By The EastAfrican

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As advanced economies debate food safety, African leaders who converge on Addis Ababa from February 18 for the 36th AU Summit will be revisiting a subject they first brought into focus two decades ago — food security.

The African Union declared 2022 the Year of Nutrition, during which they would seek to “strengthen resilience in nutrition and food security on the African continent through more robust agro-food systems, health and social protection systems for the acceleration of human, social and economic capital development”.

Yet, in a connivance of nature and nurture, 2022 turned out to be one of the "hungriest" years in recent memory. A devastating drought in the Horn of Africa combined with armed conflict and Covid-19 restrictions to spawn widespread hunger and starvation, a state of affairs obtaining to date.

The conflict in Ukraine disrupted global supply chains for wheat grain, leading to a spike in prices for the commodity, which added to the pain for those dependent on a predominantly wheat diet.

Valuable lessons for Africa

The events of the past year offer valuable lessons for Africa as its leaders meet to discuss nutrition and food security. When they set a 10 percent minimum budget allocation to agriculture development by member states back in July 2003, their eyes were on quantity. While many have faltered on meeting that commitment, Africa has, in the intervening period, witnessed many initiatives to address the supply side of food. The key lesson from last year is that it is possible to suffer deprivation amid plenty.

People who went hungry or starved to death in places like Somalia and Sudan last year did not suffer because of a shortage of wheat. They succumbed to disrupted global supply chains and impeded trade that left a basic commodity stranded in Ukraine and Russia by a combination of conflict and trade sanctions.

An African entrepreneurial class focused on addressing the continent’s food production deficit has recently emerged in Africa. Yet, despite the obvious logic and appropriate political sloganeering by leaders, it has not been plain sailing for many of them. Archaic policies, inward-looking policies and the infrastructure void stand in the way of enterprise and make output more expensive than imported substitutes from far away.

Demolish barriers

To end the cycle of hunger, African leaders must demolish the barriers that hold up food production and trade in it. Prohibitive tariffs by design, restrictive policies and poor or non-existent infrastructure to facilitate the efficient movement of food from areas of surplus to areas of deficit must go. That calls for a 360-degree mind-set shift, the continent to invest in liberal trade policies, physical infrastructure, and above all, peace and security.

Barriers to trade simply punish consumers by denying them choice in the marketplace and saddling them with inefficiently produced and expensive goods. Liberalising food trade food in Africa will direct more resources to food production than broke governments can ever afford to raise through their 10 percent budget allocation to the sector. Private capital is also less prone to leakages than public resources.

A lot is doable, if only leaders can find unity of purpose and devote more time to action than talk shop.