19 September 2023 – Dr Florence Nabwire discusses the issues around food supply and climate change in Africa. How will changes in climate and population bring new challenges for consumers and suppliers in coming years?
Climate change poses an existential threat to humanity. As sea levels and global temperatures gradually rise, the global food system could be forced into collapse.
Africa is already experiencing a disproportionate number of catastrophic climate events (droughts, cyclones, among others) causing food shortages, displacement and migration. African leaders and national and international organisations have requested increased financing to accelerate implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation measures - key priorities being transition to renewable energy, sustainable land use and innovative technologies in Africa.
However, a critical ingredient of the transition has not received sufficient attention in high-level discussions such as the Africa Climate Summit: the role of consumers and how to nudge them towards healthier diets and more sustainable lifestyles.
Although Africa accounts for only 4% of global emissions, its population is rapidly increasing and will account for over 25% of the global population by 2050. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing rapid urbanisation and most of its population is predicted to live in secondary cities of (up to 500,000 people) by 2050. This growing population is putting pressure on food systems which are already grappling with the impacts of climate change. Ironically, the food systems themselves are a major cause of climate change due to deforestation and growing use of agricultural inputs and feedstocks.
A key theme at recent UN Food Systems Summits and COP discussions has been how to transform food systems to deliver healthy, safe, and affordable food for all within planetary boundaries. It is acknowledged that achieving this will require a ‘food systems approach’ and collaboration among all actors in the food system: producers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and consumers.
From the food supply side, there are concerted efforts to increase agricultural productivity by accelerating the uptake of climate-smart agriculture and increasing resilience by shifting to more climate-resilient food crops and reducing post-harvest food losses. In contrast, on the demand side, ongoing rapid urbanisation is associated with rapid shifts from traditional diets - which tend to be nutrient-dense and climate-resilient - towards 'ultra-processed' foods (UPFs) which are less nutrient-dense, high in sugar, fat, salt, and low in fibre and micronutrients.
Data from the 2022 Global Nutrition Report shows that stakeholders (governments, donors, and private sector), focus mostly on undernutrition, leadership and governance, with little attention paid to poor diets, obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) or food and nutrition security. According to the global Food Systems Dashboard, growth in the retail value of UPF sales was 106% in Zimbabwe and 45% in Kenya between 2014 and 2019; and there has been marked growth in the number of ‘modern’ food retailers across SSA. Marketing of unhealthy foods in SSA has also increased rapidly, with changes in food retailing environments and shifts in dietary patterns associated with a growing double burden of malnutrition (undernutrition, obesity and overweight, and micronutrient deficiencies) and NCDs in SSA.
The food industry - particularly large retailers and multinational companies - hold significant power and influence in the food system: from food production (through contracting farmers) to consumer behaviour (through food pricing and marketing practices) which can be harnessed to reverse current trends towards UPFs, and accelerate progress towards achieving nutrition and health, economic, social and environmental goals in SSA. However, to attract investments in value chains for nutritious and environmentally sustainable foods, consumer demand must be generated in tandem with government action to encourage the food industry to deliver nutritious foods that are safe, sustainable and affordable to all.
Food production, processing and retailing is mostly driven by demand as there is no economic value in processing foods without a market. Therefore, like all businesses, food system actors are motivated by demand and profit margin to grow their businesses. Given the ongoing nutrition trends and increasing shifts from traditional nutritious foods to UPFs, urban consumer preferences are increasingly divergent with ongoing efforts to increase production of climate-resilient and indigenous cereals, roots crops and legumes.
The Demand Generation Alliance was recently established with the vision of making nutritious and sustainable food the preferred consumer choice, by leveraging social and cultural strategies to drive societal preferences toward nutritious and sustainable food.
In order to develop effective demand-generation strategies for urban SSA, the drivers of nutrition transition and food consumption patterns must be properly understood. From an inequalities perspective, a special focus on households with nutritionally vulnerable groups (young children, pregnant and lactating women, adolescents and older people) is necessary as this is where the biggest nutritional wins are possible.
More research is needed in towns and peri-urban areas that are currently small but are projected to increase in size dramatically by 2050 as urbanisation proceeds. Such locations offer a unique opportunity to understand how consumer behaviours can be shifted in a positive direction in order to provide the demand signal necessary to build sustainable food systems for newly urban areas in SSA.
Our ongoing research in Kenya is studying food environments and consumer behaviour in secondary cities at different stages of urbanisation and nutrition transition. We are focusing on Kisumu - the third-largest city in Kenya with about 600,000 inhabitants - and Busia, a rapidly growing border town in Western Kenya with a population of around 100,000. Our aim is to understand the drivers of food consumption behaviours and how to nudge families towards healthier and more sustainable food choices, in the process building their - and their city’s - resilience to climate change.
