AFRICA’S FOOD PRODUCTION has, over the years, reduced due to the negative impact caused by climate change. Therefore, adapting Africa’s food system to climate change is imperative, not a choice. Every flood or drought causes a 5-20% drop in food security, although critical food security crops only provide 1.4% of the region's annual food calories.
Despite increased agricultural exports, the continent still imports food at a net cost of $43 billion annually. This cost could rise to $110 billion if nothing is done by 2025. Although encouraging, current efforts to strengthen Africa's food systems' resilience to climate change and related shocks fall well short of the scope of the issue.
Millions of people who would struggle to survive will experience severe and catastrophic upheaval to the current food systems if global temperatures rise by an average of 3°C, as current trends predict. A more ambitious and urgent set of adaptation efforts is needed to prevent widespread starvation, even on a 1.5°C trajectory.
However, there have been efforts to build smart agriculture for sustainable food systems in Africa. Regenerative agriculture has been one of the core foundations of this move across the African continent. This agricultural system strives to have lower, or even a net-positive, environmental impact. Regenerative agriculture practices thus avoid damage to soil health, chemical runoffs, overexploitation of water resources, and high chemical and hormonal residue levels in food often caused by industrialized agricultural production.
The State and Trends in Adaptation Report 2021: Africa, a report from the Global Center on Adaptation, makes the case that public sector investments in Africa should place a priority on research and extension, water management, infrastructure, land restoration, and climate information services to help small-scale farmers, pastoralists, fishers, and other small-business owners become more resilient.
Funding climate change adaptation will be more cost-effective than the increasingly severe and frequent crises, disaster relief, and recovery efforts. According to a 2021 report by World Bank, taking action to adapt agriculture and food systems to climate change would cost $15 billion instead of $201 billion annually, less than a tenth of the price of doing nothing.
Therefore, the African food system can be transformed through: (1) The adoption of pertinent climate-smart technologies and practices to reroute farming and rural livelihoods to new climate-resilient and low-emission trajectories; (2) the development and use of weather and climate information services (WCIS) that support de-risking of livelihoods, farms, and value chains in the face of increasing vagaries of weather and extreme events; (3) the use of climate change adaptation strategies can significantly transform food systems in Africa; and realign policies and finance that are to sustain all transformation efforts.
Due to their relative lack of resources to invest in more climate-adaptive institutions and technology, low-income food producers and consumers in Africa are more vulnerable to climate change. Therefore, if the objective is to attain food security and sustainable development more quickly, the management of our food systems urgently has to alter.
The writer is Senior Partner, Business Development Africa Envirogreen.
The views expressed in this article are of the author.