Can Africa Feed the World?

The answer to this question, like all others in Africa, involves complex maths. Africa’s food system is riddled with paradoxes. On one hand, it provides for the world’s most uncultivated, arable land, 60% of the world’s fertile land lies in Africa. Some estimates have even pointed to the DRC, one of Africa’s most unstable states as a potential candidate to feed at least 2 billion people - that is, 2 billion Africans by 2050. On the other spectrum, Africa remains the world’s net food importer. In 2019, the continent was reported to have to import $43bn of food according to the World Bank estimates. These figures, however, have turned out to be the subject of heated interrogation, and are constantly questioned.

Whatever stats one chooses, there are compelling reasons to suggest that Africa can, and will feed the world. It is a ‘when’, not an ‘if’ question. The world is already becoming African, young, vibrant, and madly in love for a different century, an era that according to the Times, is blooming with creativity, and teeming with innovation. Africa seems set to tackle its own’s, and the world’s biggest crises that may well extend beyond food democracy. As the world gets older, Africa gets younger. This is an impressive shift for the continent that defies simple demographic rhetoric. Agriculture requires labour, and Africa will generate that labour from its young population.

There is already some notable progress, validating the continent's energetic demographics. By 2016, Africa had already surpassed the global agricultural averages by 160% above the MDG global target of 100%, achieving agri-based transformation that cuts across the continent. This progress is good both for Africa, and the world at large. As the rich world ages, Africa is being born. In Europe and East Asia, with some of the world’s largest food baskets, much of the population will get older by 2050. This makes Africa’s young population an asset to the world. Indeed, UN estimates report that in Italy, and South Korea, there will be 10 and 13 million fewer people of working age. Africa proudly will be critical to fill this gap. And there are already symptoms of intentional investment to grab this golden opportunity.

However, the youthful population is not enough. With the rise of AI-driven farming and the increasing embrace of the ‘green revolution,’ Africa will need to brace for the tough world ahead. Coupled with its ordinary development obstacles - political instability, limited infrastructures such as the challenge of electrification, an important input for labour-intensive agriculture, and the constant market failures as illustrated by farmer-market mismatch, progress is difficult though not impossible. A constant challenge is lower yield outputs. As the African Report reveals, Africa’s yield gap, defined as the difference between average farmers’ yields, and those of the productive farmers stands at a baffling 90%. This implies that for Africa to be able to achieve its world breadbasket ambition, it has to up its game by not only increasing its farm inputs but also ensuring that its production outputs meet the global standard as it feeds its domestic needs. The agricultural revolution depends in part on access to better seed varieties, fertilisers, and the latest technology to prop up growth. With better seeds, and fertilisers, Africa cannot only feed itself but can potentially become a net food exporter, believed Bill Gates, one of the hearty investors in the continent.

Although Gates’ dream appears to be farfetched for the continent today, there are certainly outliers. Take the OCP (formerly Office Chérifien des Phosphates), Morocco’s state-owned company as an example. Founded in 1920, this firm engages in a large-scale processing plant that aims to produce exportable fertilisers. Each year, the OCP Group digs 44mm tonnes of phosphate rock, turning them into fertilisers with an expected rise to 70mm tonnes annually by 2027. Although it exports much of these outputs outside Africa at the moment, the company’s Africa-facing investment is a potential source of realising the African dream. With the growing intra-African trade espoused under the (AfCFTA), the biggest trade bloc in the world, this kind of partnership will undoubtedly triple in size in the next decade. This is so because the AFCFTA is complemented by a sea of other initiatives that slowly bring the continent to its realization. For instance, the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Right to Residence and Right to Establishment, and the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) have already taken shape in some African economies notably Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa.

Although the Moroccan case is a perfect example of what is possible, it only resolves one challenge in an ocean of need. Africa’s farmlands also face the financing challenge. The continent’s food system is produced largely by informal, smallholder farmers who are far removed from the marketplace with often limited access to both the domestic and the global financing structure. Reportedly, 80% of the food supply from Africa south of the Sahara is produced by smallholder farmers. These farmers are often outcompeted in the global food chain by more diversified, well-financed global food companies elsewhere. A notable demonstration of this was perhaps the recent food insecurity dubbed the ‘grain crisis’ resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian standoff. Like all else in the continent, the African farmland encounters a deep-seated financing paradox. While farming contributes 29% to the total African GDP, it only receives 3% of bank loans as most of these farmers lack collateral, making them unbankable, and therefore, uninvestable in the eyes of traditional African bankers. Compounding the problem is a mindblowing 1% contribution from the global agri-based venture funding. This leaves the ‘global breadbasket’ aspiration a mere dream.

But as usual, Africa will always innovate out of its problems. Though still at a nascent stage, change is at reach. African-based fintech firms have sprung up to provide solutions to evasive problems like the above. Emata, Uganda’s growing fintech firm is one. Like the Grameen idea in Bangladesh, Emata builds its farmers' stockpile by linking informal farmers with already established agri-based cooperatives. Smallholding farmers use production track records to demonstrate their trustworthiness for loans - an informal collateral of sorts. Rather than burying themselves in the traditional loan bureaucracy, Emata employs a simplified Internet of Things (IoT) game plan where farmers use a 5-minute application process that allows them to access finance. Farmers then utilise the finance to purchase better seed varieties, and fertilisers to raise productivity levels. The approach so far generates a whooping 95% repayment rate. Besides improving yields, it provides better returns on investment to Emata.

That is Africa! If African governments, their regional compasses housed under the African Union, and its private sector can map out the Emata of Africa, progress is assured. But as warned by the African Development Bank, more will need to happen beyond just the productivity debate. For example, there is an urgency for a robust economic match-making model so that African farmers can trade right at the right market mix. I believe AFCFTA has some of these answers. Time will, however, tell how this will get delivered but at the moment, Africa is on the trip, and such challenges will find her walking.?