Africa: Making Nutritious Food Affordable for One Billion Africans

09/29/2020 Business, Health, World



[ad_1]

Addis Ababa: One of the biggest revelations of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that people with pre-existing diet-related conditions, such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes, are at increased risk of severe forms of the disease leading to necessity intensive hospitalization.

In Kenya, for example, the Ministry of Health reported in July that 16 percent of seriously ill COVID-19 patients had diabetes, while diabetes and hypertension alone accounted for 47 percent of COVID deaths. -19 related to pre-existing conditions.

According to WHO data, these diet-related chronic conditions were among the leading risk factors for disease and mortality in Africa prior to COVID-19. The current crisis is simply adding fuel to the fire. It has highlighted the critical importance of diet as a key determinant of the health of individuals and populations, especially in urban areas, where increased absorption of highly processed and unhealthy foods increasingly undermines regional nutrition goals.

In fact, data from Eastern and Southern African countries published in the Journal of International Development show that highly processed foods now account for more than a third of the market for purchased foods. Not all of these foods are unhealthy, but many are, and combined with the availability of cheap, convenient, and tasty street foods, the result is cheap food that is high in saturated and trans fats, salt, and sugar.

Long-term solutions must be sought, a process that requires the participation of all world leaders from communities, governments, civil society and the private sector. The challenge is clear: how to incentivize food producers, processors, distributors and marketers to make nutritious food more accessible and affordable?

To change these devastating trends, fresh foods such as vegetables, fruits, high-protein legumes, nuts, eggs, and fish must become more available and much more affordable in African food markets. Healthy diets are often unaffordable for the majority of the African population.

The UN estimates that 74% of Africans cannot afford a healthy diet. That is almost a billion Africans. This is shocking and unacceptable. These numbers are likely to only rise during this time of a pandemic, where job cuts have greatly reduced people’s purchasing power and lockdowns have broken food supply chains, further driving up food prices. , especially the prices of fresh perishable foods.

Temporary and very partial solutions include expanding social protection programs, as in Nigeria, which provide targeted transfers to poor and vulnerable households. These financial packages help vulnerable people meet their minimal dietary and nutritional needs, but they are not a complete or sustainable solution.

Long-term solutions must be sought, a process that requires the participation of all world leaders from communities, governments, civil society and the private sector. The challenge is clear: how to incentivize food producers, processors, distributors and marketers to make nutritious food more accessible and affordable?

First, public policy must be aligned with this objective. Too many policies are working against this goal. For example, very few subsidies for food production and consumption go to nutritious food; very little public agricultural research development and farmer outreach focuses on these foods; Too often, public purchasing of food detracts from these items, and infrastructure development ignores cold chain development.

Agriculture in Africa is a key economic engine and driver of livelihoods. It is necessary to increase productivity, promote biodiversity and achieve climate resilience. it’s possible? Yes. Farmers in countries like Zambia are already seeing up to 60 percent increase in yields through the application of ecosystem-based adaptation techniques.

Elsewhere, in Burkina Faso, farmers have reclaimed between 200,000 and 300,000 hectares of degraded land by digging shallow pots in wasteland and filling them with organic matter. The reclaimed land now produces an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 additional tonnes of cereal for Burkina Faso. The challenge is to replicate these successes across the continent.

Second, it is necessary to encourage private investment in these more nutritious foods. Of the $ 200 billion impact investment fund industry, GAIN estimates that less than 0.3% goes to nutritious food in Africa. There is a need to establish financing services that stimulate private investment in small and medium-sized enterprises that produce nutritious food for low-income populations that offer lower-than-market loan rates and that target nutritional outcomes.

Institutional investors, such as pension funds, should indicate to the largest companies with extensive value chains in Africa that they will favor companies that produce more nutritionally beneficial food.

Third, consumer demand must be directed towards healthy foods. Too often, healthy food campaigns pale in comparison to private sector campaigns for highly processed foods – they lack imagination, humor, and style.

Healthy eating campaigns should be engaging, aspirational, and memorable. Food environments, where consumers come face to face with food, are faced with consuming healthy foods, which are often consigned in unattractive spaces in markets and stores. This too must change.