Browsing: Africa population’s food security

Ecological catastrophe

Africa’s Achilles heel: Food production in a low-income setting

Industry and Trade
  • The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) says food production across Africa is stubbornly low.
  • Households across Sub-Saharan Africa spend roughly 23% of their total income on food.
  • The Collapse of the Black Sea Initiative, the bombing of an ammonia pipeline, and a key dam in Ukraine spell doom for Africa's food production systems.

Reducing hunger and increasing food production in a persistently low-income environment will be one of Africa's biggest problems in the next ten years, a new report by FAO says.

The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2023-2032 report attributes the challenge to increasingly volatile weather patterns due to climate change. At the moment, food production in many countries across Africa is stubbornly low.

During the period under focus, the report predicts that imports into the region will surge. And this will negatively impact the economic welfare of the continent's 1.1 billion people.

Households across SSA spend roughly 23 per cent…

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GMO Maize

Forget GMOs, human action is fueling world hunger

Industry and Trade
  • World hunger is not the result of food shortage, and opposition to gene-edited crops, but due to political strife.
  • Global food production is sufficient to feed all, but skewed distribution systems create a huge shortfall in countries.
  • Analysis shows that even if GMOs were adopted globally, food shortage will persist.

Globally, Genetically Modified (GM) crops have been touted as the magic wand that could end world hunger. The ability of gene-edited crops to produce more over shorter periods of time and their resistance to diseases has been lauded. Further, GMO’s ability to resist poor weather conditions occasioned by climate crisis are earning them acceptance across nations.

These traits make Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) a solution to global food shortage. Increasingly, naturally maturing crops are yielding little, and their long gestation periods leave them vulnerable to climate crisis. Further their vulnerability to pests and diseases drastically cuts yields, exacerbating food shortages.…

A panel discussion on AfCFTA.

Why reforms are vital in driving Africa’s free trade plan

Industry and Trade
  • By enhancing intra-African trade, AfCFTA estimates that the continent with gain $195 billion by 2045.
  • These gains are projected to be mainly realised in industry, services, agrifood, and energy sectors.
  • By collaborating under AfCFTA, countries can greatly boost regional supply chains for the global electric vehicles market.

African countries need to embrace a set of reforms critical in driving Africa's free trade plan, AfCFTA. The call comes even as more African leaders sign the agreement on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

AfCFTA has the potential to transform regional trade and thereby lift billions of livelihoods in Africa out of poverty. To realise these benefits however African leaders need to go beyond blueprints.

"It is not for lack of blueprints that Africa has not structurally transformed," United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Secretary-General Antonio Pedro said.

Mr Pedro was speaking at the Africa Regional Forum by UNECA on…

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Living off the land in Africa digitally

Agribusiness

On a spiritual level, the fracturing of the relationship between the people and the land as urbanisation kicked in with a vengeance is causing lasting and severe damage to the environment and the population’s food security.  

The curious thing to a British observer is that nearly all of the people of my age (more than 50 years!) whom I know and who are at the top of their professions in finance, government, trade, hospitality or retail are also…..farmers.

In fact, I know hardly anyone who came to the big city seeking an escape from rural ways who is not now farming in the village or on the outskirts of their city. Many times I see them a good deal more excited about their crops than they are about their balance sheets.…

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