Friday, 22 July 2011 00:11 BY STAR CORRESPONDENT

Hunger has taken away the dignity of the African, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Uhuru Kenyatta said yesterday. Kenyatta said the Government would support programmes that give the people the ability to feed themselves and thus restore their dignity. “If you cannot feed yourself, you have no dignity. The process of restoring this dignity is in giving people the ability to feed themselves. We have many challenges but food should not be one of them,” he said.

The DPM spoke when he met the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Dr A Namanga Ngongi, at the Treasury Building. In the last three Budgets, the Government has set aside more money for the agriculture sector and related activities such as water, irrigation, forestry and conservation.

AGRA aims to achieve a food sufficient and prosperous Africa through the promotion of agricultural growth based on small-scale farmers. The AGRA board is chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Ngongi commended the government for the efforts to expand agriculture through increased funding. Kenya, he said, is better organised to tackle problems facing agriculture. He called for meetings among concerned stakeholders to discuss methods of allocating more funding to agriculture.