Saudi Arabia announced a fivefold increase in its contribution to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) from $10 million in 2006 to $50 million, said Kanayo F. Nwanze, the newly elected president of the UN's specialized agency. Nwanze, accompanied with Taysir Al-Ghanem, IFAD's Regional Communication Manager for the Near East and North Africa, and Nadim Khouri, Director, Near East and North Africa Division, was on an official visit to the Kingdom, Tuesday. “IFAD has been seeking funds for its next three-year financial period and the Kingdom has granted a fivefold increase in its contribution from $10 million, three years ago to $50 million,” Nwanze told Saudi Gazette. He said it would be noteworthy to say that the Kingdom made the announcement for the contribution in 2009, a year before IFAD's 2010-2012 fund drive. The Kingdom's early announcement of its contribution triggered tremendous response from other GCC states that came forward and made donations, he added. IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in developing countries. Through low-interest loans and grants, it develops and finances projects that enable rural poor people to overcome poverty themselves. The Kingdom, Nwanze said, has been very modest about its generous contributions to the international community and because its efforts are seldom highlighted in the media, many people in the world do not know about the Kingdom's humanitarian aid. Referring to Official Development Assistance (ODA), which is a statistic compiled by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmnt to measure aid, he said OECD states' contributions amounted to a mere 0.7 percent as compared with 2 percent from Saudi Arabia. Explaining the Saudi contributions to international efforts, he said the Kingdom during 2007-2008 gave $1 billion to the OPEC Fund for energy for the poor, $1 billion to the Palestinian people of Gaza, $500,000 to AGFUND for its soft loan program for developing countries, another $500,000 to the World Food Program, as a result of the food crisis in 2008, and $1 billion to the Islamic Solidarity Fund of the Islam Development Bank among other contributions. This, he added, does not include the contributions of private Saudi companies for the development of agricultural projects in a number of countries. “So, in many ways one has to recognize the efforts of the Kingdom, in terms of financial assistance for which Saudi Arabia does not take enough credit,” Nwanze said, adding “Saudi Arabia has been very modest about its support to international efforts as regards food security.” The OECD's DAC first compiled the statistic in 1969, which was widely used by academics and journalists as a convenient indicator of international aid flow. Saudi Arabia was in the forefront of establishing the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) some 30 years ago in terms of financial, moral and international support. “I was elected president of IFAD less than two months ago and the Kingdom was not only supportive but also instrumental in getting support from other GCC states for my candidacy as president of IFAD,” Nwanze explained. Contributions to IFAD by donors are divided into three different groups, such as, OPEC member countries, OECD and G77 development countries, he said. Nwanze said that this was his first official visit to Saudi Arabia, as IFAD president “and I came to express my appreciation and thanks to King Abdullah, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and his government,” he said. During his stay in Riyadh, he said that he held meetings with Saudi officials and assured them of IFAD's continued commitment to its mandate in helping developing countries through their programs and projects aimed at alleviating poverty and hunger. The move was toward achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goal Number 1 by 2050 to reduce world poverty by half,” he explained. IFAD could act as a partner in co-financing some projects in countries where the Kingdom has been engaged in supporting development programs, he added. “People are not aware of the Saudi government's support in development efforts worldwide in regions, such as, Africa and Asia in particular,” Nwanze said. He hailed the Kingdom's decision to stop wheat cultivation, which he said was very expensive compared to purchasing from outside, which is a viable alternative. “The Kingdom's decision to stop wheat cultivation because of water scarcity was good,” he said, adding that the renewable water resources in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia were very low. Investments in offshore agriculture have benefits and offer a win-win situation, and IFAD would certainly support such efforts, Nwanze said. Hunger and poverty were inhuman and that could not be tolerated. Food security was the fundamental pillar in ensuring political stability and peace in any country of the world “and this is why we called for global efforts in securing food security,” he explained. The food crisis has become a global issue and cannot be handled in isolation, he said, while calling for Arab participation in tackling the problem in cooperation with the UN and its related agencies by developing new techniques for growing better crops. IFAD has been supporting medium- and long-term investments into agriculture, because when people start to depend on food aid, they lose the ability to produce, Nwanze pointed out. He said his institution has been providing assistance to Arab countries, such as, Yemen, Sudan and projects in Algeria. While working with these countries in the Arab region, IFAD looked into possibilities, such as, increasing agricultural productivity through water management by means of efficient irrigation mechanisms, using alternative sources of water, such as, brackish or recycled saline water, or growing crops that are more tolerant to drought. IFAD has been coordinating efforts with a number of research institutions based in the Arab region, such as, the Syrian-based International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the Dubai-based International Center for Bio-saline Agriculture (ICBA). IFAD tackles poverty not just as a lender, but also as an advocate for the rural poor. Central to its work is the belief that rural poor people must shape and guide their own destinies if poverty is to be seriously reduced. For that reason, IFAD focuses on local rural development and acts as a catalyst, bringing together donors, non-governmental organizations and community groups working at the grass
