Africa Must Be Able To Feed Itself

The idea came from the realisation that Africa will have to feed a population of two and a half billion over the next few decades. There are already major food-related challenges, particularly in terms of child malnutrition.

In the book, Ive tried to answer this question: How can we produce more healthy, quality products in sufficient quantity for a growing population, but on land that is limited in terms of land ownership and has little scope for expansion ?

In fact, this land is often degraded and can fall victim to climatic hazards, as is currently the case with flooding, or pests such as locusts eating crops.

The reasons are many. First the colonial heritage although we wont dwell on this well-known issue explains this situation. When you produce coffee, cocoa, palm oil, soya or groundnuts instead of food, you are unlikely to satisfy the needs of the people.

And when you devote a large proportion of your imports to buying rice or other foodstuffs from Asia or Europe, you are not enabling your national agriculture productionto meet the needs of the population from its own resources.