5 vital steps toward achieving ‘zero hunger’ in Africa by 2030

Global food systems have been battered by overlapping crises in recent years. Key among these are the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and extreme weather events resulting from climate change. These have led to forced migration, loss of employment, climate stress, loss of biodiversity, and economic instability.

In Africa, which is home to 1.5 billion people, these shocks and stressors have slowed—or even reversed—decades of progress in improving food security and nutrition. For example, 37 million people in the Greater Horn of Africa are facing acute hunger in one of the region’s worst droughts in decades.

These multiple crises have forced the world to recognize that improving nutrition and food security requires more resilient global and national food systems. Food systems are the sum of actors and interactions along the food value chain—from input supply and production to transport, processing, retailing, wholesaling, preparation, consumption, and disposal.

As set out in the Sustainable Development Goals, the journey toward food and nutritional security for Africa has a clear destination—zero hunger. The target is to ensure access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all people by 2030.

The recently launched Africa Agriculture Status Report examines the continent’s progress toward food and nutritional security.

We coedited the report, which has six key themes. It charts a road map to get to the goal faster while adapting to a changing environment. Our report coincided with World Food Day 2022, whose theme is safer food, better health.

Without transformative change like the Asian Green Revolution, African food systems will continue to impede human development. They will also continue to be overly dependent on food imports. Without a strong drive for sustainable agricultural practices, the continent’s food systems will worsen environmental destruction. Urgent action is needed to anticipate megatrends, rally political will, mobilize investments, and strengthen capacity.

Five ways to transform African food systems

1. True cost accounting

Development practitioners working in Africa need true cost accounting for our food systems. It should explicitly consider all the environmental, social, and human health outcomes associated with the way food systems are organized. For example, 74% of agricultural production growth in sub-Saharan Africa since 2000 has been achieved through area expansion and only 26% from increased yields. This is far from ideal. Reliance on area expansion has converted forests and grasslands into cropland on a massive scale. The result has been substantial damage to the region’s stock of natural resources and ecosystem services.

A true cost accounting framework sets out the costs of this approach. It would lead to the recognition that technical innovation is important to improve yields on existing farmland. It would show that this is a more sustainable approach to production growth, better health, and improved nutrition.

2. Anticipate the megatrends 

African governments must be prepared for the big demographic, economic, environmental, and social trends shaping the continent’s food systems. These include:

rapid population growth, associated land scarcity, and rapidly rising land prices
rapidly growing demand for food, driven by rapidly growing urban areas, rising incomes, and purchasing power
more frequent and intense weather disruptions associated with climate change
global health crises, economic disruptions, and civil conflicts such as the war in Ukraine
technical innovation in digital agriculture.

Africa’s food systems continue to evolve in response to these drivers. Food policies and investment strategies need to change too. We are chasing a moving target.