Innovation and Sustainability:Doing Better For Africa’s Food System amid Climate Change.
Climate change is emerging as a major challenge to agriculture development in Africa. The increasingly unpredictable and erratic nature of weather systems on the continent has placed an extra burden on food security and rural livelihoods.
Agriculture is expected to pay a significant cost of the damage caused by climate change. Progress on rural development has already been hit hard by the combined effect of the global financial downturn and the food crisis, as a result, hunger and malnutrition trends remain stubbornly high.
Without extensive adaptation the effects of climate change on agriculture is expected to exacerbate Africa’s deepening food crisis, narrowing channels of food access and slowing efforts to expand food productivity.
Africa, therefore need to adapt agriculture and food systems to climate change.
Transforming food systems under a changing climate entails amplifying solutions that build sustainability along multiple interconnected principles. For example, diversity, resilience, equity, economic viability, health and renewability.
World Bank forecasts show that Sub-Saharan Africa will surpass Asia as the most food insecure region inhabiting 40-50 percent of undernourished people globally in 2080 compared with 24 percent today. Levels of viable arable land for production are predicted to decline by 2080, with 9-20 percent of arable land becoming much less suitable for agriculture.
This calls for us to close the gap between today’s production and the projected demand for food in the future and we need to make sure that any increase is done in a sustainable way.
Many African countries are recognizing that developing and promoting adoption of climate-smart technologies, implementing the right enabling policies and developing relevant skills in Africa’s food system workforce are among the game-changers that can truly make a difference.
In order to move our food system forward, the continent need to apply big data to drive smarter farm-level decisions on water management and fertilizer use to deploying drought-resistant crop varieties.
There is need for urgent action by using the right technologies. This is because getting it right with these fundamentals can help lay the foundation for a food system that can better feed and sustain Africa.
To ensure a prosperous future for African food systems, we must accelerate adaptation across the continent through partnerships that make them more resilient to a changing climate.
According to Gerardine Mukeshimana, Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, “We have to think regional or even continental as we design technologies or policies because we’re faced with climate change and we’ve to preserve the resources that we have as land for the future generation.”
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