Delivering food security to an additional one billion people in Africa will become ever more challenging over the next four decades unless more intelligent management of natural resources and emerging opportunities are brought to bear.
In addressing this and other similar crises, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development provided some new and sobering costs on how environmental degradation might impact food production, while highlighting new and promising paths.
Invasive pests, land degradation, erosion, drought and climate change have already caused agricultural yields to fall in some cases by up to 50 per cent, according to the report.
Business as usual, with Africa’s population set to rise from 770 million to 1.75 billion by 2050, is likely to dwarf the recent food crisis which plunged over 100 million into poverty and hunger in just two years.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director, said: “The economic models and management regimes of the 20th century are unlikely to serve humanity well on a planet of six billion, rising to over 9 billion by 2050. This is particularly true with respect to agriculture and especially valid in Africa.”
Under-Exploited Management Options
Water scarcity is an increasing risk in Africa. But studies by UNEP and the World Agroforestry Centre estimated that there was enough rain falling on Africa to supply the water needs for 13 billion people – twice the current world population.
However, little is collected or stored sustainably via methods such as small- and large-scale rainwater harvesting.
Similarly, much of overseas development aid continues to promote the tools, fertilizers and seeds approach.
A recent report by UNEP and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) surveyed 114 small-scale farms in 24 African countries who had switched to organic or near organic production. The report pointed out:
- Yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used, with the yield jumping 128 per cent in east Africa.
- Organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming and also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought.
- Clean energy projects, such as wind, off-river hydro and solar power are beginning to take off in Africa from an albeit low base. There are now an estimated 100 projects in over 20 countries up and running or in the pipeline.
Mr. Steiner pointed to Kenya, where several hundred megawatts of geothermal electricity are now being installed in the Rift Valley as representing development, poverty-reduction and alternative employment prospects for people.
“Kenya has plans to generate 1,300MW of geothermal electricity by around 2020. But this is only scratching the surface. Kenya is also a windy country – in Turkana, in the north of the country, a private consortium is developing an initial 300MW of wind energy, following the Government’s introduction of new legislation – equal to around 25 per cent Kenya’s current installed energy capacity”, he said.
Over half of the global food produced today is either lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain. Post-harvest losses of Africa’s coastal fisheries and crops range from 25 per cent to as much as 50 per cent for some crops, leaving only a fraction of this available for human consumption and marketing.
By 2050, climate change and water scarcity are likely to cause wide droughts and unpredictable rainfall, accelerate invasive pests like weeds, diseases and locusts, and depress yields even further. Droughts have already cost 22-90 per cent loss (average 40 per cent) of livestock losses in the past two decades across African countries, especially on the Horn of Africa, but also in Botswana, Namibia and Niger. Livestock is very important to rural food security in many African countries.
Lack of investments in Africa’s agriculture has resulted in a steady setback. In 1992 land productivity in sub-Saharan Africa was 79 per cent of that in Asia; by 2006 it had dropped to only 59 per cent.
Africa’s share of the global exports also remained less than 3 per cent in the last decade. For every $100 of agricultural output produced in the developed countries, the public spends over $2, compared to only around 50 cents in developing countries, mainly in Asia, while it is actually even less and declining for Africa.
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