Africa Development Forum

1 total work

Food systems in Africa

by Gaelle Balineau, Arthur Bauer, Martin Kessler, and Nicole Madariaga

Published 28 February 2021

Food for cities in Africa is changing under the triple effect of growth demography, urbanization and transformations in agricultural production and trade. These changes create risks: African cities increasingly face the challenges of undernutrition and malnutrition. But they also generate new opportunities: the economy food is the continent's main source of employment and will remain so in the near future, both to ensure agricultural production, agro-food processing and product distribution. At the center of this economy are the intermediaries market, which link producers and consumers, and whose ineffectiveness explains that about a third of the production evaporates in food losses.