in members of the african union committed to allocating ten percent of their national budgets to agriculture development in the maputo declaration malawi has successfully introduced an extensive subsidy programme for fertilizers allocating percent of its budget to it which stimulated both agricultural production and economic growth dorward and chirwa in africa overall the number of undernourished increased by percent between and while it remained constant in asia fao their rise was greeted with optimism early on with african countries ostensibly benefiting from the technology transfer higher yields and higher productivity generally associated with foreign direct investment