Many expected a pledge of $15 bil­lion, instead the G-8 sur­passed that by pledg­ing $20 bil­lion dol­lars to fight hunger through­out the world. The $20 bil­lion will come from the eight wealthy nations over the next 3 years. Italy will con­tribute 480 mil­lion, Japan and the Euro­pean Union will each con­tribute $3 billion.

The G-8 is still try­ing to catch up from fail­ing on pre­vi­ous pledges. Many ana­lysts say that G-8 sur­passed expec­ta­tions on food secu­rity because they did not come up with an agree­ment on cli­mate change.

More on the new pledges that we hope they keep from the Finan­cial Times and reporter Guy Dinmore.

Man­age­ment of the fund had not been finally decided but there would be close coop­er­a­tion between the World Bank and the Rome-based UN food agen­cies, the min­is­ter said.

On the final day of the three-day G8 sum­mit in L’Aquila, cen­tral Italy, lead­ers of the G8 club of rich coun­tries were joined by heads of African gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions to finalise the multi-billion dol­lar food secu­rity fund for agriculture.

Barack Obama, US pres­i­dent, sat at the same din­ner table on Thurs­day night with Muam­mer Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, invited to the sum­mit by Italy in his role as head of the African Union.

US deputy national secu­rity advi­sor Denis McDo­nough told reporters that the US con­tri­bu­tion to the fund would be about $3bn over three years. He said late on Thurs­day that pledges were still “bounc­ing around”.

Aid organ­i­sa­tions will be care­fully scru­ti­n­is­ing the pledges to make sure that the fund­ing rep­re­sents new money and has not been stripped from exist­ing bud­gets else­where. Also to be ham­mered out is what agency or agen­cies will admin­is­ter the trust fund. The World Bank is a prime candidate.

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