DAKAR 2 AFRICA FOOD SUMMIT 2023: Key Messages for African Heads of State and Other Leaders

Towards A Nature-Positive Food System For Africa’s Food Security and Sovereignty

By Nancy Rapando (Africa Food Futures Lead) and Alice Ruhweza (Senior Director, Policy Influence and Engagement) at WWF International

The multiple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and hunger continue to threaten the lives of millions of African citizens. If these challenges are not addressed, future generations will inherit an unstable planet that cannot provide for everyone. Urgent action is required, and we need both short and long term short- and long-term, to limit global warming and preserve the planet. Solutions need to be holistic and adaptive and should cascade across the food system so as to build resilience while putting the continent on a sustainable development pathway. Global and National frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement provide a platform to bring all policy priorities together and implement food security measures in a holistic manner. WWF promotes the nature-positive food systems approach, the basis of which was born out of the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS). This approach views nature-positive food systems as those that support solutions which optimise environmental resource use in production, processing and distribution of food.

As African Heads of State and other leaders wrap-up the Dakar 2 - Africa Food Summit, we call on our leaders to adopt a nature-positive approach and solutions to the current food security crisis in Africa recognising that:

• Climate change is both a threat and an opportunity for accelerated action. Climate change adaptation in agriculture and food systems is considered an important part of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Action Plans (NAPs) to furthering the Paris Agreement goals, alongside linkages to the SDGs. Africa should leverage the opportunity of climate finance to accelerate progress and develop concrete actions that address food insecurity on the continent.
• Food systems are one of the largest causes of biodiversity loss. Seventy percent of all biodiversity loss on land and 50% in freshwater is closely linked to how we produce food and what we eat. At the same time, food systems generate around 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions, significantly contributing to climate change and pollution. African leaders should opt for agroecological methods of production that maintain and increase biodiversity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and regenerate ecosystems, and should opt out of production methods that ignore planetary boundaries.
• Achieving food security in Africa requires actions along the whole food chain. This includes scaling nature-positive food production, reducing food loss and waste, and encouraging a diverse consumption of foods including indigenous crops, in order to increase adoption of nutritious diets that emphasize both human health and environmental sustainability. This implies the need to mobilise stakeholders beyond the agriculture sector such as health, environment, trade and finance, among others, and to integrate multiple actors including governments, the private sector, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and academia, among others). African countries must develop a better coordination mechanism that mobilises multiple stakeholders to develop innovative solutions.
• Food systems must increase diversity to facilitate self-sufficiency. An overconcentration on staple crops and inadequate attention given to indigenous foods is among the factors driving food insecurity in Africa. Africa’s research, extension, trade, infrastructure and financing instruments must prioritise the production and consumption of nutritious indigenous crops through agrobiodiverse cropping systems.

During the United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021, African countries committed to sustainable and equitable food systems, these targets can be made broader and bolder during the Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit. African countries must therefore develop more robust national-level action plans, and ensure they are integrated with existing nature and climate commitments. 

WWF, through the Great Food Puzzle report, provides a framework to assist policymakers and other stakeholders to identify high-impact opportunities for transformation through several levers of change. The below levers of change can be adopted to facilitate the transition towards a sustainable food secure Africa:

Lever 1: Natural resource management: African countries need to optimise land use through sustainable and efficient practices that preserve ecosystem services, restore biodiversity and increase below and above ground carbon sinks.

Lever 2: Equitable access to productive resources: Easy access to productive resources such as land, seed, breeds, and water, among others, is a critical barrier to a food-secure Africa. There is a need to improve land tenure rights and develop actions that encourage collective ownership and equitable access rights, especially for women farmers, youth, and indigenous communities.

Lever 3: Education and knowledge: There is a need to increase research and development opportunities with multiple actors on nature-positive food production practices and reducing food loss and waste from farm to fork, and creating public awareness of healthy eating behaviours which promote traditional food cultures. All this must be associated with health and environmental goals.

Lever 4: Technology: Africa must adapt and adopt technologies that reduce loss and waste of nutritious foods, including innovative infrastructure and post-harvest storage technologies, and packaging and processing techniques.

Lever 5: Trade: There is a need to prioritize local economies and trade that support local producers to meet the growing demand for food by urban dwellers. Trade policies should support nature-positive food value chains and investments, including nature-positive incentives, trade agreements and traceability tools, while developing measures to ensure stable and fair food prices.

Lever 6: Finance: Investment policies should integrate ecological safeguards, redirect subsidies towards integrated, biodiversity-friendly and diversified production while reducing harmful subsidies. They should provide financial support that increases the availability, affordability and appeal of nutritious foods.

Reference Materials

1. Food for Biodiversity: https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/food_for_thriving_biodiversity.

2. Food for Climate (https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/food_climate_cop27/)

3. Adaptation in Food Systems in Africa https://wwf.panda.org/?6813391/urgent-finance-needed-for-climateadaptation-in-African-food-systems