Document
Press gaggle by President Obama en Route Johannesburg, South Africa
THE PRESIDENT: I just want to emphasize how important the work that we're doing on agriculture is and I hope you got a sense from those folks who had set up their booths how much of a direct impact it can make in the lives of people in a really concrete way.
Obviously, we've got budget constraints back home, which means that we've got to come up with new and creative ways to promote development and deliver aid -- and this Food for the Future program and our
New Alliance on Food Security is doing exactly that. Every dollar that we're putting in, we're getting a huge amount of private-sector dollars. We're focusing on how do people become more productive as opposed to simply giving them food or giving them medicine.
What we announce later on this trip around power what we're calling Power Africa is going to be utilizing that same model. But what you're really starting to see is people understanding what works, working with small producers, leveraging so, for example, you notice we're doing nutrition issues, but then also using it as an economic development tool.
And all that creates the kind of critical mass where, in a country like Senegal or Tanzania, where maybe 70 percent of the people are involved in agriculture, you can see each one of those small farmers suddenly increasing their income by 20 percent, 30 percent, 50 percent. That then becomes the basis for a nascent middle class in those countries; that in turn can help create local manufacturers, local consumer goods. And eventually, these then become export markets for the United States. So it's not just a matter of alleviating hunger or reducing poverty; it's creating the basis for the entire continent to get incorporated into world markets in a way that ultimately will benefit not just Africa but also the United States.
So our foreign aid budget is around 1 percent of our total federal budget. It's chronically the least popular part of our federal budget. But if you look at the bang for the buck that we're getting when it's done right, when it's well designed, and when it's scaled at the local level with input from local folks, it can really make a huge difference. And what we've designed I think is so effective that we've been able to see other countries essentially put their money into a similar model, and we're also thereby leveraging all of international assistance around this issue.
THE PRESIDENT: I just want to emphasize how important the work that we're doing on agriculture is and I hope you got a sense from those folks who had set up their booths how much of a direct impact it can make in the lives of people in a really concrete way.
Obviously, we've got budget constraints back home, which means that we've got to come up with new and creative ways to promote development and deliver aid -- and this Food for the Future program and our
New Alliance on Food Security is doing exactly that. Every dollar that we're putting in, we're getting a huge amount of private-sector dollars. We're focusing on how do people become more productive as opposed to simply giving them food or giving them medicine.
What we announce later on this trip around power what we're calling Power Africa is going to be utilizing that same model. But what you're really starting to see is people understanding what works, working with small producers, leveraging so, for example, you notice we're doing nutrition issues, but then also using it as an economic development tool.
And all that creates the kind of critical mass where, in a country like Senegal or Tanzania, where maybe 70 percent of the people are involved in agriculture, you can see each one of those small farmers suddenly increasing their income by 20 percent, 30 percent, 50 percent. That then becomes the basis for a nascent middle class in those countries; that in turn can help create local manufacturers, local consumer goods. And eventually, these then become export markets for the United States. So it's not just a matter of alleviating hunger or reducing poverty; it's creating the basis for the entire continent to get incorporated into world markets in a way that ultimately will benefit not just Africa but also the United States.
So our foreign aid budget is around 1 percent of our total federal budget. It's chronically the least popular part of our federal budget. But if you look at the bang for the buck that we're getting when it's done right, when it's well designed, and when it's scaled at the local level with input from local folks, it can really make a huge difference. And what we've designed I think is so effective that we've been able to see other countries essentially put their money into a similar model, and we're also thereby leveraging all of international assistance around this issue.
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