By Seleman Yusuph Kitenge

Resilient access to safe and nutritious food is still a significant challenge for Africa towards a healthy and nourished population that can fully take part as a workforce in the day-to-day production process in the socio-economic development activities. However, the fate of ensuring that Africans are nourished and healthy is intertwined with the plight of extreme poverty and vice versa.

In the opinion of OECD, the global pandemic of COVID-19 has increased the numbers of those living in extreme poverty to over half a billion in the continent. In that sense, the African dream of socio-economic transformation will continue to be in limbo if its majority population are unhealthy due to poor access to nutritious food resulted from poverty and its other relevant effects.

The lack of access to healthy food and the prevalence of poverty will hamper the efforts of the African population to have sufficient purchasing power for buying and even producing safe and nutritious food needed to reduce the chances of being affected by non-communicable diseases and the like. As a result, Africans may not be able to fully contribute their fair share in socio-economic activities and even afford other daily basic needs for themselves and even their families as a whole.

The World Vision expounds that economic hardships, famine, and severe weather are reversing years of development, resulting in 237 million chronically malnourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number in the world whereby hunger affects 257 million people in Africa, accounting for 20% of the continent's population. That is why as we are heading towards the UN Food Systems Summit, it is necessary that African countries fully embrace the agenda of ensuring access to safe and nutritious food for all.

Moreover, the promotion of access to sufficient quantities of affordable and safe food products as well as increasing the availability of nutritious food, making food more affordable, and reducing inequities in access to food as highlighted in Action track 1 of the summit will only be possible if the challenge of absolute poverty and other associated factors such as drought, conflicts, and environmental degradation will be completely addressed. In this regard, African countries have to ensure that they fully incorporate these factors in their regional and national dialogues deliberations and decisions. And most importantly, commit to implementing them locally so that Africa can have robust and resilient food systems that will promote a healthy society across the continent and push forward Africa’s continental development agenda and the attainment of the global development blueprint.

Moreover, AUDA-NEPAD’s continental coordination role towards the UN Food Systems Summit will ensure that Africa has effective regional and national dialogues critical for a broad and inclusive local ownership and responsibility for the process and the outcomes under government leadership. In addition, it will promote the cross-sector linkages and interdependences in pursuit of sustainable food systems as well as fostering integrated approaches within national and sub-national implementation structures imperative for the continent food systems future.