Russia‐Ukrainewar, the leadership question and sustainable food security in Africa

Abstract

Extant analyses identified the various channels through which the ongoing Russia‐Ukraine war is hurting Africa's aspiration toward sustainable food security. They however acknowledged that the crisis presents a viable opportunity to kickstart the process of reversing Africa's food dependence and minimizing the continent's vulnerabilities to future external food shocks. It is however feared that the well‐known leadership deficit in the continent poses significant impediment for exploiting opportunities offered by such ‘good crisis’. The international community is, therefore, called upon to help Africa to better prepare for the next crisis. Taking this as our point of departure, we argue that the onus of reversing Africa's food dependence rests squarely on Africa's political leaders and policy makers and not on any external intervention. We then propose a residual option for tackling the leadership challenge and for launching Africa on the path of sustainable food security in line with the target of SDG‐2. The study relied on qualitative descriptive analysis of both primary and secondary data.