By Mark Allegrini and Kate Ritterspach

This summer, the issue of food security in sub-Saharan Africa has been thrown into cruelly sharp focus. The United Nations reports that over 3 million Somalis (almost half the country’s population) are in need of food aid, and the U.S. Agency for International Development claims that over 12 million people in the eastern Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food, water or medical assistance. Last month the U.N. declared an official famine in two regions of Somalia, and recent U.S. statistics indicate that nearly 30,000 children under the age of five have already died.

Hunger in Africa is a daily reality for many across the continent, though it rarely makes headlines. The current situation in the Horn of Africa is, to be sure, a particularly dramatic case, with several of its own peculiarities. The current famine was triggered by a severe drought that affected the whole of eastern Africa. Somalia, where the official famine has been declared, is essentially a failed state, and long-standing armed conflict and militant control over some areas of the country exacerbate the effects of the drought and make delivery of essential food aid much more difficult.

However, some of the food crisis’ other contributing factors are more structural, and are not unique to one region or one dry season. Drought, while potentially devastating to farmers around the world, does not automatically produce food shortages or famine. But a basic and crippling problem in many parts of Africa is the lack of reliable, fully functioning food systems. This includes the lack of technology required to protect crops and maximize yields, and, just as crucially, the lack of infrastructure necessary to harvest, store, process, transport, and ship food locally, regionally, and internationally.

Since 2009, major donors have devoted significant attention and funds to agriculture and food security. Encouragingly, there is widespread recognition that real food security requires a holistic, value chain approach. Ultimately, for donors this means a shift away from business as usual, where large sums of money are allocated and spent largely by the donors themselves on isolated projects. The imperative of transatlantic budget austerity has added to the urgency of doing things differently. Donors must leverage the skills and financial resources of other donors, host countries, regional institutions, civil society and businesses. They can no longer go it alone.

Actually implementing this new approach, however, has proven to be a difficult task.  While high-level donor dialogues have produced commitments to coordination and a more holistic approach, there remain large gaps on the ground.  In many cases, donors’ focus on decreasing the number of countries and sectors receiving funds and attention for the sake of efficiency and specialization (“selectivity,” in the development vernacular) has not been accompanied by the necessary increase in coordination.  In order to achieve development goals in a time of smaller budgets and greater need, a focus on partnerships is a good place to start.

While one could characterize most donor programs as partnerships between the donor and host country, it has become essential to look beyond this traditional dyad toward ways to leverage other funding sources.  Generally speaking, the private sector is best suited to create economic growth. Functioning food systems are, of course, ultimately built and operated by business. Therefore, a key part of a donors’ role in ensuring food security should be helping to create a friendly and stable investment climate.  In the context of food security, donors need to bring in both the private sector and civil society to determine where investment can have the most catalytic effect. Once this is determined (for example, in Tanzania a study found that investments in food processing have a higher multiplier effect than those in any other sector), donors and businesses must come to an agreement about the right balance of resources and roles to make investments scalable and sustainable.

While partnerships with the private sector and coordination amongst donors are not new concepts, they have become increasingly important given today’s political and economic realities. To be successful, donors need to find better ways to coordinate and leverage existing sources of funding at all levels.  Country-led plans such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and the Feed the Future Initiative represent a good first step toward this approach.  Coordinating directly with a country on its own priorities, as in CAADP, and having a clear set of goals and mechanisms, as outlined in the Feed the Future Initiative, create a transparent platform for high-level donor dialogues.  The United States and European Union have gone so far as to identify priority countries that will be the focus of increased efforts at coordination.  However, while much of this work has begun at the highest levels, these are two programs where change will require a renewed focus on ground-level action and partnerships.

There are many instances where ground-level focus has yielded real development results.  Much of the work left to be done lies in identifying, scaling, and duplicating the successes that have already been achieved while getting past those projects that have failed to achieve real results.  It is all too apparent that some partnerships exist more on paper than in reality, and in a time of increased constraints, donors should not shy away from distinguishing success from failure and concentrating resources. Successful partnerships with host countries, civil society, and business need to be recognized and repeated; those that have not been successful need to be honestly acknowledged and left behind.

The German Marshall Fund is supporting a Transatlantic Experts Group to examine successful and failed food security partnerships in east Africa, with the goal of transmitting best practices and policy recommendations to transatlantic and African policymakers and other stakeholders in early 2012. The group will look beyond high-level commitments to partnerships in practice on the ground, and will work to provide an honest view of what works and what doesn’t.

Even aggressive action to increase coordination and focus on successful partnership models will not relieve the current crisis in the Horn of Africa. The current situation calls for intensive and immediate humanitarian relief. However, in order to minimize the likelihood of future famines and food emergencies, much remains to be done in creating the robust, functioning food value chains that so many in the developed world take for granted.

Mark Allegrini is a Program Officer and Kate Ritterspach a Research Assistant for GMF’s Economic Policy Program.

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BRUSSELS – On December 31st the Belgian Presidency of the European Council is coming to an end. Both Presidents Barroso and Van Rompuy congratulated Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme for the effective presidency and the true community spirit the government had shown. Indeed for a Kingdom which shows little bravura for eliminating its own political divide, Belgium succeeded remarkably well to unite the 27 on more than a few critical issues.

Perhaps it is ‘surprise’ that generated the presidential praise? With the country plunged into permanent political chaos since 2007, the ruling government coalition collapsed once again (the third time in three years) little more than a month before taking over responsibilities from the Spanish Presidency. As Belgium prepared for fresh elections, European diplomats already recalled the fall of the Czech government in early 2009 and how this had significantly reduced the efficiency of the central European state during its presidency. But the Rue de la Loi 16, the seat of the Belgian government, was not envisioning prestigious or high-profile projects. Instead the motto claimed ‘pragmatic modesty’, a strategy that may well have shown its merits. Against all odds reservations quickly disappeared as the Belgians proved rather effective.

The presidency clinched its first success in September with the European Parliament backing a legislative proposal on financial supervision. The package will allow the EU27 to set up a system of institutional watchdogs aimed at preventing a repetition of the current financial crisis. Only a few weeks later the second prize was in the bag. Belgium presided the signing of a free-trade pact between the European Union and South-Korea, but only after bringing an unpredictable Italy back at the negotiation table. This important agreement with Seoul is expected to leverage €19 billion of new exports for European producers. The Belgians also solved a long standing row with the European Parliament on the EU 2011 budget by issuing a political declaration recognizing the role of EU deputies in the next multi-annual budget talks (the Greens however rejected the text for its ‘non-binding’ nature). Without agreement the 2011 budget would have been rolled over on monthly base, hindering the bloc’s ability to operate smoothly. Finally, concluding its presidency with a minimalistic Summit, Belgium concerted an agreement on a ‘permanent crisis fund’ to shore up indebted EU member states and confront investor skepticism.

In total more than 50 deals were going to be sealed in only six months time. Besides a meager result on the EU 2020 Strategy, a dysfunctional deal on the single EU patent dream and a poor review on last summer’s Roma-dispute, general consensus exists that this has been a positive presidency.

But perhaps the biggest achievement of all has been one that is not immediately visible on paper. Since the Lisbon Treaty came into effect on the 1st of January 2009, and new actors such as Mr. Van Rompuy and Ms. Ashton have materialized in their appropriate roles, Belgium may have truly been the first country to lead an EU Presidency in post-Lisbon style. A first test for instance came when the Belgian government successfully coordinated to grant High Representative Ashton speaking rights at the United Nations General Assembly, upgrading the EU’s observer status to the new realities of the Lisbon era. Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere held his word when he said that Belgium would show its loyalty to the new Treaty and the Lisbon institutions. Yet it is one thing for a country which is traditionally pro-Europe to do so, it is another thing to hope that the tone for future presidencies has now been set.

The Financial Times already headlined back in September 2010 that Belgium “is the ideal holder of the EU Presidency”. They were right. One, as a founding state of the EU and having now chaired its 12th presidency Belgian diplomats and administrators possess the technical expertise and experience to run the project smoothly. Prime Minister Leterme mentioned this during a press conference: “I sometimes felt like operating on automatic pilot”. Two, by keeping low profile and concentrating mainly on legislative issues, the Belgians did what they can do best, namely balancing out individual interests and seeking compromise. A skill they have mastered throughout time because of the country’s historical political turmoil between the Flemish and Francophone communities. Three, it has certainly helped that Council President Herman Van Rompuy used to be the Prime Minister of Belgium before assuming his European responsibilities. Literally and figuratively the President and the Presidency were speaking the same language. And finally, the collapse of the government just before the start of its presidency has been in the end – how strange it may sound – more of a blessing rather than the expected tragedy. The simple fact that the caretaker government no longer had the powers to worry about crippling domestic issues enabled Prime Minister Leterme and his team to focus entirely on the success of the EU Presidency. Or as a Belgian diplomat put it: “It would have been disastrous for Belgium’s role if a new government had been formed during the presidency”.

Bruno Lété is a Program Associate and Thomas Castrel is an Intern with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels

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BRUSSELS — Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee finally approved a resolution to ratify the New START treaty. But chances of its being debated in the full Senate before the U.S. mid-term elections on November 2 are looking slim, further delaying the treaty’s final ratification. These rather gloomy prospects stand in sharp contrast to the optimism of a little less than 18 months ago. Then, thousands of people gathered at the city castle in the center of Prague to hear U.S. President Barack Obama give an historic address on the future of nuclear weapons, the first speech devoted to the issue of nuclear security by a U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. Since then, the New START treaty has survived a long and tortuous process of negotiations between the United States and Russia, as well as consultations with its European allies. Indeed, while New START is a bilateral treaty that binds only the two nuclear superpowers, it is also of considerable importance to Europe.

Any U.S.-Russian arms control agreement brings new opportunities to denuclearize the European continent. The strongest advocates of this idea are the European “non-nuclear weapon states” who are hosting U.S. warheads under a NATO flag. These countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey—together host an estimated total of 150 to 220 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons. In 2006, the Belgian Senate passed a bill to remove U.S. weapons from Kleine Brogel Air Force Base. Last year, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle singled out the issue of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Germany during his first visits to NATO and the United States. Parliamentarians of all host countries have urged Obama to withdraw U.S. warheads from Europe, and foreign ministers have written to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen asking for the issue to be placed higher on the alliance’s agenda. These European “abolitionists” fear that, without New START, Russia will be more reluctant to negotiate further arms limitations, giving fewer reasons for Washington to remove its weapons from Europe.

A U.S.-Russian arms control agreement is seen as a key factor by Central and Eastern Europeans for their own security. Reports such as the Nuclear Posture Review show that the White House is quietly broaching the question of whether U.S. nukes are still needed in Europe at all. That worries member states on NATO’s eastern frontier that see U.S. nuclear weapons primarily as an insurance against Russian aggression. Obama has reacted to these concerns by promising Warsaw and Prague that New START would not jeopardize U.S. plans for a missile defense system that would cover all of Eastern Europe. Yet Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite recently voiced additional concerns, saying that the treaty fails to guarantee the security of her country because it does not include non-strategic nuclear arms, specifically short-range weapons that are believed to be deployed along Russia’s western border.

No less tricky is the issue of the fate of the British and French nuclear deterrent if and when the United States and Russia disarm. The European Union’s sole nuclear powers feel ambiguous about Obama’s treaty, torn between bandwagoning on a zero-nukes campaign and ensuring their own independent nuclear deterrent, which has been a key factor in helping them keep their permanent seats and veto power in the UN Security Council.  In the U.K.—with its declared maximum stockpile of 225 weapons—a post-Cold War security environment combined with an expected defense budget shortfall of £36bn (according to a group of British MPs quoted in the Guardian) have renewed the debate on nuclear weapons. The U.K.’s Strategic Defense and Security Review, now raises the option of a doctrine of minimum deterrence, including stricter preconditions on the usage of nuclear weapons, stretching out the longevity of the arsenal, and reducing military preparedness. The New START treaty provides a good excuse for Her Majesty’s government to promote a different security approach and further cuts in defense spending.

France, with its Force de Frappe of approximately 300 warheads, is far less open to arms reduction, with President Sarkozy remaining a strong proponent of what he calls “reciprocity.” In defense of its disarmament credentials, Paris repeatedly points to its nuclear test ban in Polynesia or the closing of its Albion Plateau missile launching facility near the French Alps. But Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner helpfully clarified the Elysée’s thinking last March when he told the National Assembly that “France is not considering giving up its nuclear deterrence force.” However, with European abolitionists concerting their efforts and London prudently aligning with Washington, Paris may find itself increasingly isolated.

New START will also enhance global non-proliferation efforts, an important issue for the European Union as a whole. Whether it is former High Representative Javier Solana’s past negotiation efforts in Iran or collective attempts of member states to strengthen regimes such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Europeans have always cared about the issue. As a “civilian” power, the EU has the credibility to promote non-proliferation; New START might just be another argument to continue doing so.

The stakes are high, and, whether the senators realize it or not, the U.S. Senate’s actions will have a dramatic impact on the future security architecture of Europe.

Bruno Lété is a Program Associate with the German Marshall Fund in Brussels.

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Besides being known for its beers, chocolates and well-preserved medieval towns, Belgium is also a popular curiosity cabinet among political scientists for its particular ability of peacefully absorbing conflicts between the country’s two main regions, Flanders in the north and Wallonia in the south. Today this is no longer true. The Belgian model of ‘compromise’ is broken, leaving behind a country which for three years has been in a permanent political crisis. There is something rotten in the state of Belgium.

Social-economic realities have certainly created fundamental differences of opinion between the wealthy Flemish and the poorer Walloons on how to reorganize a highly indebted central state. Since federal reforms started in the 1960’s Belgium has gradually transformed from a centrally governed state into an entity where regions possess their own scope of competencies, but never really had to assume financial responsibility for it. The federal treasury has been (mis)used both by Flanders and Wallonia to sponsor their own budgetary gaps wherever needed. Broadly formulated and compromised directives leaving space for multiple interpretations have created a system of fund transfers between the national government and the regions that has structurally impoverished the Belgian national government. Consequence, today that government is facing a national debt that increases at the rate of 700€ per second, or a figure totaling 100% of the country’s GDP. The economic crisis has derailed the national budget producing a dramatic shortage of more than 25€ billion for the coming years. In short, despite some recent signs of prudent recovery the Belgian state is on the verge of quasi-bankruptcy. Wealthy Flanders, to a certain extent, is not unwilling to come to the rescue of the national government but is still more concerned to make sure it doesn’t solely end up repairing decades of financial mismanagement. This also explains Flemish rhetoric in current negotiations to promote regions ‘responsible’ for their own budgets. Walloons somewhat agree with the Flemish, but are right to fear that ‘responsibilization’ would mean the end of northern ‘solidarity’ with the south’s socio-economic development. Yes indeed, money is talking.

It is also a historical fact that in Belgium the economic power of one region traditionally translates into political self-confidence and cultural assertiveness towards the other weaker region. Strangely enough whereas countries create external threats and enemies to consolidate their national identity, in Belgium, political elites have created an internal enemy being it the south for the north, or the north for the south. From the Industrial Revolution until World War II the Walloons benefited economically from a flourishing heavy industry and dominated a poor and underdeveloped north neglecting Flemish grievances for self-identity. It took more than a century after the creation of Belgium for the south to fully recognize Flemish cultural rights. It might not be said out loud at the negotiation table but still, even today, the struggle for cultural self-affirmation toward the south is often latently present in many Flemish minds. And since Flanders has now become the economic engine of the Belgian economy it doesn’t hesitate to flex its muscles. Since the 1960’s the north has developed a post-modern export-orientated industry complex while the south only very recently started to overcome the lost glory of abundant coal mines and mighty steel mills. In Flanders, the past cultural trauma, economic strength and a larger demography than the south, have stoked Flemish nationalism.  Everyone in the north is jumping on that bandwagon. Today political elites in the south have started to publicly grasp the consequences of years of francophone refusal to listen to Flemish demands for more decentralization. In fact, this attitude has fed Flemish nationalism. Had the south shown political courage to engage in a debate at the very beginning, instead of coming up with water downed compromises that neutralize Flemish demands, it might have well safeguarded Belgian unity and avoided the current political impasse.

But since the very existence of Belgium there have always been socio-economic differences and cultural divides between the countries’ main regions. So why now everything is going wrong?  Why does it seem there are no longer Belgians in Belgium? Maybe the answer lies within today’s generation of political elites. Their predecessors, the baby-boomers, all were born in a united Belgium, where politicians accounted for national political parties, within a thriving post-world war economy, and where society was far less organized along the north/south axis. Since the 1960’s when Belgium started its transformation into a federalized state, that sense of unity has gradually been eroded. An important political alienation between north and south was initiated when both national political parties and the national elections were ‘regionalized’. For instance, a liberal politician in the north or in the south of Belgium belongs to a separate Flemish or Walloon liberal party. Whenever national elections in Belgium are being held, electors in the north can only vote for politicians in their part of the country and vice versa for the south. This artificial and undemocratic ‘compromise’ makes politicians in one part of the country unconcerned with what constituents in other parts of the country want. This system only invigorates popular speech, selfish self-interest and a society where politicians are permitted to ignore the other half of the population.

But Belgium will remain. It is already complicated enough to reform it, let stand alone to break it up. Moreover, neither the north neither the south will ever give up on the national capital Brussels. Certainly socio-economic responsibility and cultural autonomy needs to be further regionalized, but equally important, political life needs to be re-nationalized if the Kingdom is to solve challenges it is currently facing. With finances on the brink of collapse, an unsustainable social security system, foreign investments staying out because of the political instability, a failing immigration system and an aging population, problems are genuine. The last three years are irreversibly lost and wasted, but now it is time for political elites on both sides of the country to stop mudslinging. The Flemish should recognize that over the last weeks Walloon concessions about further decentralization constituted a major shift of thinking never seen before in the south. Breaking up Belgium is not on the agenda and therefore incremental steps toward autonomy might be a better strategy than current Flemish I-Want-It-All attitude. And the Walloons once and for all should let go of their fear for more regional autonomy. Regional ‘responsibilization’, after all, might not be such a bad concept for a southern landscape that has suffered a lot from fraud and corruption over the last years.

Creating jobs, sustaining an affordable high-quality of life and fixing the state’s finances is what really is on people’s mind today. For the elites who have been elected to lead the country, getting back to the negotiation table, showing some political goodwill and forming a workable government sooner rather than later is not a luxury, it is the only way forward.

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