Africa Agriculture Status Report 2020
Feeding Africa’s Cities - Opportunities, Challenges, and Policies for Linking African Farmers with Growing Urban Food Markets
Urban populations are growing faster in Africa than all other regions of the world. Feeding Africa’s cities, and providing access to good quality food, presents a major challenge but also a major opportunity to the continent’s 60 million farms. Africa’s growing urban food markets are the focus of this year’s Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR), which is coordinated and published by AGRA.
This year's AASR focuses on ‘Feeding Africa’s Cities’ by assessing the opportunities, challenges and policies required to enable African farmers and agribusinesses to serve rapidly growing urban food markets. The report seeks to find ways for smallholder farmers to drive food security, rural prosperity, and inclusive economic growth.
The report begins by outlining the opportunities provided by Africa's urban food markets to the continent’s 60 million farms. It indicates that cities shape Africa’s agribusiness environment by affecting patterns of agricultural production and inducing rapid expansion of food processing and distribution.
Subsequent chapters touch on the opportunities in Africa’s growing urban food markets while recognizing that the effective governance of urban food systems requires inclusive models to coordinate and harmonize the actions of the many diverse players now shaping African agri-food systems.
After recognizing the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report defines five focus areas in a bid to overcome the problem of urban under-nutrition and accelerate the urgency of urban food system planning. These focus areas are: (1) improved urban food system governance; (2) efficient urban wholesale markets; (3) food safety regulation and enforcement; (4) regional free trade and agricultural policy harmonization; and (5) agricultural research focused on high-growth, high-value food commodities.
Domestic food distribution systems, intra-African trade and food safety are the other themes of the report leading to the conclusion that improved urban food system governance and performance can create new opportunities for Africa to transform its agricultural endeavors into thriving businesses.
The report was launched on the opening day of the 10th African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF), which was held virtually from September 8 to 11, 2020. The theme of the summit, ‘Feed the Cities, Grow the Continent: Leveraging Urban Food Markets to Achieve Sustainable Food Systems in Africa’, is a call to action to rethink our food systems to deliver resilient, better nourished, and more prosperous outcomes for all.
Click here to download the 2020 Africa Agriculture Status Report. (PDF 10 MB)
