There should be some good lessons for the African people to draw from the recent widely publicized African leaders’ peace mission to Ukraine and Russia.
One of the points on the ten point list of the African Peace Mission initiative was that of the issue of rising food prices in most of African countries which threaten to cause unrest. The rising food costs have been due to the hampered supply of wheat, sun flower cooking oil and fertilizers to the African continent. This has come about as a result of the sanctions imposed by the Western world on Russia and the continued blockade of exports from the Black Sea ports as a direct consequence of the ongoing Russian – Ukrainian war.
Results from the African peace mission are still scanty and there is no indication that the war is about to end soon. Therefore, it is imperative that the African leaders under the auspices of the African Union should be crafting together a Marshall-like African plan geared at increasing the production of wheat, sun flower and maize on the continent.
It is reported that wheat consumption in Africa has been rising faster than in any other region around the world.
In 2014, the population of Sub-Saharan Africa was 50 percent greater than it had been 14 years prior. And last year, Sub-Saharan Africans were consuming one-third more wheat per person than they had in 2000. These trends combined have led to a doubling in total wheat demand in that time period.
There are several reasons driving Africa’s increased appetite for wheat including urbanization, rising incomes, food aid, globalization in cuisine, and fluctuations in the relative price of other staple crops such as corn.
Demand for wheat-based foods have reached all-time highs in many countries both on the household level—as sales of items like pasta increase in grocery stores—and on the restaurant level, as international restaurant chains continue to find big business in Africa.
It is also reported that local wheat production has not been able to keep up with the increasing demand. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa consistently produces less than half, and often as little as one-third, of the wheat it consumes. While domestic consumption has doubled since the turn of the century, production over the same period only grew by 50 percent.
Over years, wheat gains in production have been very much regional, with East Africa leading the pack in total production as well as the amount of land dedicated to wheat production.
On the other hand, West and Central Africa for example produce negligible amounts of wheat, while Southern Africa’s overall wheat harvest area and production has actually been in a state of decline over the past 15 years.
Consequently this lackluster production has translated to an increase in demand and imports of wheat from elsewhere outside the continent. It is reported that roughly over half of Africa’s wheat, sun flower cooking oil and fertilizer consumption comes from Russia and Ukraine.
According to Statista Reports, during the years of 2018/2019, South Africa alone consumed 3.33 million metric tons of wheat which was an increase of 3% from the previous years. It is also reported that over the past 5 years (2016 – 2020), South Africa imported an average of 1.8mn metric tons of wheat annually. This represented half of the country’s consumption needs. Igbal Jassat, an Executive at the Johannesburg based think tank called Media Review Network said the following, “The fact that the continent’s dependence on external sources of basic food supply such as wheat, grain cooking oil and fuel has remained long after many years of gaining independence from the colonial powers, makes Africa extremely vulnerable”.
Rebeca Grynspan, the head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said in a recent report that “soaring food and fuel prices will affect the most vulnerable in developing countries, putting pressure on the poorest households which spend the highest share of their income on food, resulting in hardship and hunger." So it is not surprising that the war in Europe has continued to render people in many African countries in a food insecurity predicament.
One chilling reality is that actually there is no indication that African wheat demand is slowing down. The United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), projects an increase in Sub-Saharan African per capita wheat consumption, while West Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa have been identified as some of the largest growth markets for wheat exports through 2024 from other continents.
Given the current trends and expectations, FAO projects that Sub-Saharan Africa will continue to rely on imports, predicting that the net trade balance for the staple grain will grow from current levels of 20 million tons to 33 million tons by 2050.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s reliance on wheat imports leaves the region vulnerable to global prices and weather shocks, which could wreak havoc on regional food security while also draining countries of precious foreign reserves. These unfavorable realities are set to continue in the coming years unless there is a concerted effort to boost wheat production across the continent.
According to a 2012 study by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), eight Sub-Saharan African countries have at least 500,000 hectares of land that could competitively and profitably produce wheat without irrigation. These countries include Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
It is reported that in these eight countries, the amount of wheat that could potentially be produced by cultivating that suitable land would actually exceed current consumption levels of wheat in the same countries.
Similarly, the World Bank identified 3.84 million hectares of land suitable for wheat production in Sub-Saharan Africa, the vast majority of which is in East Africa. This is almost equal to the amount of land dedicated to the cultivation of wheat in Argentina, one of the world’s major producers of the crop.
In all of these studies, however, two regions consistently come out at the bottom - West and Central Africa. Wheat consumption is growing quickly in these regions, but unfortunately, the climate, soil and/or irrigation infrastructure that exists today is not conducive to wheat production.
Several parts of Southern Africa have been pinpointed as suitable for non-irrigated wheat production, and several more could effectively produce the crop with irrigation. However, production and area harvested in the region’s historical powerhouse South Africa have been in decline over the past fifteen years, as has production in neighboring Zimbabwe. The wheat sector in places like Zambia, Namibia, and Mozambique has been growing, but at very modest rates. Consequently, Southern Africa’s wheat trade gap has been widening as a result.
Meanwhile, East African prospects are bright, as production in places like Ethiopia has sprinted ahead thanks to favorable growing conditions and proper planning.
Given the above wheat production landscape and trends on the African continent, and given the inevitable increasing demand for wheat consumption due to the growing population, it is imperative that there is a deliberate, collaborative and concerted effort by the Africa n leaders to address the issue of increasing wheat production on the continent. The areas in Africa where wheat can be grown with ease and without much resort to expensive methods of irrigation have been identified. What is now needed is for a concerted effort to put these soils to use so that no part of Africa should starve on account of lack of sufficient basic wheat food. It is only when we as Africans are able to achieve this milestone in our human endeavor of self sustainability in food security that we shall have the respect we deserve or demand from the Europeans. It continues to be an embarrassment and self demeaning on the part of the African leaders to be hoping to get food reliefs from Ukraine or Russia which countries are currently engaged in a veracious war. Let the African peace mission be transformed into an African Food Security Action Task Team that should spearhead the awakening of the food production giant potential of Africa. As our forefathers desired many years ago that culminated into their protracted struggles to shed off the yokes of colonialism from Africa by advocating for African solutions to African problems, it is high time this is put into practice.
