The sad commentary by the President of African Development Bank (AfDB) and the 2017 World Food Laureate, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, is that Africa spends $35bn dollars annually on food imports when it has the capacity to feed itself and even earn foreign exchange from exports.
Adesina, a former Nigerian minister of agriculture in the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, made the revelation in his Norman Borlaug Lecture delivered at Iowa State University, entitled “Betting on Africa to Feed the World”, not long ago in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. He lamented the negative effects that huge food imports had on the continent.
“Africa’s annual food import bill of $35bn, estimated to rise to $110bn by 2025, weakens African economies, decimates its agriculture and exports jobs from the continent. Africa’s annual food import bill of $35bn is just about the same amount it needs to close its power deficit.
“To rapidly support Africa to diversify its economies, and revive its rural areas, we have prioritized agriculture. We are taking action.
The bank has committed $24bn towards agriculture in the next 10 years, with a sharp focus on food self-sufficiency and agricultural industrialization”, he added. He called for land tax for unused agricultural land, to provide incentives for faster commercialisation of agriculture and unlocking its potential in Africa.
Adesina said Africa held the key for feeding nine billion people by 2050, adding that more than ever before, the world must help Africa to rapidly modernise its agriculture and unlock its full potential. Adesina also noted the challenge of addressing global food security is the greatest in Africa.
He said that close to 300m were malnourished on the continent due to this challenge and lamented that Africa is the only region of the world where its proportion of the population that is food insecure is on the increase. “There is, therefore, absolutely no reason for Africa to be a food importing region.
Africa has huge potential in agriculture, but, as Dr. Borlaug used to say, nobody eats potential. Unlocking that potential, we must start with the Savannah of Africa which covers mind boggling 600 million hectares of which 400 million hectares are cultivable.
“Africa sits on 65 per cent of the uncultivated arable land left in the world, so what Africa does with agriculture will determine the future of food in the world.
African farmers need more than a helping hand. They need a policy lift,” Adesina said. A recipient of the World Food Prize Laureate at the occasion, Adesina paid tribute to Dr. Norman Borlaug, whom the lecture series was named after.
He said that Africa was the last frontier for the late Borlaug, the Founder of the World Food Prize, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world.
The AfDB helmsman observed that in spite of the progress globally in food production including Africa, Latin America and Asia, the world still had 700m people languishing in extreme poverty, about 800m with chronic hunger, two billion people with micronutrient deficiency and 150m children under five years of age that are suffering from stunting.
No one can fault the argument that to revolutionise agriculture, Africa needs to make a decision to develop new agrarian systems, one that combines smallholder farmers with a new dynamic generation of medium and large commercial farmers.
Also imperative is the advocacy for land tenure systems that makes it easier to get access to land and for smallholder farmers and their communities to secure land rights. As a matter of urgency, concerted and pragmatic efforts of African policy makers and their global collaborators are required to drastically cut down or even obliterate these humongous food import bills on the continent.
Blueprint commends Adesina’s forthrightness and foresight in tackling the rampaging food insecurity in Africa, particularly in Nigeria while he held sway as minister of agriculture. It is also worthy of note that it was his giant strides in Nigeria’s agricultural sector that won him the AfDB presidency in 2015 and his tenure has so far surpassed all expectations.
It is our conviction that Adesina has the wherewithal to deliver Africa, particularly his home country, Nigeria, from the impending catastrophe occasioned by food insecurity and spurious food import bills. In fact, Nigeria’s estimated $22bn annual food import bill is scandalous.
Nevertheless, we commend the present administration of Muhammadu Buhari for its sustained efforts to ensure food sufficiency for the country through various agricultural policies.
It is hoped that in the coming years, the country would take its rightful position as a major exporter of food and cash crops and earn the much needed foreign exchange to boost its economy that has been import dependent decades after attaining nationhood.
