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Africa: Food Security and Human Development
AfricaFocus Bulletin
May 24, 2012 (120524)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"This [Africa Human Development] Report argues that subSaharan
Africa can extricate itself from pervasive food
insecurity by acting on four critical drivers of change:
greater agricultural productivity of smallholder farmers;
more effective nutrition policies, especially for children;
greater community and household resilience to cope with
shocks; and wider popular participation and empowerment,
especially of women and the rural poor."
Everyone is for food security these days, it seems, and
professions of support for smallholder farmers, women, and
country ownership of development strategies are also common
currency in statements. But, in fact, there are significant
differences in approach, apparent in today's two AfricaFocus
Bulletins.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the preface
and overview of the Africa Human Development Report. As
noted above, this report stresses a comprehensive approach,
including agricultural productivity but also stressing other
policies which also affect whether food is available to the
majority of the population.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin released today, not sent out by
e-mail but available on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs12/ag1205b.php, contains
several critical commentaries and additional links on the
new private-sector-focused initiative by the G-8 on food
security.
For additional AfricaFocus Bulletins on issues related to
agriculture, visit http://www.africafocus.org/agexp.php
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Africa Human Development Report 2012 Towards a Food Secure
Future
United Nations Development Programme
http://hdr.undp.org
Preface
Had African governments over the last 30 years met their
people's aspirations, this Report would not be necessary.
One quarter of the people in sub-Saharan Africa would not be
undernourished, and one third of African children would not
be stunted. Nor would so many African farmers have to eke
out meagre livelihoods on tiny plots of depleted soil. The
region would be food secure, and the gap between its human
development and that of more successful regions would be
closing rapidly.
Chronic food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa stems from
decades of poor governance. Regimes bent on amassing wealth
absorbed the region's resources into patrimonial power
structures. Self-serving elites, quick to profit from graft
and patronage, have stood between leaders and the people,
monopolized state revenues and emptied the countryside, but
they have provided neither employment nor industry. Across
sub-Saharan Africa rural infrastructure has deteriorated,
farming has languished, gender and other inequalities have
deepened and food systems have stagnated. Smallholder
farmers, on whose shoulders the recovery of its agriculture
rests, have long been pinned between a rock and hard place.
Rebuilding food security starts with liberating them from
this predicament and unleashing their potential.
The international community's record in this misfortune
hardly shines. Developed countries maintain agricultural
subsidies that benefit their rich producers while pushing
sub-Saharan Africa's impoverished smallholder farmers to the
margins. For many years externally inspired adjustment
programmes weakened state capacity and encouraged African
governments to repay ballooning debts by diverting resources
from food production to cash crop exports. One by one
countries fell victim to falling commodity prices and
increasingly volatile and costly imports. The indifference
of some development partners to sub-Saharan Africa's
agriculture sector mirrored government neglect, often
leaving food growers at the mercy of aid tied to
counterproductive conditions.
It is a harsh paradox that in a world of food surpluses,
hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive on a continent with
ample agricultural endowments. Fundamental change is
imperative. Notwithstanding the last decade's impressive
economic growth and the turnaround in some human development
indicators, sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's most food
insecure region. The spectre of famine, all but gone
elsewhere, continues to haunt millions in the region. Yet
another famine occurred in Somalia in 2011, and the Sahel is
again at risk in 2012.
But history is not destiny. Africans are not fated to starve
- provided that governments move decisively to put in place
appropriate policies and support mechanisms. Famine,
starvation and food insecurity are preventable. The shameful
scenes of feeding tents and starving children that have been
associated with sub-Saharan Africa for far too long can be
eliminated once and for all.
In addition to tackling challenges embedded in the African
context, food security strategies will need to respond to
major changes in the global food system. New factors are
reshaping the way food is produced and consumed: demographic
pressures, dwindling natural resources (particularly water
and soil nutrients) and a progressive shift towards meatbased
diets (which demand large quantities of grain and
water) by the new middle classes of emerging countries.
International food prices are volatile, driven by surging
demand for food and disruptions in its supply, in turn
linked to climate change and fluctuating prices of
agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer and oil.
These challenges will be magnified by a growing and more
affluent population in sub-Saharan Africa. The region will
need to produce substantially more food in the next half
century to feed its people, while mitigating stresses that
agricultural production places on the environment.
Half a century ago, green revolutions in Asia and Latin
America ushered in a steady flow of scientific and
technological breakthroughs that ultimately conquered famine
in those regions. Millions of lives were saved as these
changes rolled across Asia. Basket cases became bread
baskets. Why should sub-Saharan Africa be different?
Africa has the knowledge, the technology and the means to
end hunger and food insecurity. But still missing have been
the political will and dedication. Africa must stop begging
for food. That is an affront to both its dignity and its
potential. If some African countries can acquire and deploy
jet fighters, tanks, artillery and other advanced means of
destruction, why should they not be able to master
agricultural know-how? Why should Africans be unable to
afford the technology, tractors, irrigation, seed varieties
and training needed to be food secure?
This Report argues that sub-Saharan Africa can extricate
itself from pervasive food insecurity by acting on four
critical drivers of change: greater agricultural
productivity of smallholder farmers; more effective
nutrition policies, especially for children; greater
community and household resilience to cope with shocks; and
wider popular participation and empowerment, especially of
women and the rural poor. These drivers of change, by ending
the ravages of hunger and malnourishment, will nurture
capabilities and conditions for human development. A wellnourished
and empowered population, in turn, is more likely
to seek education, participate in society and expand its
productive and human potential. With the right policies and
institutions Africa can sustain this virtuous cycle of
higher human development and enhanced food security.
Tegegnework Gettu
Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director
Regional Bureau for Africa,
United Nations Development Programme
Overview
Hunger and starvation in sub-Saharan Africa have lasted too
long. But Africans are not consigned to a lifetime of food
insecurity. The knowledge, technology and resources for
closing the food security deficit are available today, and
breakthroughs will continue to emerge from research and
development. But no one believes it is possible simply to
distribute better seeds and more fertilizer to African
farmers and then to walk away. Nor will economic growth
alone solve the problem. The failures that add up to food
insecurity are pervasive, from agricultural, health,
education and nutrition policies to research, extension
services, sanitation, local government, commerce and
transport. An effective response to a challenge this broad
cannot be narrowed to a single intervention, discipline or
institutional mandate. It will take a coordinated response
across sectors.
This Africa Human Development Report, the first, argues that
sustainable increases in agricultural productivity protect
food entitlements - the ability of people to access food.
Furthering human development requires nutrition policies
that unleash the potential of today's and future
generations. Also, communities must be resilient enough to
absorb shocks and have the power to make decisions about
their own lives.
Food security for human development
For too long the face of sub-Saharan Africa has been one of
dehumanizing hunger. More than one in four Africans is
undernourished, and food insecurity - the inability to
consistently acquire enough calories and nutrients for a
healthy and productive life - is pervasive. The spectre of
famine, which has virtually disappeared elsewhere in the
world, continues to haunt parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Famines grab headlines, but chronic food insecurity and
malnutrition are more insidious, often silent, daily
calamities for millions of Africans.
Yet sub-Saharan Africa has ample agricultural land, plenty
of water and a generally favourable climate for growing
food. And in the last 10 years many African countries posted
world-beating economic growth rates and became among the
fastest movers on the Human Development Index. With these
endowments and important economic and social achievements,
why is the region still food insecure?
These two jarring paradoxes are the point of departure for
this Report.
The Report argues that sustainable increases in agricultural
productivity and better nutrition are the drivers of foodsecure
growth and human development. The argument is
straightforward: more productive agriculture will build food
security by increasing food availability and lowering food
prices, thus improving access. Higher productivity can also
raise the incomes of millions of smallholder farmers,
elevating living standards and improving health and
education, thus expanding people's capabilities. Through
science, technology and the diffusion of innovation greater
agricultural productivity can also enable better stewardship
of the environment. Sound nutrition links food security to
human development. Well-nourished people exercise their
freedoms and capabilities in different domains - the
essence of human development - and, completing the cycle,
will be inclined to demand food security from their leaders.
The human development approach focuses on entitlements and
capabilities. Food security should thus be leveraged by
empowering people to make their own choices and by building
resilience in the face of shocks. That means preserving
people's food entitlements - the income, market structures,
institutional rules and governance that enable the poor to
buy and trade food in fair markets. It also means
reinforcing essential human capabilities in health and
education.
Focusing policies on these four areas - agricultural
productivity, nutrition, resilience and empowerment - can
unleash a dynamic virtuous cycle of food security and human
development. Sub-Saharan Africa still trails the world in
human development, but the quickening pace of change and the
new economic vitality in the region offer grounds for
renewed (if guarded) optimism.
...
Persistent challenges and emerging threats
Misguided policies, weak institutions and failing markets
are the deeper causes of sub-Saharan Africa's food
insecurity. This tainted inheritance is most evident in
households and communities, where unequal power relations
trap vulnerable groups - subsistence farmers, the landless
poor, many women and children - in a vicious cycle of
deprivation, food insecurity and low human development.
For decades the policies of national governments and
international institutions neglected sub-Saharan Africa's
rural and agricultural development in favour of urban
populations. Their damaging legacies include ineffective
postcolonial industrialization plans that exhausted
development resources, leaving agriculture behind.
Structural adjustment programmes aimed to close budget gaps
but instead created large human development deficits,
especially among the vulnerable poor, and skewed allocations
of national revenue and foreign aid that overlooked
agriculture and nutrition.
Despite some improvements since the mid-1990s, many African
governments continue to burden domestic agriculture with
high, arbitrary taxes while bestowing subsidies, incentives
and macroeconomic support on other sectors. Meanwhile, many
developed countries have moved the other way, heavily
subsidizing agriculture long after its role as a development
driver has passed, giving their farmers a tremendous
advantage in international trade. Sub-Saharan Africa's
smallholder farmers, sidelined by biased policies and
squeezed by failing markets, long ago gave up struggling to
compete against the world's most formidable agricultural
systems.
Breaking with the past, standing up to the vested interests
of the privileged few and building institutions that
rebalance power relations at all levels of society will
require courageous citizens and dedicated leaders. Taking
these steps is all the more pressing as new threats to the
sustainability of sub-Saharan Africa's food systems have
emerged. Demographic change, environmental pressure, and
global and local climate change are profoundly reconfiguring
the region's development options.
These new challenges will be magnified by sub-Saharan
Africa's rising population, almost 2 billion by 2050.
Meeting the increasing demand for food will require
substantially boosting food crop yields over the next half
century and mitigating stresses put on agricultural
production by climate change and current agricultural
practices. Only sharp and sustainable increases in
agricultural productivity will enable food production,
incomes and livelihoods to keep pace with these
developments.
Raising agricultural productivity
Local agricultural capacity is the bedrock of food security
in sub-Saharan Africa, a truth so apparent it would hardly
require stating had it not been so consistently slighted.
Agriculture determines the availability of food, the first
link in the chain of food security. For most Africans,
especially the poor, agriculture is also the wellspring of
income and work, core elements of human development. In
turn, earnings and employment bolster food security by
enabling access to sufficient quantities of nutritious food.
Beyond these crucial and mutually reinforcing effects,
agriculture also shapes how - and how sustainably - the
region uses much of its land and water.
Despite agriculture's importance, it has performed below its
potential for generations in sub-Saharan Africa, neglected
by government policies and held back by low farm
productivity. Following age-old practices, African
smallholder farmers have long survived by growing crops on
reclaimed forest and grazing land or by recycling plots
without replenishing their nutrients. Production increases
have come from expanding cultivated land area, not from
making farming more efficient. The scope for further area
expansion is diminishing, and farmers now need to produce
more food for each unit of land, with the help of modern
technology. Productivity increases will generate farm
employment; decent wages, including those for unskilled
labour; and income for rural communities.
Boosting productivity requires more fertilizers and seeds,
stronger research and development, and a more coordinated
and responsive extension system staffed by experts versed in
the behaviours and habitats of local farming communities.
"Smart subsidies," which encourage smallholder farmers to
shift to high-yield crop varieties without saddling the
state with long-term costs, can energize food production and
markets. Research that embraces local farmers' knowledge as
part of the technology for improving yields can deliver
results where blinkered laboratory designs have failed.
Encouraging smallholder farmers to adopt new inputs begins
with understanding their resistance to change.
Policy-making and institutional research should focus on
varietal options for health and nutrition. Multidisciplinary
knowledge is required to develop environmentally sustainable
farm technologies. Modern agricultural technology can
deliver solutions that not only boost yields but also
economize on inputs, making fertilizer and water use more
environment friendly. Creating and diffusing science and
innovation require more collaboration among breeders,
researchers and farmers.
Irrigation presents a long-term challenge for sub-Saharan
Africa. Most countries have to make large investments in
irrigation methods designed for sustainable and employmentintensive
water management. But not all parts of the region
need irrigation. Many semihumid and humid zones have enough
moisture to make other means of water control feasible.
Better market access can also boost yields. When farmers can
transport their surpluses quickly and cheaply to points of
sale or storage, they have incentives to increase
production. This will take market development policies,
transport regulation reforms to introduce competition, and
substantial investment in rural roads, information
technology, railways and warehouses. Access to credit and
insurance through innovative schemes can lower the risks of
adopting new inputs and motivate farmers to experiment with
new varieties.
Attracting young Africans to participate in agriculture will
bring new energy and ideas into its development. Technology
and innovation can create enticing and profitable openings,
enterprises and occupations along the value chain of a
sector that young people have come to denigrate as a
backwater. Connecting three assets - a bulging youth
population, advances in innovation and the promise of
agricultural development - is a natural way forward for
many countries.
Higher agricultural productivity can deliver a triple
dividend - sustained food security, higher human
development and lower pressure on land and water. But
governments will have to rethink their priorities in order
to pay for the required investments. Self-defeating policies
that put guns before bread, cities before farms and fatty
foods before nutrition will not measure up. Adequate funding
for agricultural research and development and for effective
regional collaboration on big-ticket investments in land and
water control will yield a richer harvest for sub-Saharan
Africa than will sowing conflicts with bullets or converting
continental breadbaskets into fuel tanks.
From food security to human development through nutrition
Too often the news from sub-Saharan Africa is easy to
predict: famine and humanitarian food crises on the front
page, volatile international food prices in the business
section and numbing images of emaciated children in the
magazine supplement. But while hunger dominates the African
narrative, malnutrition - its silent accomplice - seldom
makes headlines. Malnutrition is an obstacle to human
development, inflicting irreversible damage on individuals
early in life and imposing large economic and social losses
on countries for years to come.
Malnutrition is a plague on childhood. It can span
generations in the form of hidden hunger, a lifesapping
inheritance of nutrient deficiency resulting from past
practices of eating low-quality foods. But fortifying these
staples can preserve their place in traditional diets.
Improving micronutrient intake is among the most effective -
and cost-effective - ways to combat malnutrition.
Concentrating on a handful of nutrients (vitamin A, iodine,
iron and zinc) can leverage large human development returns
from a small input - one of society's most efficient
development investments.
Many of the most critical and cost-effective nutrition
interventions are not expensive. One is empowering women, a
far-reaching way to help households break the cycle of
intergenerational deprivation. When women have less say in
decisions than men do, nutrition suffers, household food
security deteriorates and access to healthcare lags. When
women have more influence on household choices, child
nutrition often prospers.
Well-nourished people are more productive and more receptive
to learning. Well-nourished children learn better and are
more likely to live lives they value. Indeed, the importance
of nutrition begins even before children are born: nutrition
during gestation has long-term benefits for children's
ability to learn and grow.
Food science is uncovering new ways to improve the diets of
the poor. Research on biofortification - breeding nutrients
into crops - holds great promise because it focuses on the
unprocessed food staples that poor people eat in large
quantities every day. Biofortification implicitly targets
its nutrient enrichment to low-income households that do not
consume commercially fortified processed foods. While the
technology has limits, it could give traditional African
diets a major nutrition boost.
...
A multidimensional challenge of this order demands a
multisectoral nutrition strategy - one with high-level
government commitment, adequate resources and nutritionsensitive
interventions by the state, civil society, the
private sector and the international community. Nutrition
has to move up the policy agenda and down to households.
Otherwise, sub-Saharan Africa will continue to incur the
high costs to its citizens and societies of one of the
region's most disabling deficits.
Building resilience
From field to table the supply of food in sub-Saharan Africa
is fraught with risk. Shocks, cycles and trends threaten
food security and livelihoods. Conflict, droughts, floods,
food price spikes and other shocks inflict immediate
hardship on the poorest and most vulnerable households and
constrain future human development. And too often the damage
is permanent. Cyclical or longer term stresses - such as
seasonal harvesting patterns that result in long "hungry
seasons" between harvests, or creeping environmental
degradation - are slower moving and more predictable. But
they devastate communities all the same - especially those
that cannot manage their exposure to hazards and protect
their livelihoods. Stresses from population pressure are
pervasive and growing.
Preventing or relieving stresses before they undermine food
systems requires action across multiple fronts - from the
environment to conflict resolution, market stability and
women's empowerment. Long-term thinking requires lowering
agriculture's contribution to climate change through
policies that emphasize climate-smart practices. Ensuring
that techniques to boost agricultural productivity are
sustainable will allow farmers to adapt to climate change
and to reap the benefits of nutrient-enriched soils today
without adding to environmental stress.
...
Forward-looking measures can buffer food systems from stress
- or at least reduce the frequency and intensity of the
most damaging strains. But crises happen, and poor
communities must be ready to manage risks and cope with
shocks. Social protection - such as insurance, employment
protection, food and cash-for-work programmes, food
assistance, subsidies and social transfers - can determine
whether crisis-struck households survive or succumb.
However, avoiding deterioration in food systems and
mitigating the impacts of breakdowns are hardly progress.
The most effective social protection policies raise returns
to core productive assets - in sub-Saharan Africa, labour
and land - and lift people out of poverty, reducing their
need for social support and building their capacity to
withstand recurring shocks. Linking social protection to
measures that enhance farmers' access to technology,
stabilize rural markets and commodity prices, and build up
rural infrastructure can make farmers, households and
markets more resilient.
Empowerment, social justice and gender
This Report shows that the basic right to food - and the
right to life itself - is being violated in sub-Saharan
Africa to an intolerable degree. Building a food secure
continent requires transformative change - change that will
be most effective if accompanied by a shift of resources,
capacities and decisions to smallholder farmers, poor
communities and women. When women and other vulnerable
groups gain a voice in the decisions affecting their lives
and livelihoods, their capacity to produce, trade and use
food is materially enhanced.
Knowledge and organization are the keys to opening the
public space. Information technology can put up-to-theminute
knowledge about market prices and conditions at
farmers' fingertips, increasing their leverage, while
cooperatives and producer associations can provide platforms
for collective bargaining. When food market actors farmers,
transporters, sellers and buyers - communicate
regularly and quickly, costs and transaction times fall and
farmers' incomes tend to rise. High connectivity can make
farmers better traders and markets more transparent.
New inputs and farming techniques can liberate farmers from
cycles of low productivity and poverty. But technology is
double-edged. Misapplied, it dispossesses or marginalizes
smallholder farmers. Science conducted far from where its
results are used, and compartmentalized in water-tight
disciplines, can lead to designs poorly suited to
smallholder farms and local habitats.
Participation and voice grow stronger when political,
economic and social power is widely dispersed. Locally
determined solutions are usually more sustainable than topdown
decisions. Producer organizations amplify the political
voice of farmers, reduce the costs of marketing inputs and
outputs and provide a meeting point for collective
approaches. Community-based targeting can prevent elites
from capturing social transfers, drawing on local knowledge
to identify people most eligible for social protection.
African farmers have found vocal allies in autonomous civil
society organizations, which can mobilize public interest
around issues, monitor the performance of governments and
lobby them to act in line with basic human rights. In
addition to rights-based organizations, a range of
development-based civil society organizations focused on
charity, recovery and relief undertake food security
interventions. But African civil society is still evolving,
so its role in delivering food security can be neither
discounted nor relied on completely.
Accountability is the necessary counterpart to voice. When
accountable authorities answer to engaged communities,
social justice is served. In the short run community
organization and civic engagement will have to fill many
gaps. Communitybased social audits to monitor delivery of
social protection programmes and other public services -
and rights-based (rather than discretionary) approaches that
elevate interventions to the status of citizens' rights -
can strengthen the social contract between people and their
government.
Control over land is crucial for smallholder farmers. In
sub-Saharan Africa family holdings pass from one generation
to the next with ill-defined rights of tenure, leaving
smallholder farmers vulnerable to dispossession and
exploitation. A new development that risks aggravating these
insecurities is the recent international scramble for land
in sub-Saharan Africa. One danger is that largescale
investments may displace people without consultation or
adequate compensation. In countries where many people work
in agriculture, separating them from their land without
first creating opportunities in nonfarm sectors is likely to
increase poverty, unemployment and food insecurity.
There are strong and mutually reinforcing links between
expanding women's capabilities - through better education,
more direct control over resources and a more decisive voice
in decision-making - and enhancing food security.
Empowering women, who make up almost half the agricultural
labour force in sub-Saharan Africa, is a highly efficient
way to achieve progress across the multiple dimensions of
food security. But even beyond such instrumental qualities
and possible gains in efficiency, women's empowerment must
remain a central policy priority because equality and
nondiscrimination are of intrinsic value. As human rights,
women's rights deserve to be promoted for that reason alone.
Yet women in sub-Saharan Africa have less control than men
do over productive resources such as assets, land and
credit; their time is often devoted to activities that are
nonmarketed and undervalued; and their access to key
institutions such as courts and markets is curtailed.
Famines and food crises continue to plague the region as
nowhere else. The cycles of hunger and despair with which so
many Africans struggle and "cope," and which too often trap
them, show no signs of letting go. Responsibility for these
appalling conditions is shared among governments,
institutions and markets in the region and abroad. The
challenge of food security in sub-Saharan Africa is
formidable, the timeframe for action is tight and the
investment required is substantial. But the potential gains
for human development are immense.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic
publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on
African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and
international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by
William Minter.
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