Remarks by UN Resident Coordinator at the Roundtable Conference on the Feed Salone Strategy

An old saying in this part of the world is that ‘if you knock out hunger, you defeat poverty’. This highlights the long-established understanding of the mutually reinforcing relationship between food security and sustainable development. Similarly, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has repeatedly emphasized since the September 2021 Global Food Systems Summit that progress towards food security will deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

So, on behalf of international development partners and the UN country team, we commend Mr. President and the Government for placing agriculture, food security, climate change, and malnutrition as national priorities under the “Feed Salone” initiative as one of the five Big Game Changers for accelerating economic growth and building the resilience of the nation.

It is the inextricable interlinkages between food security and social, economic, and environmental sustainability and the urgent need to address Sierra Leone’s severe food security challenges that have underpinned the UN country team’s prioritization of support for efforts at achieving sustainable agriculture, food and nutrition security, and climate resilience over the last three years. In partnership with the government and other stakeholders, including farmers' organizations, and with the support of development partners, we have deployed evidence-based policy guidance, capacity building, technical assistance, social and behaviour change communication, and direct delivery of program interventions to strengthen different elements of the food system. We have fostered wider adoption of sustainable, climate-smart agricultural, fishing, and agri-business practices. We have also supported the successful piloting and ongoing scaling-up of the home-grown school feeding program.

We, therefore, welcome today’s Roundtable to engage with multiple stakeholders within the agrifood sector to mobilize partnerships and identify key collaborations that would have to be nurtured and cultivated to help drive the finetuning and effective implementation of the Feed Salone Strategy over the next 5 years. From what we know so far, the Feed Salone Strategy is a highly ambitious initiative, especially in the context of significant resource constraints and a generally unstable regional and global environment. It would, therefore, be extremely difficult for its implementation to successfully accelerate agricultural transformation without optimally leveraging resources, delivery capacities, technical expertise, and organizational networks within and beyond the country.  It would certainly need to be anchored on a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach to increase its chances of success.

It is thus encouraging that a little over a week ago, the Honorable Minister of Agriculture and Food Security joined a broad spectrum of stakeholders to launch the Agriculture Sector Donor Working Group, co-chaired by the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development and the EU Delegation in Sierra Leone. This development is a testament to the commitment of development partners, private sector players, and NGOs to foster a coordinated approach to supporting the implementation of the Feed Salone Strategy. It is a clear recognition that no single entity can alone address the complex challenges facing Sierra Leone’s agrifood system. It is also a concrete expression of a willingness to align our efforts, pool our resources, and better connect and harmonize our different interventions to make a greater impact.

To conclude, let me state that the UN System here in Sierra Leone in collaboration with other development partners, stands ready to support the finalization and implementation of the Feed Salone Strategy with requisite capacities, technical assistance, and resource partnerships. We do so in the hope that the Strategy will be implemented with the strong political commitment, sustained stakeholder engagement, and accountability needed to achieve outcomes that will contribute significantly to economic growth, food security, and climate resilience that leaves no Sierra Leonean behind.

Thank you.