Gambia committed to fight food insecurity – Minister Sillah

By Aisha Tamba The Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure, Ebrima Sillah has said that food insecurity increased in The Gambia over the past five years largely resulting from structural issues such as a weak agriculture, comprising predominantly of smallholder farmers with limited access to resources and exposed to price and climate related shocks just like many other countries in West and Central Africa. Hon. Sillah made these remarks at The Labranda Coral Beach Resort & Spa during the opening of a 3-day regional communication, advocacy and marketing retreat organised by the WFP in collaboration with the communications, advocacy and marketing (CAM) division. The event brought together communication specialists from 19 countries in West and Central Africa to discuss the WFP updated communication strategy, with a view to increasing understanding of the updated strategy and identify strategies to adopt in to country context specificities. He added that eradicating hunger and malnutrition is one of the great challenges of our time as not only do the consequences cause suffering and poor health but hinder areas of development such as education and employment. According to him, for this reason, any strategy to reduce hunger and poverty is of utmost importance to the Government of the Gambia. “It is sad to note that every day many across the globe struggle to provide a nutritious meal to their children”, adding that: “we live in a world of plenty, where individuals own billions; where there are fishes in the oceans and rivers; multitudes of vegetables and fruits; and yet 821 million people- 1 in 9 persons around the globe- still go to bed hungry each night”. “Worst still- 1 in 3- suffer from some form of malnutrition”, he went on while describing the above as one of the biggest parables of time. He expressed government’s commitment to work with UN family in order to achieve the SDGs in general.]]>