The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Two seeks to eradicate all kinds of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, but this appears to be a long way off in Africa. Among other persistent concerns, feeding Africa’s expanding population is one of its most difficult challenges. As a result, despite government agriculture and food industry sector support, hunger, undernutrition, and food insecurity are widespread across the continent. Even with the millions of hectares of fertile land that remain uncultivated due to low capacity. Without equivocation, food insecurity may intensify if the population continues to expand without a proportionate response to halt the situation.
In Nigeria like many other African countries, each year a substantial portion of its total food production is never preserved despite the hunger and undernutrition. The continent still losses and wastes food in the midst of the inadequacy that exists. One of the key reasons is that food loss and food waste continue to grow without any significant intervention by the government or businesses. The magnitude of food loss and waste (FLW) is undeniably common and high in Africa along the food supply chain, largely due to a general lack of capacity to innovate. The loss and waste problem have been neglected for so long and the last few years have witnessed a consistent increase as a result of heightening climate change, lack of infrastructure, illiteracy, inconsistent power supply, environmental pressure, lack of innovation, and the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted the vulnerability of African food systems to external shocks. Though food loss and waste are a global problem, it appears it is more prevalent in Africa now with the current realities. Therefore, persistent food loss, and food waste amid starvation on the continent should not be overlooked, this piece should trigger a wake-up call.
While I agree that both “food waste” and “food loss” signifies the food portion that is wasted and not eaten, the terms are different but often use interchangeably. Painfully, both are damaging to the economy, businesses, households, and the well-being of the populace. The fact is food loss and waste are quite different anyway in terms of origin and scope and the true difference lies in exactly where the waste occurs. According to literature food loss typically takes place at the harvest, storage, transportation, and sometimes at processing, and distribution stages in the food value chain. Staggeringly, in Sub-Saharan Africa, post-harvest food losses are estimated to be worth the US $4 billion annually – or enough to feed at least 48 million people, this is a disclosure in a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. In my opinion, a large chunk of this may likely be from Nigeria, considering the population and economic size of the country in Africa. Further findings in the report indicated that some of the leading causes of food loss are poor storage, insecurity, loss during transportation, insufficient and inefficient agro-processing skills among smallholder farming communities, lack of innovative approach to preservation, and insufficient infrastructure. On the other hand, food waste” refers to food that is of good quality and fit for consumption, but does not get consumed because it is discarded―either before or after and it is left to spoil. Surveys of families in Lagos State the economic capital of the country to understand the causes of food waste elicited packaging and preservation as a key aspect of the problem. One of the root causes of food waste is a lack of power and some restaurants equally mentioned a lack of proper packaging techniques. It was easy to conclude from the survey that food waste occurs at various stages of the supply chain due to a lack of constant power and adequate packaging.
Though funding and investing in agriculture or the food sector can improve food security and promote sustainability, in my opinion, improved food sufficiency can be achieved by considering the reduction of food loss and food waste. This can be a more effective and cost-saving strategy for Africa at this time. Because when food is lost or wasted, all the resources that are used to produce the food, including water, land, power, labour, and capital, are also wasted. So, a reduction in loss or wastage will more than likely reduce wasted resources and increase profits along the food supply chain. To address this prevailing huge problem, businesses and the government must result in policy responses to enhance storage, cooling technologies, and packaging for the preservation of perishable foods and to lengthen food shelf lives. The good news is that there are a variety of ways to prevent food loss and waste throughout the supply chain, for example, investment can be made in the importation of cooling and refrigerated trucks for transportation of perishable fruit and vegetables. Farm produce such as tomatoes, plantain, or even catfish can be preserved with the cooling system from the farms directly to urban businesses or consumers, thereby reducing food loss and increasing fresh produce availability in the country. Furthermore, innovative smart food packaging and smart sensing technologies for monitoring food quality can also be introduced for the sustainability of high-quality standards and improved product safety. These are lines of business opportunities for investors to explore or for the attraction of foreign direct investments (FDIs). Sincerely, the government, businesses, and decision-makers need to target investments deliberately in the food supply value chain because opportunities are bound. The government also needs to create incentives to boost efforts to reduce food losses by businesses and smallholder farmers.
In conclusion, no single solution can tackle this whole issue but having an innovative mindset can get the government, businesses, researchers and the populace started. In fact, the recent implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents an opportunity to eliminate trade barriers and strengthen intra-regional trade, thereby providing farmers and all other stakeholders along the value chains of food systems with a strong incentive to increase local production and transform food systems. More so reducing food wastage will strengthen and enhance general food security on the continent. Good luck!
Image Credit: World Food Programme/Twitter
