African governments haven’t done much to stop periodic food crises. Leaders vowed in 2003 to devote at least 10% of their national budgets to agriculture and rural development within five years in an effort to increase production, decrease reliance on imports, and improve food security. Only Mali and Zimbabwe in sub-Saharan Africa achieved that goal by 2021, almost two decades later.
In contrast, according to a UK charity Oxfam survey of 39 African nations, budgetary spending on agricultural decreased between 2019 and 2021. According to the World Bank, more than half of Africans work in agriculture, which accounts for about 20% of the continent’s GDP. Crop yields and productivity have increased, yet they remain the lowest in the world.
According to the United Nations, Somalia’s impending famine threatens the lives of half a million children, more than any other nation in the world this century. According to figures from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, one in five Africans – a record 278 million people – were already experiencing hunger in 2021. (FAO).
According to the WFP, if the rain once more fail, the number of people experiencing severe acute food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia would increase to up to 26 million by February. Various regions in northern and central Somalia are projected to experience a food insecurity emergency – the fourth of five increasingly severe phases of insecurity – and parts of the Bay region near the country’s capital Mogadishu are projected to experience a famine in mid-2023.
Without action, the World Bank says Africa’s food import bill, which stood at $43 billion in 2019, could rise to $110 billion in 2025.