The pursuit of climate-resilient and biodiversity-conscious food systems, which are commended by the United Nations, are flickering new hope into the livesof millions of Africans who still go to bed hungry.
The agenda “right to food” is also being intensified. Many countries are integrating their national food systems with their agriculture. Yet, the right to food remains a pressing concern in the continent where droughts, conflicts, and unbalanced global trade relations undermine agricultural stability.
The UN report presented at the UNFSS+4 summit, which held in Addis Ababa recently reveals that the hidden costs of global food systems including the hidden social, economic, and environmental factors amount to 11.6 trillion USD across 156 countries with many of them are African nations.
According to the report, the situation of Africans with the significant share of this burden makes the need for transformation urgent. “With regard to nutrition goals and the fight against malnutrition, countries in the Near East and North Africa are integrating nutrition strategies with social protections relevant to address water scarcity and related challenges.”
In exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Herald, Ugandan agriculturalist and national food systems coordination committee member, Agnes Kirabo shared her insights on the continent’s evolving strategies.
“We need to acknowledge Africa is a unique continent,” she stressed. To here, climate change impacts all African nations, but, the homogenous blueprint for transformation risks erasing “the continent’s diverse ecological zones, traditional food practices, and cultural identity.”
In Africa, several governments are adopting initiatives to diversify their food sources. For instance, Mali and Kenya have made constitutional recognitions of the right to food, UN recognizes. Also, multi-stakeholder coordination platforms such as the inter-donor group in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar’s investor matchmaking platform are creating new investment hubs to finance food transformation.
“If we are going to make our food systems resilient, we should avoid making our food system homogeneous,” she said, adding, grounding transformation in African traditions, indigenous crops, and localized knowledge, is critical.
She critiqued past dismissals of traditional agriculture as “primitive,” saying that these practices are now being revisited for their ecological adaptability. “Now, we are going back to it.”
Indigenous methods are agroecology, now being embraced once again. “With the diversity, we are going to respond to the burglaries of climate change,” she underlined.
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Kirabo pointed out the lack of empirical documentation for traditional food system resilience as a deliberate oversight, and urged that Africa must “be intentional and deliberate” in shaping its own food future.
Asked about Uganda’s best experience, she said that Uganda’s progress in recognizing food diversity as a strategic asset, placing the country second in Africa in terms of leveraging its biodiversity.
“Diversity is the heart and soul of our food systems transformation,” she noted while praising ongoing support from government, researchers, and development actors.
To her, Ethiopia’s wheat initiative also serves as a leading example of how national strategies are delivering results. By accelerating the production of local wheat production, Ethiopia is moving toward self-sufficiency and reducing its reliance on imported grain, she commented.
“It is transforming the agri-food system in a more equitable way,” she emphasized, expressing her optimism that this model could serve as an inspiration across the continent.
Africa, as a climate vulnerable continent, should foster intra-African trade which remains critical to sustaining its sectorial transformation. Her appeal to root Africa’s food systems in its heritage and ecological diversity aligns with the wider UN recognition that the future of global food security may be reliant on Africa’s ability to offer solutions uniquely its own.