We need to invest in agri infrastructure

World Vision reported in 2023 that more than one billion people in Africa struggle to afford a healthy diet. The organisation added that around 30% of children on the continent suffered from stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. Moreover, 20% of the total population of Africa was considered undernourished, and this had increased on the back of COVID-19 lockdowns.

World Vision further reported that progress since 2000 had been reversed, and that hunger, starvation and malnutrition had severely worsened between 2019 and 2022.

As these figures show, Africa is a food-insecure continent, and this is unlikely to change in the short term. There are many reasons for this, but it would seem that the blame largely sits with African governments that are unable to address their problems with economic stability, enabling more agripreneurs and farmers to enter the industry, and access to education, allowing more farmers to produce sustainably and over the long term.

Another major reason is the failing infrastructure across Africa. This is something that farmers in South Africa are particularly familiar with. South Africa’s rail network, for example, is highly compromised, making it more difficult for farmers to move their produce and products to markets and ports. Our ports have also long been in decline, making it increasingly difficult and expensive for farmers and exporters to send agricultural commodities abroad. Our roads are falling apart, and many farmers have thus taken it upon themselves (and at their own cost) to fix these problems if and where they can.

But these challenges are not unique to South Africa, and pose a real problem to the future food security and agricultural production of the whole continent.

African Business recently reported on this dilemma. It starts the discussion with something that we all already know: Africa has the potential to become the breadbasket of the world.

“With excellent growing conditions across large parts of the continent, a huge agricultural workforce and a relative abundance of land that could be converted for arable farming, Africa appears to possess all the ingredients to ramp up food production in the coming years,” it said.

However, this potential cannot be realised without serious intervention by governments in terms of maintaining and building the necessary infrastructure. And this does not only refer to roads and ports, but rather to processing and storage facilities, as African Business pointed out. The lack of these facilities not only hinders production, but also results in excessive waste, with African Business reporting that around US$4 billion (about R75 billion) of food is lost on an annual basis across the continent. The lack of these facilities also discourages investment in the sector, and many young people are increasingly steering away from agriculture.

The solution to this, of course, is simple: African governments need to start investing, as they have promised, in agriculture. There should be no need for Africa to continue to import billions of rands’ worth of food when the continent is capable of producing everything it needs!