KAMPALA - Ending conflict in Africa is the key to reducing hunger in the impoverished continent, former Mozambican first lady GraÁa Machel told an international conference on food security here yesterday.

'Conflicts are the primary causes of food insecurity in our continent," Machel, a children rights advocate and wife of Nelson Mandela, told the meeting, which seeks to draw up strategies to end hunger in Africa by 2020.

An estimated 200 million Africans are currently malnourished, and that number is expected to rise if action is not taken.

The three-day conference, which opened near here on Thursday, is being attended by Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade, as well as more than 500 ministers, experts and farmers from 35 African countries.

'We cannot plan how to get out of food shortage and how to improve the nutrition status of our citizens without concentrating efforts in solving conflicts that affect our society," said Machel.

'We need to re-prioritise our resources towards development. Resources that were concentrated on arms and the so-called security, have to be diverted now to human security, which is enough food for everybody," she added.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) called for political commitment to ending hunger and appealed for increased resources in support of policies and actions aimed at improving agriculture and food security.

'Substantial public and private investments are needed to increase agricultural productivity," FAO said in a statement, adding that only seven percent of Africa's arable land is irrigated, compared to 40 percent in Asia.

The UN food agency also noted that Africa only uses four percent of water reserves available for irrigation, compared to 17 percent in Asia.

European Union commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Poul Nielson, said that although the undernourished population was decreasing elsewhere in the developing world, it has not changed in sub- Saharan Africa. He pledged EU's continued support for Africa's efforts to attain food security, but cautioned that most of the work has to be done by Africans themselves.

'Development finally depends on developing countries' own actions," Nielson told the conference.

In speeches during the opening session on Thursday, the three presidents urged the West to stop trade 'protectionism" to encourage Africa farmers to grow more food.

'We should not beat about the bush, we need a level-playing field in the global market because market access is the stimulus for people to produce sustainably," Museveni told the conference, whose theme is 'Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020."

'You cannot have food security without income security," he said. 'You cannot preach free markets and practice protectionism. You will not go to heaven that way," he added.

Obasanjo said that 'farmers in the West were being subsidised at about a billion dollars a day and at this level, African agriculture will not become buoyant".

'We are all familiar with the clichÈ about Africans living on less than a dollar a day, yet a cow in Europe is subsidised at over two dollars a day," said the Nigerian leader.

'Through disincentive and inability to compete, western markets are thus directly and indirectly shut against Africa."

Wade outlined the role of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, an organisation he founded with Obasanjo and South African President Thabo Mbeki which, he said, was aimed at supplementing development efforts of national goverments.

The Kampala conference is jointly organised by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute and the Ugandan government. - Sapa-AFP