Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if she will take diplomatic steps to encourage (a) donor governments and (b) private sector partners to scale up the global response to the hunger crisis in Africa.

The UK is pressing for an urgent collective response to food insecurity in Africa, building on the first G7 Famine Prevention Compact agreed during the UK's presidency in 2021. In April, the UK helped bring states together at a UN drought roundtable which mobilised roughly $400 million in new commitments for the East Africa region. The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, Victoria Prentis and I attended the G7 leaders meeting in June where participants pledged an additional $4.5 billion of support, including a UK commitment of £372 million. We continue to support the G7 Global Alliance on Food Security and the UN Global Crisis Response Group to mobilise support from other donor governments.

I have written to the World Bank President and the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator to encourage them to do more. The UN has confirmed a scale-up of efforts in Somalia and Ethiopia. The Multilateral Development Banks, including the World Bank and Africa Development Bank, have in total announced more than $35 billion of funding. The Banks are rapidly approving projects, totalling $24 billion at the World Bank and $1.1 billion at the African Development Bank, directly supporting vulnerable households and farmers and supporting a shift towards more resilient agriculture.