Food security for Africa: an urgent global challenge

Abstract

<p>Abstract</p> <p>In 2012, food insecurity is still a major global concern as 1 billion people are suffering from starvation, under-, and malnutrition, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has concluded that we are still far from reaching millennium development goal (MDG) number 1: to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people suffering from hunger is estimated at 239 million, and this figure could increase in the near future.</p> <p>There are many examples of food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, some of them having reached catastrophic dimensions, for example, in the Horn of Africa or southern Madagascar. Food insecurity is not just about insufficient food production, availability, and intake, it is also about the poor quality or nutritional value of the food. The detrimental situation of women and children is particularly serious, as well as the situation among female teenagers, who receive less food than their male counterparts in the same households.</p> <p>Soaring food prices and food riots are among the many symptoms of the prevailing food crisis and insecurity. Climate change and weather vagaries, present and forecast, are generally compounding food insecurity and drastically changing farming activities, as diagnosed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in June 2011.</p> <p>The key cause of food insecurity is inadequate food production. Since the global food crisis of 2007–2008, there has been an increasing awareness throughout the world that we must produce more and better food; and we should not be derailed from this goal, despite some relief brought by the good cereal harvests in 2011–2012. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, which needs and wants to make its own green revolution.</p> <p>The African challenge indeed is key to mitigating food insecurity in the world. Commitments were made by the heads of states and governments of the African Union to double the part of their domestic budgets devoted to agriculture in 2010–2011, so as to reach 10%. Technical solutions exist and there are indeed, throughout Africa, good examples of higher-yielding and sustainable agriculture. But good practices have to spread throughout the continent, while at the same time social and economic measures, as well as political will, are indispensable ingredients of Africa’s green revolution. It is also necessary that international donors fulfil their commitment to help African farmers and rural communities and protect them against unfair trade, competition, and dumping of cheap agrifood products from overseas.</p

Climate and Food Production: Understanding Vulnerability from Past Trends in Africa’s Sudan-Sahel

“…While food assistance has the potential of alleviating the food crisis in the short-run, one of the main problems of food security in this region is that of low levels of production [2]. Increasing levels of food production can improve the food availability component of food security.…”

“…Other problems have to do with different components of food security (access, utilization and stability). Low levels of inputs (nutrients, seeds, irrigation), limited mechanization and less optimal cultivation techniques are advanced as reasons for low levels in Sub-Saharan Africa [2,4]. Low production levels of staple food crops may, in some cases, sustain households, albeit marginally.…”

“…Low production levels of staple food crops may, in some cases, sustain households, albeit marginally. Such marginal sustenance with staple foods is seen only as a first step towards truly reducing hunger [2]. A more comprehensive food security pathway must involve a transformation of agriculture beyond staple food provision.…”

“…In the most severe cases, in countries, such as Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, millions of people (especially women, children and adolescent girls) are in acute need of emergency food assistance. It is feared that the 2012 crop failure that may result from a looming drought in the region may bring another 12 million people in need of food assistance [1][2][3]. The present food crisis follows that of last year (2011) in which 13 million people living in a similar agro-ecological zone in the Horn of Africa needed food assistance [1].…”

Assessing the food security outcomes of industrial crop expansion in smallholder settings: insights from cotton production in Northern Ghana and sugarcane production in Central Ethiopia

“…Food security is a major sustainability challenge in Africa (Sasson 2012;UNDP 2012). While the overall population of chronically undernourished people worldwide decreased by 216 million people between 1990 and 2016, the number increased by 44 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the same period (FAO et al 2015).…”