Masked Botswana farmer covers sorghum in his field to protect it from birds (2020) -

© Monirul Bhuiyan / AFP (via The Conversation)

  • Climate change risks hampering African agricultural development in some vulnerable areas, according to our partner The Conversation.

  • A majority of the population of sub-Saharan Africa indeed lives in rural areas, where income and employment depend almost entirely on rain-fed agriculture.

  • The analysis of this phenomenon was carried out by Sougueh Cheik, doctor in environmental sciences at the Research Institute for Development (IRD).

The agricultural development and food systems of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa will inexorably face enormous challenges in the decades to come.

While the world's population is expected to grow from 7.7 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050, more than half of the world's population growth by 2050 is expected to occur in Africa, according to the UN.

Faced with this pressure, agricultural development already faces immense challenges, and there are fears that climate change will worsen them in vulnerable areas.

A majority of the population of sub-Saharan Africa indeed lives in rural areas, where income and employment depend almost entirely on rain-fed agriculture.

Photo © Neil Palmer (CIAT) / Flickr CC

The agricultural sector employs between 65 and 70% of the African workforce and generally accounts for 30 to 40% of the gross domestic product.

Multiple biophysical, political and socio-economic factors combine to increase the vulnerability of this region and risk hampering its adaptive capacity.

Precipitation, droughts and desertification

The African climate is determined by three critical climatic phenomena which are interrelated in complex ways and which are not yet fully understood.

These are the movement of the intertropical convergence zone, the El Niño southern oscillation and the annual alternation of monsoons.

Each of these phenomena interacts with the other, determining regional temperature and precipitation regimes.

Added to this is the ongoing climate change, which is impacting precipitation and sea level rise, and leading to a moderate to extreme rise in global temperature.

Beyond temperature increases, climate change in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to lead to transformations in the intensity of rainfall, an increased incidence of extreme events such as droughts and floods, increased desertification and the alteration of certain vectors of diseases leading to changes in the spatial and temporal transmission of infectious diseases.

A quarter of the undernourished population

One of the greatest challenges facing our societies today is to continuously provide all citizens with nutritious food while preserving the environment.

This problem is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is estimated that one in four people still do not have enough food to lead a healthy and active life.

The term “food security” is defined as physical, social and economic access for all at all times to food that can meet their energy needs and food preferences in order to lead a healthy and active life.

It is based on four pillars: food availability, food access, food utilization, and the stability of food availability and access.

Food insecurity corresponds to a lack of access to sufficient food.

Despite uncertainty about climate data, the published literature allows us to draw several salient points: everywhere in Africa, agriculture risks being negatively affected by climate change;

and in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, crop yields could decline by 10-20% by 2050 due to warming.

In the case of wheat, this average yield could decline by the middle of the century by 17%, that of maize by 5%, that of sorghum by 15% and that of millet by 10%.

Even without climate change, African agriculture is already a cause for serious concern due to the variability of water supply, soil degradation and recurrent droughts.

There is no doubt that agriculture will have to change drastically to meet future demands.

All the more so if we take into account the rates of population growth - the highest in the world - and changes in eating habits linked to urbanization and the rise of the African middle class.

Less meaty diets and agroecology

The challenge is not only to increase food production, but also to do so in a sustainable way, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and preserving biodiversity.

This is because the amount of food available for human consumption is affected by the allocation of crops to other non-food uses, such as animal feed, bioenergy and industrial uses.

Globally, only 67% of the crop produced (by mass) or 55% of the calories produced is available for direct human consumption.

The remainder of the harvest was allocated to animal feed (24% by mass) and other industrial uses, including bioenergy (9% by mass).

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In rich countries, many people consume more animal products than nutritionally recommended: this is the case with the very meaty food model in North America or Argentina.

Yet we urgently need new alternatives to meet the current and future challenges facing our food systems.

Reforms will therefore be necessary, in particular the shift towards less meaty diets, which could increase the food productivity of cultivated land and feed more people per hectare of cultivated land.

Our “Africa” dossier

It is imperative to design agricultural systems that are resistant to increasingly frequent shocks and able to adapt to the new conditions imposed by these changes.

In this context, agroecology - which aims to design food systems involving less pressure on the environment and a more moderate use of natural resources - will be essential to improve food security and nutrition;

restoring and maintaining ecosystems, providing sustainable livelihoods for smallholders and building resilience to adapt to climate change.

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This analysis was written by Sougueh Cheik, doctor in environmental sciences at the Research Institute for Development (IRD).


The original article was published on The Conversation website.

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