African Union creates food security prize

The African Union will create a food security prize named after Jacques Diouf, the outgoing UN food agency chief, the president of Equatorial Guinea announced Wednesday. The prize will be in recognition of "all he (Diouf) has done for agriculture and food on the continent over the past 18 years," the state broadcaster said. It will be awarded every two years to an individual who has best served the cause of food security around the world. "All presidents of the African Union have decided to create a Jacques Diouf prize," President Obiang Nguema said after holding talks here with Diouf. He steps down at the end of the year as head of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation. Diouf, a Senegalese, is to be replaced by Jose Graziano da Silva of Brazil who was elected to the post last month. Last October, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) suspended a prize Obiang had sponsored. Human rights and anti-poverty campaigners had put pressure on UNESCO not to lend its support to a prize named after a man they consider a corrupt dictator. Obiang, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron grip since seizing power in a 1979 coup, had offered funding of three million dollars over five years.