Climate Change and Africa’s Food Deficit

"Africa is now facing the same type of long-term food deficit problem that India faced in the early 1960s". This is according to a Study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) which recommends that Africa should spend more on Agriculture in order to avert a possible crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) food deficit is also increasingly compounded by climate change. In fact, one-third of the African population lives in drought-prone areas while two-thirds of SSA’s surface area is desert or dry land. The major impact of climate change on food security includes changes in precipitation and insulation, changes in the length of growing seasons and changes in carbon uptake. Additionally there are declines in agricultural yields, decline in the quality of pasture and livestock production, and reduced vegetation cover which place local people at risk of famine.

Climate change also affects rain-fed agriculture which is the main safety net of poor people in rural areas where agriculture employs about 70 percent of the population. The rain related challenges can either cause drought or floods and the maps shown (Source: World Bank Development Report 2010) indicates the countries likely to be affected by either.

Despite the fact that most people in SSA are engaged in agriculture, its productivity has stagnated for several years across the whole sub-region making the region a net food importer. In fact, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) list for 2010 of Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LIFDC) - 44 of the 77 low income food deficit countries in the world are in Africa.

An example is the disappearance of Lake Chad over a 40 year period as shown in the image (source: GRID Arendal UNEP). Lake Chad is shared by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger and its disappearance is a grim reminder of the dramatic ecological challenges and food shortages that lie ahead. The lake's area has decreased by 80 per cent over the last four decades, with catastrophic impacts on those reliant on its resources. Lake Victoria is receding as well and projected reductions in the rivers in the Nile region signal difficult times ahead. 

Another dimension is that of water, storage and infrastructure. Most rivers cross more than one country, necessitating effective cooperation across borders. Africa’s 63 transboundary river basins together account for 90 percent of its surface water resources necessitating regional water control systems.  Armed conflict further complicates agriculture and climate change risk management. For poor people living in weak or unstable states, climate change will deepen hunger, suffering, and intensify the risks of food insecurity, mass migration, violent conflict, and further fragility.

According to a World Bank Publication, by 2050, Sub-Saharan Africa will need to feed more people in a harsher climate. Agriculture will simply have to become more productive, getting more crop per drop while protecting ecosystems. Water resources need to be managed better by scaling up existing infrastructure to manage watersheds, rainfed agriculture and protecting forests. Improved planning for storage, power transmission, and irrigation including screening investments for climate risks will also be necessary. Countries will need to develop mechanisms for collaboration across sectors and countries.

There is a role for innovation and academic research institutions as well. This could be done by adopting simple technologies suitable for small farmers such as low-cost drip irrigation and storage of rainwater. African farmers should also be helped to work with new crop varieties. One example is "New Rice for Africa" (Nerica), an Asian-African hybrid developed in Africa with support from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), that combines drought resistance with high yields and high protein content. 

NERICA, the new rice variety was the result of years of work by a team of plant breeders and particularly Sierra Leonean molecular scientist Monty Jones at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA – now the Africa Rice Center). When Dr. Jones (a 2004 winner of the WFP) set up the biotechnology research program in 1991, some 240 million people in West Africa were dependant on rice as their primary source of food energy and protein, but the majority of Africa’s rice was imported, at an annual cost of US$1 billion. According to WIPO, the most popular Nerica rice takes only three months to ripen, as opposed to six months for the parent species, thus allowing African farmers to “double crop” it in a single growing season with nutritionally rich vegetables or high-value fiber crops. 

Meanwhile in 2009, Dr. Gebisa Ejeta of Ethiopia, was the recipient of the World Food Prize for his sorghum hybrids which are resistant to drought and the devastating Striga weed and which has dramatically increased the production and availability of one of the world’s five principal grains and enhanced the food supply of hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Overall, a Climate Strategy for Africa and food security should also include: sustainable land and forest management; increased knowledge and analytical capacity, improved weather forecasting, research, extension services, market infrastructure and renewal energy generation systems. Farmers will also need to benefit from integrating biodiversity into the landscape and reducing carbon emissions from soil and deforestation.

The Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel

going green... 


The Sahara desert experiences one of the harshest weather conditions in the world. The very dry, sandy winds and hot weather conditions certainly affect trade output and patterns in this region. For instance as sand dunes move, they bury villages, roads, oases, crops, irrigation channels and dams, causing major economic damage and increasing poverty and food insecurity.This groundbreaking transcontinental project tries to address this.

African nations on the desert border south of the Sahara are taking action to halt the march of sands by creating a great wall of green. They are contributing to the prevention of desert advancement and the development of the Saharo-Sahelian zones in order to ensure sustainable natural resource management and poverty reduction.

The “Great Green Wall” project is largely a multi-species vegetal belt 15 km wide that will link Dakar and Djibouti and stretch over a distance of about 7000 km. However it won’t be a continuous band of trees, but may be rerouted if necessary to avoid obstacles (streams, rocky terrains, mountains and rock hills) or go through inhabited areas, stretching from Mauritania in the west to Djibouti in the east.

The initiative will be a set of cross-sectoral actions and interventions aimed at the conservation and protection of natural resources with a view to achieving development and particularly, alleviating poverty. The trees however will be "drought-adapted species", preferably native to the areas planted, and so far about 37 suitable species have been identified. 

The African Union officially adopted the Great Green Wall initiative in December 2006 as one of the pillars of a rural strategy which reconciles development and environment. At the 8th common session of the Conference of the Heads of State and Government held in January 2007, the African Union adopted Declaration 137 VIII approving the Initiative "Green Great wall of Sahara. "

The plan benefits from Africa-EU Climate Change Partnership support and is implemented in collaboration with the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD). The Project has been in the works for several years with sources indicating funding difficulties and concerns regarding its maintenance. Nonetheless, it is expected that tree planting will soon begin. The great green belt will be 7000km long and 15km wide, at a cost $3 million to plant. The west-most section will be planted in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal, while the eastern section will be planted in Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.


Being a transboundary Programme, the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative would require some degree of policy harmonization for the implementation of issues such as transboundary range, ecosystems, water management and joint afforestation programmes. The participating countries would need to review their relevant policies and legislation to accommodate community involvement in environmental resources management and ownership of the benefits. 

Meanwhile the Food and Agriculture Organization has recently published a manual featuring a project in Mauritania which successfully fixed dunes and stopped sand encroachment. Sand encroachment is what happens when grains of sand are carried by winds and collect in dunes on the coast, along watercourses and on cultivated or uncultivated land.

According to a Study by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), the threat prosed by desertification is particularly acute in Africa, one of the continents most affected by the processes and impacts of land degradation and the deterioration of the communities' living conditions, particularly in the CEN-SAD area characterized by climate ranging from hyper-arid to dry sub-humid. 

Livelihoods in the countries located in this sub-region are heavily dependent on soil, water and vegetation resources, which have become increasingly fragile due to the mounting pressure being exerted on them.

Kenya's Economy; Driven by Services With Merchandise Exports Declining

While telecommunications, construction and transport sectors continued to drive Kenya's economy in 2009, merchandise exports have shrunk over the years and the Port of Mombasa has been identified as one stumbling block to Kenya's continued economic growth.  

This is according to the 2010 Kenya Country Report by the World Bank which finds that Kenya's growth rate was 2.5% in 2009 with higher projections of 4.0% foreseen in 2010. Even tourist arrivals registered a 18.9 percent growth in the first quarter of this year showing positive signs for this sector. Nonetheless, for the third consecutive year, Kenya's growth will continue to lag behind its EAC neighbours, as shown below.  

     The Report finds that overall, services grew by 4.2% and increased share of GDP from 50 % in 2000 to 55% of GDP in 2009. Agriculture contracted by 2.4%,and the role of agriculture in the economy  declined from 32% in 2000 to 26% in 2009, due in part to drought. Meanwhile, industry grew at 3.9% in 2009 due to the construction sub sector. 

This mixed performance is in part structural and in addition, Kenya remains sensitive to climatic conditions.  For instance, the 2009 weak performance in manufacturing was caused by the spillover effects from the drought which caused higher electricity costs, power outages and reduced water supply. The drought had spill-over effects in all sectors and clearly increased efforts in key infrastructure services will be necessary, to sustain increased growth.

Kenya’s economy is currently more dependant on domestic consumption than exports, and Kenya’s highest value exports, especially horticulture and tourism remain heavily dependant on Europe. This high degree of export concentration makes Kenya vulnerable to external shocks and points to the need to further diversify export markets. 

Surprisingly, Kenya has an export strategy, which was approved by Cabinet in 2004.  See previous post here on the weaknesses of export-led strategies. 

While exports of goods have been unimpressive, services exports increased from 8% in 2000 to 12% of GDP in 2009.  The strength of the domestic sector and the weakness in exports has created a large and growing current account deficit which reached 5.5% of GDP by end 2009. This current account deficit was financed mainly by increasing short term financial inflows including investment. 

                              One lesson learnt- so to speak- is that Kenya has not yet developed a targeted and strategic industrial policy. This is despite having several national policy documents such as the Vision 2030, the Private Sector Development Strategy, the Master Plan for Kenya’s Industrial Development, and the recently drafted National Trade Policy. 

Trading the Nile River Rights

Following a decade of negotiations under the auspice of the Nile Basin Initiative, the Nile Basin States have opened an Agreement termed the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, for a period of one year. The Agreement is a landmark achievement given the decades of discontent over the inequitable sharing of the Nile River and will be open for signature until 13th May 2011. The organs consists of the Commission which is comprised of: (a) Conference of Heads of State and Government (b) Council of Ministers (c) Technical Advisory Committee (d) Sectoral Advisory Committees (e) Secretariat according to Article 17 of the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement.

The River Nile is the longest river in the world with three main tributaries which reach ten African countries.  However the resource has been almost exclusively utilized by Egypt and Sudan by virtue of a 80 year old governing legal framework on the utilization of the waters.  The May 7, 1929 agreement between the United Kingdom (on behalf of its colonies) and Egypt, was in the form of exchange notes and the colonial-era “treaty” gave Egypt sole property rights to the Nile's waters, up until 1959 when Sudan formalized a partial-sharing agreement with Egypt.  Meanwhile the sources of the 6695 km Nile river consist of the White Nile which flows from Uganda (Lake Victoria) into Sudan, and Egypt, and the Blue Nile which starts in Ethiopia (Lake Tana) with tributaries in DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Eritrea and Burundi, which flow into the Nile or into Lake Victoria.

Recently, a framework agreement has been agreed upon by Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya who seek to alter the rivers’ water-sharing arrangements, with Burundi and the DRC promising to sign the landmark agreement in the course of the year. The upstream countries want to be able to implement irrigation and hydropower projects in consultation with Egypt and Sudan, but without Egypt being able to exercise the veto power it was given by the 1929 colonial-era treaty with Britain.  Meanwhile Egypt has reportedly rejected the agreement along with Sudan, however with the new Southern Sudan Government, its not clear how this matter will be handled by the latter.

I suppose the key issues in the newly concluded agreement are those of equity and sustainability. Consider for instance the riparian state of Ethiopia whose Blue Nile tributaries, highlands and lakes are estimated to supply about 86 percent of the total waters of the Nile River, however the country currently only uses about one percent of the Nile’s resources.  Ethiopia unlike most Sub Saharan African countries was not colonized and reportedly does not recognize the 1929 Nile River agreement between the UK and Egypt. Simultaneously the country is faced with grave development needs and challenges, and according to the World Bank 2008, Ethiopia has a real per capita GDP of US$280 (which is below the Sub Saharan Africa average) and a population of about 81 million making her the second-most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa. 

One could say that Ethiopia should view the Nile the same way other sovereign nations view their oil resources or mineral wealth; as a valuable source of foreign currency, development and national pride.  Along these lines, Ethiopia sees a huge potential in the export of electricity and is reportedly constructing a network of mega dams on the web of Nile rivers that tumble down from its highland such as the controversial 243 metres high Gibe III Dam (shown above) at a cost of 1.4 billion euros, which will be the highest dam on the African continent.  This is expected to meet the needs of the rural areas, where the bulk of the 80 million Ethiopians live and where only 2% of households get access to electricity.  Beyond hydroelectric power, agriculture and irrigation are other critical issues also relevant to the utilization of the Nile waters.

This is a complex and historic issue with many facets hence more can be said however, that would the subject of a thesis and not suitable for a blog.  To conclude, let me welcome this new Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement which is expected to formalize the transformation of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) into a permanent Nile River Basin Commission and facilitate its legal recognition in the member countries as well as regional and international organizations. 

NBI was formed in 1999 by its Members, who recognized their common concerns and interests, and whose vision is “to achieve sustainable socio-economic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.” 

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