India and Africa vowed today to strive together for food security and called on the Western world to rethink the diversion of huge food stocks for biofuel, which are creating shortages and driving up prices in poorer countries. Addressing a joint press conference with African leaders at the end of the first ever India-Africa Forum Summit here, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on India and Africa to acquire the momentum to meet all their food needs through domestic production. “There’s no single answer to the question of food security.”

While the move to turn food into biofuel has benefited a handful of grain-surplus African countries such as Uganda, speakers at the summit blamed the tactic for skyrocketing prices and shortages. “It is a challenge in the sense that there is this problem of shortage of food in a number of countries and there is a problem of high prices,” Tanzanian President and African Union chairman Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete said.

“These days farms have been put to biofuel production, creating a shortage of food and therefore creating a problem of high prices.” He said Africa just needs to solve its agricultural production problems to produce enough that could not only feed the continent, but also provide for the world.

The Summit issued a Delhi Declaration and ‘Framework for Cooperation’ document outlining ways in which the two sides will implement joint programmes to build a “meaningful and productive” partnership. The two sides agreed to further develop their relationship, particularly in the areas of trade, economy, agriculture and human development.

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