There is a pain in the belly of Africa that just will not go away. It is gnawing at our development goals and undermining our economies. It is blighting the lives of the young and shortening the life span of the old, yet somehow it is being forgotten. What is this scourge that stalks our continent? A rampant virus with no cure? An insect that pricks our skin and poisons our blood? If it were so dramatic and captivating, it might gather more attention.

In fact, it is much more prosaic; it is, of course, hunger. This scourge of Africa is advancing rather than receding and consuming more lives today than ever before. A hungry person is an angry and dangerous person. It is in all our interests to take away the cause of his anger. There is a saying in my country: When you take hunger out of poverty, poverty is halved. That is why it is so crucial today that we give top priority to ridding ourselves of this blight on development.

In this year when so much energy and good will have been focused on the campaign to "Make Poverty History" and the Commission for Africa, we should remember that hunger and malnutrition continue to kill more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Food is the stuff of life. Without it, free trade, debt relief and poverty alleviation will mean little or nothing to the millions of African farmers who till the soil and herd their goats in remote rural areas far from the benevolent gaze of the developed world.