The situation of food insecurity in Africa is getting to crisis levels, as measured by the absolute figures of food insecurity, and poor prospects of attaining, by next year, the Malabo Declaration of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme and, by 2030, Goal 2 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which focuses on ending hunger around the world.
According to the 2023 joint regional overview of food security and nutrition in Africa, made by the African Union, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the number of food insecure Africans rose by 57 million to 282 million, following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This development, at the individual level, brings in train prospects of undernourishment and hunger. It can also lead to deaths as well as social and political tensions.
There are several drivers of this situation. The disruption of global food and fertilizer supply chains as a result of the situation in Ukraine has led to surges in inflation in many countries. In Africa, food accounts for a large share of the incomes of many of our people. This means that inflation immediately results in reduced financial capacities to meet daily food needs.
Climate change has also contributed to food insecurity by generating situations of flooding, droughts, heat waves, poor water quality, and low levels of agricultural productivity. These have in turn led to low levels of agricultural outputs. The alternative would be importation of food and this has not just met the challenge of global supply chain disruptions earlier mentioned.
The debt situation has also played its part in bringing about food insecurity in Africa. For example, the steps taken in creditor countries to reduce inflation through interest rate hikes have translated into increased debt serving costs for the debtor countries as well as currency depreciations. Consequently, inflation has continued to rise in debtor countries. Increasing taxes to meet debt payments and repayments has, in debtor countries, as we are seeing in some African countries, social and political limitations. Social and political tensions evolve into riots and loss of lives, which if unchecked, can undermine peace, stability, and governance.
Let me now look at the way forward. The way towards food security simply requires increasing environmentally friendly agricultural productivity in Africa. Both the African Development Bank and the African Export Import Bank have come up with financing facilities to promote the development of national and regional agro-industrial zones and agro-parks aimed at making Africa food secure, in addition to promoting intra-African trade in agricultural products as well as raising rural incomes.
The programme in Ethiopia is already yielding positive results as evidenced in making the country no longer depend on importation of wheat to meet domestic consumption. Ethiopia is now increasing wheat output to export to other African countries. The regional agro-parks programmes, which have started with pilot projects involving Zambia and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa and Cote D-Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa, are also designed in promoting specialisation as part of the process of facilitating intra-African trade in agricultural products. In addition, they are designed to have an eco-system of financing, input supply, production, storage, and ultimately marketing.
We must add to the eco-system the need to increase investments in sanitary and phytosanitary standards (SPS) across Africa. These are crucial in meeting the challenges, among others, of the spread of pests in this era of climate change and high mobility. By investing in SPS, we would ensure food safety as well as animal and plant health, and invariably, higher levels of agricultural productivity, food security, and rural incomes.
Since financing will be a key component in raising agricultural productivity in Africa to meet food security at the individual level, I am sure the Africa-Arab Trade Bridges Programme can weigh in on how to join forces with the African Development Bank and the African Export Import Bank in the establishment of agro-industrial zones and agro-parks across Africa.
Let me stress the importance of promoting rural development in Africa to foster food security and sustainable livelihoods. This will be sustained when we increase rural incomes, and could even result in situations where urban dwellers decide to retire in rural areas without compromising on the quality of life they had in the urban areas during their working lives. One of the levers towards this is the development of cooperatives across Africa, with capacities to produce agricultural outputs throughout the year, undertake agro-processing within rural areas as well as directly export to international markets. With such strategic positioning, the cooperatives would add value at source, and consequently increase earnings and incomes of the members in the rural areas.
We have, in this connection, approached the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation to collaborate with us in the development of primary agricultural, agro-processing and retailing cooperatives across Africa as a way of raising agricultural productivity, promoting rural industrialization, raising rural incomes, and attaining food security.
By Albert Muchanga
The author is African Union Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals.
Some of the solutions to food insecurity in rural areas that have been proposed here are illusionary. The mention of producing for export is a gimmick that has been used introduce to introduce production methods that have increased the cost. Rural farmers now need money for costly farming inputs when previously all they needed was their labour. They’re now dependent on FISP to feed themselves which wasn’t the case previously.
Adverse weather has existed from time immemorial. There were even locusts that ravaged crops but people still survived without lengthy policy papers. At the moment populations are failing to preserve the little food available without the help of toxic chemicals. Non communicable diseases have become widespread because of scientifically contaminated foods. It’s white collar criminals that are making money out of poor peasants.
We have left collaboration to conferences while this might be the faster way out of hunger and conferences are never decentralized. More should be done to walk the talk on agriculture and foster offline collaboration that has a presence on the ground and partly move away from endless conferences and declarations that no one adheres to Agriculture has power to benefit all and Africa is best placed to lead this food security revolution