African leaders are currently meeting for a three-day Summit in Senegal to lay out plans to unlock the continent’s food-production potential.
The Feed Africa Summit is hosted by Senegal’s President Macky Sall, the African Union’s Chairperson and the African Development Bank in an effort to coordinate and mobilise vital resources to bridge the demand in the continent’s food value chain.
The summit is a follow-up to the first meeting in 2015, when the Feed Africa Strategy for Agricultural Transformation in Africa was proposed.
According to the Africa Development Bank Group, “Globally, 828 million people suffer from hunger, with Africa accounting for 249 million or a third of that number. The irony is that Africa alone, with 65 per cent of the remaining arable land, has the potential to feed nine billion people in the world by 2050.” Since 2015, an additional 90 million Africans now go to bed hungry because of unending conflicts, extreme climate-related events and economic shocks.
The ONE Campaign is calling on African leaders to use this Summit to build a cohesive plan that will transform the continent’s food system, and must include:
Actionable Country Food and Agriculture Delivery Compacts – Without adequate investment and improved coordination of multi-stakeholders, Africa cannot achieve food security at scale in each country. Africa will need between $40 billion and $77 billion public investment a year, with up to $180 billion in private sector funding, to trigger and sustain agrifood transformation on the continent.
African leaders, development partners and private sector leaders must agree to ambitious, actionable investment plans and demonstrate strong commitment to mutual accountability.
Greater pressure on high income countries to support resilience building – We expect stakeholders at this summit to urge high income countries to deliver on their promises of climate adaptation finance, which means delivering on the goal of $100 billion a year in 2020-2025, addressing any shortfalls through increased contributions in subsequent years, and setting out a delivery plan for the commitment to double adaptation finance as agreed at the previously held COP gatherings.
Désiré Assogbavi, Francophone Africa Director of the ONE Campaign, said: This Summit serves as a moment for African leaders to further the dialogue on achieving food self-sufficiency, amidst the persistent effects of the pandemic and ongoing occurrences of crisis on the continent.
It is now critical to have a cross-border integrated strategy to unleash the agricultural potential of Africa, for sustainable food production. If this can be accomplished Africa stands to benefit, and the world will gain immensely from such a collaborative effort.