Africa needs collaborations in tackling food security challenges

This year’s Africa Food Systems Summit held in Dar es Salaam last month pushed for a collaborative approach to addressing challenges around food security in the continent.

The traditional approach to food production hasn't worked well for the continent. With over 20 percent of the continent’s population undernourished, Africa bears the heaviest burden of food insecurity.

According to a 2023 report by FAO and other organisations, one in four people in Africa faces hunger.

The report shows that while several efforts have been made towards eradicating hunger, it continues to increase in Africa.

This worsening trend in Africa has led to rapidly rising net food imports and it’s expected to triple to over $110.0 billion by 2025 from $35.0 billion in 2015.

Rising prices of staples such as maize, rice, and wheat, and food price volatility are strongly associated with social unrest, high infant mortality rate, high school dropout rates, increase in crimes, malnutrition and rise in chronic diseases.

Africa’s Agricultural Status Report 2023 highlighted several ways in which the continent can redefine its future and pave a sustainable and resilient path for generations to come.

Key among them is collaboration among policymakers, farmers, entrepreneurs, youth, and every stakeholder to rally around a shared vision of an Africa that is self-reliant, where no child goes to bed hungry, and where environmental sustainability, gender equality, and resilience abound.

Various speakers at last year’s World Food Day events stressed on the need for partnerships between the industry, development partners, the private sector and the African universities to deal with the challenge of food security in the continent.

This approach is already gaining traction in some African countries like Tanzania where the Ministry of Agriculture is collaborating with the private sector, development partners and key stakeholders such as AGRA, USAID, WFP on an initiative to engage more youth in agriculture.

The main goal of Building a Better Tomorrow: Youth Initiative for Agribusiness (BBT-YIA) is to enhance the engagement of youth in the agricultural sector for sustainable and improved livelihoods.

But the continent will need more of such programmes to significantly transform its food systems.

The conference made a clarion call on the need for humanity to have a common understanding of food and its innovations for a sustainable future.

Various researchers posit that food security problems are solvable only through innovative formal and informal collaborative education programs that focuses on making people more aware of the benefits that accrue by changing current approaches toward the sustainability of food production.

It is therefore prudent upon African states to consider policies that are skewed towards change of attitude towards agriculture for a sustainable future.

Otieno Panya is a Sustainable Supply Chain Management Scholar at Jomo Kenyatta University (JKUAT)