A key goal of the Rural Strategy is support to agricultural growth that benefits the poor, for without a renewed effort to accelerate growth in the agricultural sector, few countries will be able to reach the Millennium Development Goals— especially the goal of halving poverty and hunger—by 2015. Furthermore, the World Development Report 2007: Agriculture for Development (WDR 2007) calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries. WDR 2007 warns that the sector must be placed at the center of the development agenda because, while 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, a mere 4 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture in developing countries. In Sub- Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 percent of total government spending, and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels.