Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all of you for making time in your first week back at the House to hear from us.
I have particular thanks for the chair and those of you around the table who have been particularly supportive of giving more attention to the role of small farmers in the business of reducing hunger and poverty.
We come before you today to communicate two messages. The first is that we want to make it clear that appropriate aid to agriculture is an effective—in fact many people say the most effective—investment in reducing hunger and poverty.
Canada made a promising start in providing aid for agriculture a few years ago, but more recently we fear that this is falling off the map. So we took the opportunity to see what Canadian efforts have already achieved, and that's the substance of what we want to say this morning.
The second message we want to send, which clearly is very germane to the question of good governance, is that local communities, civil society organizations, and farmer-based organizations and NGOs are especially important as the starting point for any aid for agriculture. They should not only be the final point; they need to be part of directing what kind of agricultural development takes place.
Those two messages are coming to you from the food security policy group, which is a network of Canadian NGOs working in international development that also includes some farm organizations in Canada.
We say food security is our business, but we're talking to you about agriculture, because we think that particularly in Africa attention to agriculture is essential to doing anything about food security.
Eight months ago, we started a project to give a voice to African civil society on the question of aid for agriculture—its importance and what kind of direction it should take. We therefore engaged consultants in each of three CIDA priority, sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. I believe that you or your staff received the summary report of that research.
Tomorrow morning, we are going to host a half-day workshop at CIDA to discuss the particular findings of that report. But let me say that generally it was very positive about the start Canada has made in this area. The important thing is that this start shouldn't falter.
I mentioned that we wanted to give voice to civil society, so I'm about finished saying what I wanted to say.
I would like to introduce two visitors from Africa. First is Fidelis Wainaina, who won the 2006 African Green Revolution Yara Prize, is an agriculture teacher and the founder of Maseno Interchristian Child Self Help Group. This self-help group seeks to work with local communities to help their AIDS orphans and at-risk young people become strong, viable farmers. So most of her work is spent working with small farmers.
The second person we have with us is Mr. Malex Alebikiya, who is the executive secretary of the Association of Church Development Projects in northern Ghana. This is a network of 40 church-based NGOs that work in the area of agriculture, nutrition, health, and rural livelihoods. Malex is an agriculturalist and has worked in northern Ghana for the past 30 years. He was particularly important in our study, since he oversaw the work we did in Ghana.
I'm now going to invite first Malex and then Fidelis to make brief presentations to you, and then we look forward to your questions.
Malex.