Top brass give pest talks a miss
Ministers from 15 East and Southern African countries were absent from the UN's crisis meeting on fall armyworm, instead delegating the task to staff, who in some cases left after delivering their speeches
This raised concern among those who did stay to thrash out a solution that the people who can make a difference are indifferent to the crisis. At a meeting organised by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation in Harare this week over the threat posed by pests and disease outbreaks to food security, experts pointed a finger at regional governments for being slow to respond and allocating few resources to the fight against outbreaks. The fall armyworm, African migratory red locusts, tomato leaf miner, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease have devastated crops or livestock in the Southern African Development Community. Twelve countries - South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Namibia, the Seychelles, Madagascar, Botswana, Angola, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe - participated in the FAO meeting. Representatives for Swaziland, Mauritius and Mozambique did not show up, and Kenya was represented only by an FAO official. Criticism by experts, however, failed to jolt the right audience, as ...
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