This year, for the first time since it began in 1984, the World Food Day Teleconference will explore a specifically regional rather than global situation. The theme will be: "World Food Security: Focus on Africa

Two considerations led to this African focus: first, recurring drought and famine over very wide areas of the continent in the past two decades have highlighted the environmental fragility of the food resource base; and second, sub-Saharan Africa is the only major region in the world in which, even apart from the disaster years, population has been growing faster than food production. As late as 1970, Africa was a net food exporter; today, one-fourth of all food consumed is imported into the region, and a trend line shows a steady worsening of food dependency. It can be shown, however, that the trend line is not irreversible.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), after years of detailed mapping of land and water resources, estimates that the 46 countries of the region could feed many times their present population. The land/population ratio is still extremely favorable compared to other parts of the world, and ecological problems can be handled by better land management. An overview of this resource strength is found in the first section of this year's teleconference Study/Action Packet, prepared by the Center for Advanced Study of International Development (CASID) at Michigan State University, and is amply supported by research studies of FAO and many other African and international institutions.

Although deep concern with the steady fall in African self-sufficiency has grown over the years, world attention increased dramatically because of the disastrous drought and famine of 1983-85. A series of hastily assembled meetings and conferences of regional and world development agencies led to the adoption in 1985 of a five-year UN Program of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development (UN-PAAERD) to cover the years 1986-1990. This program involved commitments by both the African governments and the donor community that would combine structural reforms on the African side with financial support by the donors to ensure that reform and development could advance simultaneously and that short-term hardships caused by the reforms could be made politically acceptable to the African peoples.

The first and most positive side of this bargain, it is widely agreed, was the universal consensus that agriculture, and especially the food production of small farmers, holds the key to Africa's future. The questions remaining were less of goals and objectives (recovery and development with smallholder agriculture as the leading sector) as with means and the speed of action required.

Specific steps required to ensure that structural adjustment programs don't weigh too heavily on the poorest strata of each national society;

The need to improve education and health systems even while reducing public budget deficits;

The role of African (and foreign) non-governmental agencies in assisting rural development in the face of structural adjustment cuts;

The balance between governmental support for export agriculture and enhanced food security.