Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has described the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a “waste of money” and called for its scrapping. His comments came as the FAO announced a $200 million package to help farmers boost production in developing countries, where the cost of feeding a family has more than doubled in just three years. The FAO, founded in 1945 with the specific brief to defeat hunger, has had a checkered history. Originally headquartered in Quebec it is now run out of Rome and has built up a reputation for considerable bureaucracy which at times has been accused of generating more highly expensive reports than improvements in agriculture. During the long leadership of Director-General Edouard Saouma, who served three terms from 1976 to 1993, there were allegations of inordinately high salaries, inflated expenditure on the likes of first- class air travel and corruption.
Unfortunately, instead of mounting a root-and-branch reform of the failing FAO, the UN permitted the establishment of rival organizations, in the shape of the World Food Council, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Program. Last year, a report found that the FAO had still done little to reform its processes and — in large part because of the calls of competing bodies in the agricultural development space — was woefully short of money.
There is, therefore, some justice in the Senegalese president’s call that the FAO be trashed. However this is to ignore the fact that for all its bloated administration, the agency has done valuable work in its time and is currently running good programs. These could, of course, be taken up by other agencies and very probably better run. The considerable financial saving of closing the FAO could also be redirected toward the work of its rivals.
Nevertheless, perhaps the FAO deserves one last chance and in a way that Wade also suggested in the same speech. The organization should be relocated to Africa, which is the continent where food shortages due to failing agricultural production are most dangerous for political and social stability. No doubt the Senegalese president would like to suggest his own capital Dakar as the new FAO base. However, in reality, with the instability in Kenya, there are only two or arguably three potential African hosts. Pretoria in South Africa or Cairo are obvious choices with perhaps Algiers as an outsider.
If the UN decided on such a move, it should coincide with a total overhaul of the FAO. The best way to undertake this would be to start with the programs it is running with farmers and work backward through the management chain, cutting out every part of the agency that does not make a serious contribution to what is going on — literally in the field. Merely moving the FAO lock, stock and barrel to an African city would merely transplant the waste and inefficiencies along with it. Unfortunately, however, such moves could take years and we are already in crisis.
