Agriculturists are of the view that what makes a community or nation tick is its ability to feed itself. For ages, finding enough to eat has been a major hassle for Africans. Against a physical environment often hostile to agricultural and pastoral activity – deserts, mountains and dense forests – the population explosion of the past century has made the goal of food security even more difficult to achieve.
‘More and more people compete for a finite amount of agricultural production. However, a report by South Africa-based research and consulting firm, says “political will by governments to prioritise food security, combined with the use of new crop and food production technologies, has allowed some countries to break the chains of food insecurity”.
There are clear ways to measure a country’s food security situation, mostly health indicators. The percentage of malnourished children, including children suffering from stunting due to improper nutrition, provides a good snapshot of a country’s overall food situation. African countries have large divides between rich and poor, and childhood malnutrition is a measurement of how equitably a country’s most valuable commodity, food, is distributed.
The report notes increasing obesity in sub-Saharan Africa as some countries grow more affluent. Middle-class lifestyles tend to bring poor eating choices and less physical activity. However, the prevalence of obesity does not correspond with a country’s food security situation, and often extreme childhood stunting exists side by side in a country with increased adult obesity.
Another measurement is to what extent external food aid from such organisations as the World Food Program must be provided to circumvent famine: which countries receive food aid, how much and at what frequency.
As the report says, ‘Just as the Africa Country Benchmark Report for 2017 amalgamates business and economic indexes to create an inclusive and holistic view of each African country’s performance, a review of this data gives insights into which countries are successfully expanding their food resources. These countries tend to be politically stable, with democratic governance, and have better economic performance resulting from their people-oriented politics’.
