Africa as a whole is facing two major problems in the 21st century: The first problem is how to feed the growing population of the continent; the second is how to adapt to climate change. Both problems are interlinked since climate change has the potential for having severe implications on food security in Africa.
The African population is growing rapidly: From the year 2000 to date, eight of the ten countries with the highest average annual growth rate in the world are African. Arguably, countries with the highest total fertility are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria as an example is projected to have the third-largest population growth in the world from 2000 to 2050. Already now Nigeria is in the top ten of the most populous countries on the planet and is expected to climb in the top five in the course of this century. All these are indicators of the enormous ongoing population growth in Africa and they point to the most important fact: The population on the African continent is expected to double from around one billion to almost two billion over the next 40 years (United Nations, 2004)
Food security is subject to natural and economic shocks in Zimbabwe. The El Nino phenomenon has been at its peak this past year; we have been experiencing an erratic rainfall pattern which has been the major cause of drought. 72% of our population live below the national poverty datum line (living on less than US$1.25/day).30% of the rural poor are considered ‘food poor’ 89% of children 6-23 months old receive a minimum acceptable diet. One-third of children are stunted or short for their age. (Runganga 2018)
An increase in hunger and food insecurity leads to an increase in health risks which include chronic diseases related to diet, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, depression, physical and mental problems. The escalation of these conditions will subsequently lead to an increase in health expenses, crime rates, prostitution and cannibalism.
As such, the growth in populations translates to higher food demand on the African continent. The nations in Africa will have to act to ensure that this higher food demand is met by sufficient food supply. But as elaborated subsequently, the big challenge of the 21st century for the growing number of people in Africa is finding the means to meet their food demand.
Currently, Africa ensures food supply by a mix of domestic food production and overseas food imports. West Africa, for example, depends on 40% on imports in ensuring sufficient rice supply with Thailand as the main rice supplier (FAO, 2010). The total volume of cereal imports in Africa was around 66 million tons in 2010 (FAO, 2013a). This means that for the whole of Africa 30% of all cereals consumed were imported. (Cereals exports are negligible: Even if all exports were instead to be used for domestic consumption, 28% of cereals consumed would still be constituted of imports. One of the five largest trade flows of wheat in the world is from the US to Nigeria.)
According to FAO, despite domestic production and import efforts, there were 239 million undernourished people living on the African continent in 2012, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lately, the number of undernourished people in Africa has increased significantly. This shows that food insecurity already now is of increasingly relevant concern. In meeting the rising food demand caused by the growth in population in Africa, there are three options of how this rising demand can theoretically be covered by sufficient food supply: raise overseas food imports, raise domestic food production, or increase both food production and food imports. Then there are countries like Zimbabwe whose economy does not allow for many imports due to the shaky fiscus.
Ultimately, ensuring food supply through increased overseas food imports will not be an option that could satisfy the increasing demand for food: The current world population could so far be sustained through the benefits of modern Africa population agriculture, which promotes the use of irrigation systems, chemical fertilizer, farm machinery, and large-scale monoculture farms for increased efficiency and yields. It is now understood that this system of modern agriculture is unsustainable at the current scale and potentially cannot even be sustained throughout this century. The main reason for this is that modern agriculture depends heavily on water, fossil fuels (for irrigation, fertilizer production, machinery, transportation) and phosphate rock (for phosphorus fertilizer). Both fossil fuels and phosphate rock are finite resources and are becoming increasingly scarce. There are estimates that phosphate rock production will peak in the course of this century and thereafter continuously decline, thereby creating a supply-demand gap.
Even the global oil company BP states that there are only 54.2 years of known crude oil reserves left and this only when assuming no growth in consumption (BP, 2012). There are other forms of unconventional oil such as tar sands but those deliver a much less favourable energy return on energy invested and therefore bear a much higher price making modern agriculture less affordable and food products more expensive. Additionally also these unconventional fuels will eventually diminish. Phosphorus on the other hand does not have any substitutes: Once the world’s economically retrievable phosphate rock is completely mined there will be no alternative convenient way of obtaining phosphorus easily for the production of phosphorus fertilizer which is indispensable for efficient plant growth. While the dates stated of the end of economically producible fossil fuel and phosphate rock are issues with large vested interests and therefore significantly varying prognoses, it can definitely be expected that fertilizer and oil will become increasingly expensive leading to large increases in food prices making food imports much more costly.
A recent crisis example of that problem of agricultural dependence on external inputs was the 2008 global rice crisis which was partly caused by the rise in fuel prices. The same crisis also caused a 700% price increase in phosphate rock. Perhaps a clearer cut example is that of Zimbabwe, which in past years boasted of being Southern Africa’s breadbasket, but since its Fast Track Land Reform Programme which saw the ouster of white farmers and the introduction of indigenous farmers who have struggled to reach the levels set by the former landowners in terms of production. These new farmers have dismally failed to come up with decent levels of outputs even to feed the locals despite the recent government hands-on command agriculture system. People in Zimbabwe no longer have faith in farming as a way of alleviating poverty and food insecurity and have resorted to illegal cross border trading and foreign currency trading. Similar sentiments could be echoed about the West African young men and women who risk their lives riding ships to Europe in search of better lives and essentially FOOD.
Finally and probably most importantly there is an increasing lack of water available for agricultural purposes for which no substitutes exist. Generally, water is a renewable resource and therefore does not get depleted the same way that fossil fuels get depleted. However, there is a maximum of water available at a certain period of time (e.g. through rainfall). If population growth trends continue, the available renewable water during a certain period of time will not be sufficient to meet the agricultural water requirements in that time frame anymore. The Colorado River in the U.S., the Huang He in China, or the Nile in Northern Africa often do not reach the sea anymore with river flows falling to zero due to extensive water withdrawals for agricultural use (Gleick & Palaniappan, 2010).
Change is additionally expected to aggravate water scarcity by causing salination of coastal freshwater sources, and through a general decline in water quality due to higher average temperatures. These are all signs which strongly indicate that water is becoming a more limited resource. With water, fossil fuels, and phosphate rock becoming increasingly scarce, efficient food production will be challenged, yields might decrease and food prices increase.
The question now is, what steps should be taken to ensure food security across the continent?
Read Food – An Article by Ugbede Ataboh, Nigeria
