DURING the Regional Wheat Summit organised by West and Central African Wheat Development Network (WECAWheat), experts called for the adoption of innovative technology to revolutionise Africa’s food systems to reduce dependency on imports.
The summit has as its theme: “Prioritising Policy, Innovation, Technologies, and Investments in Wheat Transformation Towards Sustainable Food Security and Economy in West and Central Africa”.
One of the notable persons who made this call is the President of the African Development Bank (AFDB), Akinwumi Adesina.
While raising concerns over the heavy reliance on wheat imports in West and Central Africa, he warned that this dependency threatens the region’s food security.
Adesina, who was represented by the Director-General of the Nigeria Country Department, Dr. Abdul Kamara, said over 80 percent of the wheat consumed in these regions is imported, costing billions of dollars annually.
Meanwhile, the essential function of wheat in ensuring global and regional food security and fostering economic development, particularly in West and Central Africa, highlights the imperative to focus on policy formulation, policy design, and implementation sequencing, advanced scientific research, innovative technologies, and strategic investments within the wheat value chain.
This focus is vital for achieving sustainable food security and regional economic stability. The increasing rate of wheat consumption in West and Central Africa, driven by socioeconomic factors such as population growth, income growth, urbanisation, and dietary preferences, has exacerbated the demand-supply imbalance in these sub-regions.
Recent developments, including the 2022 conflict between Russia and Ukraine and India’s ban on wheat exports due to extreme heat, have intensified this disparity, revealing the instability of the global wheat market and its adverse effects on food security, particularly in West and Central Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), wheat consumption has surged by over 6 percent in the past decade, necessitating substantial imports to satisfy local demand.
During the 2021/2022 trade year, domestic wheat production in Sub-Saharan Africa was approximately 8.9 million metric tons, resulting in an import requirement of around 27 million metric tons to bridge the demand gap, incurring costs close to USD 8.2 billion. West and Central Africa present favourable conditions for irrigated and rain-fed wheat production, making it a viable region for competitive and profitable wheat cultivation.
The Regional Coordinator of West and Central Africa Wheat, Professor Benjamin Ubi revealed that Nigeria currently imports approximately six million metric tonnes of wheat annually, costing the nation around $3 billion.
Professor Ubi highlighted the need for strategic policy implementation to secure food security and boost economic growth in the region.
He also underscored the urgency of reducing wheat imports, adding that half of the money used for import could be allocated to research and development to sustain wheat production and export surplus.
“Imagine if we allocated half of this amount to research and development; we could sustain our wheat production and even export surplus. We must work together to avoid vulnerabilities in our food supply chain and ensure food sovereignty’, Professor Ubi noted.
Nigeria and Cameroon have capitalised on the assistance of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) to formulate their National Wheat Road Maps, such as Nigeria’s 2022–2032 National Strategy for Wheat Self-Sufficiency and Cameroon’s 2024 – 2028 Wheat Development Strategy, respectively. These initiatives aim to enhance domestic wheat production, ultimately striving for self-sufficiency and export capabilities of wheat to other parts of the world.
Considering the evolving socio-economic environment, it is essential to adjust the agendas of regional and global institutions to promote investments in the wheat value chain development within the West and Central Africa sub-region.
The national wheat road maps supported by the AfDB for Nigeria and Cameroon and ongoing wheat initiatives in other member states emphasize the importance of wheat crop development, which aligns with the broader goals of agricultural transformation and economic advancement in the region.
The Second Regional Wheat Summit represents a key step in influencing and engaging policymakers in their efforts to bolster wheat production and productivity, advance wheat sector development policy, and transform the entire value chain in West and Central African nations.
The emphasis on policy reforms and the prioritization of investments for accelerating wheat transformation in this region will significantly benefit the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), which is part of the Agenda 2063 continental initiative, as well as the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and the AfDB’s Leadership for Agriculture (L4Ag) Initiative.
Initiated in 2018 as the flagship programme of the African Development Bank, TAAT is a transformative effort designed to counteract the decline in food productivity across Africa. Its main goal is to introduce modern agricultural technologies to 40 million farmers, focusing on empowering youth and women in economically disadvantaged areas.
Over the past six years, TAAT has successfully expanded the distribution of heat-tolerant wheat varieties, drought-resistant maize, high-yield rice, cassava, high-iron beans, sorghum, millet, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, superior livestock breeds, and fingerlings to over 12 million farmers, resulting in an estimated increase in crop production of 25 million tonnes. This growth in food production underscores the programme’s success in improving agricultural productivity throughout the continent.
Additionally, Leadership for Agriculture (L4Ag) is an African ministerial-level peer-to-peer learning platform led by the African Development Bank (AfDB), together with other steering committee members – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the Rockefeller Foundation as the main financiers, and with Emerge Centre for Innovations – Africa (ECI-Africa) as the process facilitator.
The L4Ag aims to promote strategic engagements and policy actions among African ministers for agriculture and food security, livestock, economy, fisheries and finance, the private sector, and other critical stakeholders to increase their commitments to investing in agriculture and food systems and boosting agricultural productivity. The key envisaged outcomes of this initiative are that countries would have increased funding for the development of agriculture and food systems, enabling programs to be designed and executed more effectively and efficiently.
Dr Solomon Assefa Gizaw, Head of the TAAT Clearinghouse, believes that the WECAWHEAT initiative will foster a more food-secure and socio-economically stable West and Central Africa. “That is why stakeholders like the AfDB, TAAT, ICARDA, CORAF, Lake Chad Research Institute and other allied institutions involved in wheat sector development across member countries are prioritizing policy and development initiatives that align with the region’s dynamic vision for agricultural transformation,” Dr Gizaw said.
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