Time For Africa To Treat Agriculture As A Business

Rural economies in Africa have become zones of economic misery. According to Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, stimulating economic growth in these areas through agriculture and the food industry should be at the top of the development agenda.

- Akinwumi Adesina

Addressing agriculture and food security issues in Africa is critical not only to economic development across the continent, but to the future of food production worldwide over the next generation. Much progress has been made globally in terms of extreme poverty. According to the World Bank, the population living on less than US$1,90 (R28) a day declined from 44% in 1980 to under 10% by 2015. But we must not celebrate too soon: we are not winning the war on global hunger. In the 2017 report, ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) points out that the number of hungry people worldwide increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016.

Climate change is worsening the situation, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that by 2050, Africa will be home to an additional 38 million hungry people due to climate change.

The challenges facing the world require focused and compassionate leadership. We owe it to ourselves, and to generations to come, to use every opportunity we have to make the world a better place.

SCALING UP PROCESSING

The future of food in the world will depend on what Africa achieves in agriculture. Africa holds 65% of the uncultivated arable land left to feed nine billion people by 2050. Its vast savannas are the world’s largest agriculture frontier, estimated at 400 million hectares. But only 10% of this is cultivated.

Africa accounts for 75% of global cocoa production, with 65% of this coming from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. However, the continent is a price-taker and receives only 2% of the US$100 billion (R1,47 trillion) annual revenues from chocolate globally. This is because Africa exports only raw cocoa beans.