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Can Africa one day feed the world’s growing population?

African farmer working in a field

The Financial Times explores Africa's potential to shift from a major food importer to an exporter, citing challenges such as low productivity, political instability, and climate change, while also highlighting opportunities, including available arable land and a growing population willing to engage in agriculture. 

Summary

In this article by the Financial Times, Susannah Savage analyses the potential of Africa to feed the world, transforming from a vast net importer of food to an exporter. It highlights the extensive challenges – inefficient yield production, political insecurity, conflict and intensifying climate change – but also the opportunities; a growing population able to work the land and 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land. Savage interviews Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates who says that greater access to modern seeds and chemical fertilisers – currently at a fifth of the global average – could see Africa become a food producing powerhouse. However, there are many that argue that this package of fertilisers, modern seeds and pesticides, referred to as the Green Revolution, can negatively affect farmers as detailed in this letter in response

Read more here and see our report on Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa and our podcast episode with Ken Giller on the Food Security Conundrum

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