Africa needs up to $257 billion annually to develop its agriculture sector, in order to cushion its food systems from shocks such as climate change effects, and end hunger, a new report has suggested.

The 2022 Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR22) called for African governments to lead and coordinate domestic and external efforts to urgently and holistically tackle food insecurity on the continent.

The report released on Tuesday, September 6, during the ongoing African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Summit in Kigali, is themed "Accelerating African Food Systems Transformation”.

AASR is an annual publication by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), focusing on emerging issues on the continent.

According to the report, agriculture in most African countries is still characterised by small-scale, low-technology, and rain-fed farming, which pauses a major threat to the continent’s food system.

This situation, it said, leaves subsistence farmers and food production systems highly vulnerable to climate, market, and other shocks.

"The journey toward food and nutritional security for Africa has a clear destination: zero hunger. Thanks to many strategy documents, we have reasonable consensus on the roadmap - sustainable intensification and a food systems approach. This report focuses on how we get there faster while adapting to the ever-changing terrain. Time is of the essence,” said Ed Mabaya, Research Professor at Cornell University and one of the authors of the AASR report.

Citing estimates from other publications, the AASR 2022 indicated that the magnitude of required additional investment for Africa’s agriculture sector transformation is considerable, ranging from a conservative $15 to $77 billion per year from the public sector, and up to $180 billion from the private sector.

"With the private sector expected to play a critical role in filling the financing gap, public sector funding is expected to play the role of de-risking and incentivising private sector capital into agriculture,” the AASR22 stated.

It called for an enabling environment through investment in public infrastructure and policy and innovative financing mechanisms that are continuously recalibrated to meet evolving financial needs and circumstances.

In many African countries, challenges to agriculture transformation include, among others, lack of commercialisation in the agricultural sector, high cost of credit, low productivity and low investment, and lack of enabling environment by governments, the publication revealed.

To meet the SDGs by 2030, Africa must move quickly to mobilise the financial resources required for food systems transformation.

This includes meeting SDG 2 on eradicating hunger, doubling the productivity of small-scale farmers, and scaling up sustainable agriculture is critical, as is achieving SDG 13, which calls for urgent action on climate change and its impacts.

Effect of inaction

Mabaya said that Africa’s food and agriculture problem is big and is changing, pointing out that "we are chasing a moving target.”

He cited circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and climate change effects as some of the factors that contribute to the change in the situation.

Meanwhile, he said that the continent’s food import bill estimated at over $50 billion annually, suggests how its food system is fragile and needs actions to reverse the food import reliance trend.

For instance, AGRA President, Agnes Kalibata said that Africa needs 55 million tonnes of wheat annually, but produces 25 million tonnes of this cereal – less than half of its demand – leaving a huge gap to be filled by imports.

According to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 by FAO, Africa is the region with the highest hunger prevalence in the world, with 278 million people on the continent – or 20.2 percent of its population – being hungry in 2021 [from 257 million individuals in 2018].

Yet, Mabaya said, most of the African countries have not yet met the recommended financing of spending at least 10 per cent of their budget on agriculture growth under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

For him, Governments should be accountable for not honouring that agriculture funding rate.

At the current rate, he said, it is mostly unlikely that Africa could end hunger by 2025 in line with CAADP, nor by 2030 as a target set under the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

"But, we have to try. It’s still 2022. If all these things that we said in this report are put in

"If we continue at the rate that we are going now, no we would not achieve those goals. But if there is commitment and deliberate investment into agriculture today, this story could be changing within three years,” he said, pointing out that there is need for improved seeds, fertilisers, mechanisation, and irrigation in order to increase crop yields on the continent.

Apollos Nwafor, Vice President, Policy and State Capability at AGRA said that agriculture was perceived as very risky, which makes stallholder farmers unable to secure loans.

"One of the challenges we have seen in the sector is that nobody, or we have very little support, to de-risk agriculture financing, particularly for smallholder farmers, who cannot afford to borrow, and the banks put very huge interest rates – as high as 30 percent,’ he said.

"So, we need to rethink finance to attract new people into the sector [agriculture],” he said.