Sharm el-Sheikh - Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak opened Sunday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh the summit of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) group amid growing criticism that the organization has become a talking shop. In his opening address, the Egyptian leader, whose country was one of the five founders of the group along with Senegal, South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria, urged African leaders to put into effect an agricultural development programme that the group had previously agreed.
"The programme gains in importance with the current regional and international situation caused by the food crisis and the soaring global prices of food commodities," Mubarak said.
Prices of major food commodities, such as rice, corn and wheat, have doubled in the past two years, sparking food riots across Africa.
International financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have warned that higher food prices, expected to continue to rise by 50 per cent in the next decade, could cause social instability in Africa.
Mubarak, whose country has seen several food riots in the past months with several people dying in scuffles in bread queues, has made agricultural development a government priority.
African countries must intensify their efforts to increase agricultural output by "increasing farmland, adopting modern irrigation methods and managing water resources in a scientific way to reduce water waste," Mubarak told his fellow African leaders.
The NEPAD organization wants developed countries to reduce subsidies to their own farmers and more market access for African produce.
The organization with some 30 countries and development groups complain that farm subsidies in rich countries result in surplus agricultural produce being dumped in African markets at a heavily subsidized prices that local farmers can not compete with.
The World Bank announced in March that it would nearly double its agricultural loans to Africa from 450 million to 800 million dollars in 2010 and beyond to help it cope with the food crisis.
Some 20 countries from sub-Saharan Africa are among the 36 countries that are considered most vulnerable to soaring food prices.
The NEPAD summit is held amid criticism that it failed to make any significant progress in its stalled development plan.
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade is among the critics. He accused NEPAD last year of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and becoming a talking shop.
Seeking to streamline NEPAD, Senegal has proposed merging the organization's institutions into the African Union and giving more decision-making powers to the heads of state instead of technocrats.
Some critics question the seriousness of NEPAD's declared goal of setting and policing standards of good governance across the continent given Africa's reaction to the internationally condemned run-off election in Zimbabwe.
On Saturday, Zimbabwe held a single-candidate presidential run-off election with only President Robert Mugabe taking part.
The election crisis will be discussed in the African summit to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday but western calls for sanctions against Harare are expected to ignored.
African ministers said ahead of the summit, which Mugabe was expected to attend, sanctions would have limited impact.
Kenya's Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula questioned the effectiveness of sanctions.
"We need to engage Zimbabwe. The route of sanctions may not be the helpful one," the minister said.
African leaders prefer a pan-African solution to regional and domestic conflicts to solutions imposed by the west.
Many African leaders are themselves autocrats, who reject democratization.
The octogenarian Egyptian leader, who only allows limited political freedoms and participation, has himself repeatedly rebuffed calls from western countries for more political reforms in Egypt.
He has always argued that democratization should be initiated domestically and must reflect every country's cultural and political particularity.
He and other African leaders are unlikely to lend their support for any international sanctions against Mugabe.
Any reforms, Mubarak told African leaders, should "take into consideration Africa's political and economic conditions and its social and cultural particularity."
"Reforms should be reflect a purely African choice," Mubarak said.
