Excellencies;

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Allow me to begin by welcoming you to Tanzania and in Arusha in particular and to this important retreat of ours, on food security and climate change. Our participation is a clear testimony of the importance we personally, and our respective governments attach to these overarching issues.

During our last ordinary Summit, it became evident that our region needs to have a serious discussion on food security and climate change. Both are important matters of concern to all of us. We have to ensure a sustainable food security situation in our countries. Currently this is not the case. Agricultural productivity and production is in fact too low. Our agriculture is predominantly peasant and remains backward in terms of use of modern techniques and methods of agricultural productions. There is limited use of high yielding seeds, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Moreover, our agriculture is overly dependent on rains and these days availability of rain has become very unreliable. Weather patterns seem to have become less predictable these days. Experience has shown that our region has been experiencing frequent and long periods of drought in recent years and serious problems of post harvest loses. Shortage of food in many parts of East Africa therefore, has become a recurrent problem.

This factor is very much a function of the effects of climate change. That is why it is very opportune, indeed, that we are today discussing food security and issues related to climate change. They are very much related and inseparable. There are today, threats of food security because of climate change. There are problems of climate change partly because of agriculture. We need to address both issues to ensure food security and sound environmental sustainability.

In addressing the challenge of food security and climate change facing our region, we need to look into finding the appropriate solutions. We need to explore how best to increase food production to meet our increasing demand as our population grows; how to address the ever-changing weather patterns: and how to minimize agricultural related activities that are destructive to the environment while maximizing its potential to mitigate climate change. We need to come up with a clear regional policy and implementable action plan that will halt and reverse the current human actions that are destructive to the environment thereby, enhancing food security in our Region.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen;

It is my hope that we shall also use today's retreat to explore ways and means of making our Region the "saviour" of what appears to be the global food apocalypse. The question that begs answers is: Can the East African Community countries take a pro-active role to become food self sufficient and a food warehouse for the whole of Africa? I believe we can. Let us put our act together. Let this retreat be the beginning of that steady march towards that noble goal.

Clearly, Africa including the EAC region will have to take more appropriate measures to ensure its own food security and think seriously about food exports as well. We are here to basically exchange views on how to achieve these dual objectives.

We need to consider how to increase irrigation in our agricultural production. Currently only 5% of our arable land is irrigated; we need to do more. We need to ask ourselves about how to leverage modern science and technology to increase food production in our respective countries and the region as a whole.
Our discussions should also be mindful of the fact that Africa no longer gets the same level of aid to support its agriculture. ODA to agriculture in Africa is down to the 1975 level of US$ 1.2 billion, compared to US$ 3.4 billion in 1984. To make matters worse, even our national budgetary allocation to agriculture does not reflect the importance of the sector to our countries. We need to seriously consider the Lagos Plan of Action of ensuring that at least 10 percent of our national budgetary allocation goes to agriculture.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen;

Let me conclude my remarks by posing a number of questions that we should reflect upon in our retreat:

• Why is the potential for producing key sources of food and nutrition in the EAC Region so underutilized at the moment?

• What will it take to achieve optimal and environmentally sustainable land utilization to produce food and food products from all sources including crops, livestock, fishery and marine resources, and forestry resources?

• How do we implement the best models to accelerate regional trade in food commodities and products in ways that ensure utilization of comparative advantage in food production and supply?

• How can we structure our food and agricultural production systems with respect to optimizing the combinations of: smallholder vs large scale, crops vs livestock systems, rain fed vs. irrigated systems and production for export vs. for local consumption?

• What agricultural financing models should we adopt to accelerate local investments and FDIs in food supply and value chain systems – from production to consumption?

• What measures should we adopt to enhance the resilience to weather variability and adaptation to climate change by our agricultural-systems?

• How do we improve crop markets which presently are imperfect and inefficient to absorb and distribute food harvest?

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen;

Let us avail ourselves of this opportunity for fruitful discussions and deliberations for the benefit of our East African Community Region.
After those few remarks, I declare the retreat open, and thank you for listening.