Feeding Africa's fast-growing cities

Africa’s rapidly growing urban food markets offer significant opportunities for the continent’s farmers and agribusinesses. Yet, according to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’s ‘Africa Agriculture Status Report 2020’, food can often be imported at lower cost from international suppliers. African farmers will have to become globally competitive if they hope to successfully supply growing domestic markets.

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Demographic projections have forecast that in the coming decades, Africa’s rate of urbanisation will be the highest in the world. According to some models, the majority of the continent’s population will be urbanised by the mid2030s at the latest. As a result, Africa’s cities and food markets offer the largest and fastest-growing market opportunity available to the continent’s 60 million farms.

Parallel increases in per capita income, fuelled by an emerging middle class, are triggering dietary changes. By 2010, the African Development Bank (AfDB) estimated that the continent’s middle class accounted for over one-third of its total population. Growing per capita income leads to pronounced dietary changes, including diversification from starchy staples to higher-value perishable products such as dairy, meat and horticulture, as well as growing demand for prepared and processed foods.

In their efforts to supply growing urban food markets, Africa’s farmers, agroindustries and policymakers face many challenges. Farmers must find ways to intensify food production amidst increasing land pressure and rising wage rates. They must simultaneously diversify production to accommodate a growing demand for high-value perishables such as poultry, dairy, livestock and horticultural products. In addition, in the face of mounting food imports from overseas, African farmers, traders and wholesalers have to find ways to drive down the domestic costs of production, storage and distribution in order to remain competitive with external suppliers in Brazil, North America, Europe and Asia.

AFRICA’S PRODUCTIVITY GAP