African countries need to urgently expand food reserves, keep food supply flowing and boost their agriculture budgets to avert a possible hunger pandemic, partly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, delegates at a two-day webinar hosted by the African Development Institute (ADI) has advised.
The delegates were of the opinion that Africa must now, more than ever, develop and implement policies to enhance capacity to compete in the agriculture sector, processing, trade and industry.
Noting that COVID-19 has fast-tracked the transition to the 4th Industrial Revolution era, participants also called on African governments to scale up technology for agriculture production, including private sector-led initiatives, to build resilience and grow the sector to self-sufficiency.
The webinar, titled, Building Resilience in Food Systems and Agricultural Value Chains: Agricultural Policy Responses to COVID-19 in Africa, examined the pandemic’s impacts on Africa’s agri-food systems and offered policy recommendations to make them more resilient and efficient.
The dialogue, which drew 770 experts from 57 countries, was the second in a series ADI organised under its Global Community of Practice (G-CoP) to provide evidence-based policy guidance to African Development Bank Group member countries.
Prioritise agriculture
Participants also urged governments to prioritise agriculture and agribusiness in national security agenda by implementing structural reforms.
Reforms proposed included merging ministries of agriculture, health, trade and industry and environment into ‘One Health Ministry’ for greater impact.
They pointed out that introducing trade or non-trade barriers was not a welcome policy in Africa, especially during the pandemics.
They called on Africa to establish green corridors and domestic food systems and keep inter-regional food supply chains open during the pandemic.
Many African countries must import food to meet domestic demand and so face dangerous food shortages due to COVID-19 related supply-chain disruptions.
Further, a number of countries in East Africa and the Horn are grappling with another food security threat: locust swarms.
The participants therefore noted that food insecurity had been a problem prior to the pandemic, as many African countries lack adequate strategic food reserves.
Other challenges
Other challenges, including climate change, water scarcity, and poorly developed agricultural markets were also discussed.
These factors driving extreme hunger could kill far much more than COVID-19 in Africa if lockdowns persist without clearing the “choke-points” in the food supply chain to the vulnerable, the meeting observed.
“Without COVID-19, many of our people were already hungry. The pandemic has worsened the situation. Let’s call this an emergency for food production and let this crisis not waste,” they noted.
Speakers likened this to “a silent war on the most vulnerable populations without guns.”
Participants offered several policy solutions, including promotion of research; enhancing capacity; and expansion of regional agricultural trade, with the African Continental Free Trade Area representing one pathway to resilient regional food supply chains.
The experts also called for the establishment of national agricultural productivity accelerator funds to support smallholder farmers and SMEs to ramp up production.
