The Food and Agricultural Organisation's office in Accra (FAO) has launched an international campaign against hunger in Ghana. Dubbed: "The One Billionhunngry Campaign", the programme highlights the growing problem of global hunger, which now affects more than one billion people worldwide. The aim of the campaign is to act as a reminder to world leaders to eliminate global hunger and deliver the L' Aquilla statement on food security by scaling up investments in agriculture and addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty. Launching the campaign in Accra, Mr Musa Saihou Mbenga, Deputy Regional Representative for Africa, said world leaders gathered in L' Aquila in July 2009 and signed a joint statement on food security, which was endorsed at the World Summit of Food Security in November 2009. He said the leaders had agreed on five principles to reduce hunger and increase investment in agriculture through country-owned plans, among others, and the role of the FAO was to speak for the hungry, since over a quarter of a billion pe00ple in Africa currently suffered from malnutrition and 30 per cent of Africans faced hunger. He said the worst hit areas were in Central and Eastern Africa with food crisis linked to conflicts occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Ethiopia in addition to a worsening food crisis in Niger which had increased the number of people affected in the Sahel. The Country Representative said the, one billion hungry campaign was launched worldwide by the FAO on, May 11,2010 and it was a carefully orchestrated drive to attract one million signatures to a petition calling on national and international leaders to - move hunger onto the top of their political agenda. He said the signatures were intended to be symbolically presented during World Food Day observances at the UN headquarters in New York in the fall of 2010. He said hunger, a quiet crisis, was barely in the news yet current calculations showed that close to one billion people worldwide continued to go hungry on a daily basis and the UN had agreed to the target of reducing the number by half in 2015. Mr Mbenga said boosting Africa's food production had been a major cause of concern for governments and regional institutions in their efforts to achieve food security. He said, however, issues such as rural poverty, investment in the agriculture sector and marketing constraints had also been highlighted as posing serious challenge• to hunger reduction. He said the FAO operated throughout the region, alleviating hunger and building the capacity to develop, adding that regional support programmes to reduce hunger included the recently implemented ED Food Facility programme, which was operational in 16 countries, as well as the special programme for food security in 35 countries across Africa. Source: Daily Graphic