Can Mother Africa feed her Children?

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For over two centuries, the continent of Africa has borne the pain of suffering from extreme hunger, diseases, pestilences, pain, war, human rights violations, corruption and many more vices. Cases of malnourished children, women and men dying due to lack of food and water are rampant. From rising to the setting of the sun, ceaseless cries and faint voices of children and mothers are heard across the villages and towns. With their hopes for seeing tomorrow shuttered, they are told of help coming from abroad, donors and agencies. But why? Because their Africa is poor, unproductive and unable to produce enough food for her people without aid.

Africa has for a long time been a guinea pig; a continent for conducting experiments and mass introduction of unproven agricultural technologies.  Worse still, after centuries of such trials, a good portion of Africans have remained pathetic in many ways.  These conditions lead one to ask several questions: Can Africa ever feed her population? Is the continent of Africa too poor to feed her children?

These questions demand prompt and fearless answers. That is why I invite you to explore with me our continent and find out whether her current situation and inability to protect and provide for her population is justifiable or something to go by. Comparing our continent with the rest of the world, Africa has a lot of natural resources that if used adequately cannot be rivalled with any part of the world. Our vast land is fairly fertile, endowed with valuable natural resources (minerals and natural gas), natural forests, diverse range of animals (both domestic and wild), magnificent water bodies (swamps, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans), year-round solar, wind and tidal energies, just to mention a few.

The potential of land in Africa is yet to be fully exploited. in terms of sustainable agricultural production to yield food for the steadily growing population. Current agricultural production systems are very limited in scope and scale. With over 80% of African farmers being smallholders who largely depend on simple farm implements such as hoes and machetes to cultivate their land. This situation has led to unsustainable and inefficient agricultural land use. Efforts to change the status quo have been frustrated over the years. This has been experienced by the failed African Green Revolution and governments’ tractor importation strategies for mechanization from the early 1960s to late 1990s. The results of these unfortunate conditions have led to recurrent food insecurity and malnutrition in most African countries.

African leaders have not been sensitive to these problems facing agriculture and worse still, they are not giving the urgency it deserves. There are miniature policies and strategies drafted and enacted by African governments to address these problems but implementations have never succeeded. With every passing moment, fertile arable lands are being depleted and in turn, getting less productive. Meanwhile, we remain stuck with subsistence agriculture which is largely unsustainable. We have also not developed our adaptive capabilities to deal with the risks climate change pose to agricultural production on our continent.

Borrowing a leaf from countries which had same economic status at independence with most African countries; like South Korea and Singapore, I believe we have stayed too long on our knees and exposed ourselves to vulnerability and unwarranted exploitation. Although these countries did not have any natural resource advantage over Africa, they have over the years developed and overcome the basic needs of humanity that Africa is still struggling to overcome. A great man, Einstein once said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”. We need to evolve our thinking to innovate solutions that work for us. For revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

To overcome the hunger menace, purposive steps to expand and mechanize our agricultural production are the sure means to buoy us up out of these perils. We together with our governments need to set our priority right. Our leaders recently in 2014 promulgated the Malabo Declaration, unanimously pledging to end “hand-hoe” agriculture by 2025 and we are yet to see if this commitment will be championed to fruition. Supporting local agricultural production is more sustainable than importing food from other countries. For one, it provides us jobs which is more essential for local economic development. Secondly, it improves our food sovereignty and reduces our reliance on others to feed ourselves. Moreover, food is an essential part of our culture. If we are to have any hope of preserving this culture then we better not relinquish control of it to others because we will be forced to adopt other foods at the expense of ours. This is already happening in most countries where polished rice is gradually displacing locally nutrition foods and leading to malnutrition and hidden hunger.

The agricultural sector in Africa has over the years lost its glory and position in society. Youths and the elites view it as an indecent and unattractive career. They have in turn moved to the cities in search of white-collar jobs in the government and private sectors leading to urbanization challenges. If we do not implement strategies that change this condition, we will continue increasing our predisposition to neo-colonialism and exploitation masked under the flagship of foreign aid and relief food.

We need more holistic solutions to agriculture production. We can start by reinventing our educational curriculum to lay emphasis on not only the theories of agriculture but to lay a strong emphasis on hands-on training in agriculture. We need to invest in agricultural education and research at all levels: formal and non-formal.

Another issue that needs a thorough reconsideration is land. Here, we need to rethink land access in a way that makes land readily available to African youth willing to engage in agriculture as it is the single most important factor of agricultural production. We need not be blinded by global land reforms which promote commodification of land. Rather, we need to find room to accommodate our traditional land tenurial regimes with modern cadastral and technologically promising options. We do this when we strengthen the link between traditional knowledge and science in analysing land tenure.

A similar issue that determines our ability to feed ourselves is how we harness weather elements to our advantage. Is the rainfall experienced in Africa too low to support her agricultural production? Indeed, this is not the case! According to the Eldorado worldwide weather reports, sub-Saharan Africa is among the countries with the highest annual precipitation worldwide. Does this mean that other forms of modern and improved agricultural production systems like irrigation are not applicable to Africa? This is certainly not the case. Rather, the intensity and amount of rainfall we receive should be harnessed to improve our engagement in irrigation. Sunshine abounds on our continent. Together with good water supply, we have a good climate and a dynamic weather that favour continuous growth of crops, forests and animals. With this combination, there really is no limit to the number of growing seasons. However, our reliance on rainfed agriculture limits us, at present, to two growing (cropping) seasons. We need to change this status quo and embrace our true potential as a hub of endless agricultural productivity. 

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The next broad issue lies with the technical and practical aspects of agricultural production. Traditionally, our production systems were very diversified and multi-strata systems capable of supplying our varied nutritional requirements. Today, however, we have abandoned these diversified cropping systems in favour of monocultures. This move has its own merits, particularly competitive advantage associated with specialisation. However, monoculture also possesses several risks, including increased impacts upon crop failure to reduced system resilience owing to over-reliance on external inputs. We do not need to go back to hunting and gathering to feed our burgeoning population. Rather we need to reconsider how we adapt and integrate promising agricultural innovation to our local systems. Here, careful considerations and investments are required from government and private sector alike to improve the productivity of smallholder agricultural systems, including making them mechanisation friendly and disease resilient. We also need to pay careful attention to the issue of food waste especially due to post-harvest losses. One estimate by the World Bank shows that each year, an estimated  USD 4 billion worth of grains are lost in Sub-Saharan Africa due to post-harvest losses. This is more than 65% per cent of the estimated USD 6 billion committed to production (agriculture, fisheries, forestry; industry, mining, construction; trade and tourism).

Yes, the ever-asked question “Can Mother Africa feed her Children?” can be clearly answered with a resounding YES. But are we ready? Probably not. All recognised authorities predict that our continent’s population will rise to over 2.4 billion by 2050 and food security is an impending crisis that awaits us unless we make a proactive change now.  A lot of things need to change. The pathways provided here, including redefining our education, research and training to be more practice-oriented, streamlining land tenure, investing in practical local solutions are in no way exhaustive but they offer insights on entry points. With visionary leadership, a selfless heart and a sense of African pride that once rested in the hearts of our founding fathers, we can surely get there. There really is no need to look to anyone for this leadership. It starts with you and I giving our best more than ever before and spreading the message to build a momentum that will take us there.