Food And Nutrition Security : ECOWAS Experience – Afenyo-Markin
Honorable Alexander AFENYO-MARKIN Chairman of the Committee of Agriculture, Environment, Water Resources and Rural Development of the ECOWAS Parliament & Deputy Majority Leader of the Ghana Parliament, at the international parliamentary conference under the theme: “Sovereignty and food security, between the challenges of the international situation and the challenges of strategic security in Rabat Morroco has highlighted issues that are of concern to African leaders to tackle.
During the panel I Session, devoted to “International strategies to ensure the recovery of the food production system and supply chains to face climate change and the crises of the new global context, the Honourable Minister highlighted the following as contained in his full presentation at the forum.
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Food Security means having, at all times, both physical and economic access to sufficient food to meet dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. A family is food secure when its members do not live in hunger or fear of hunger.
Food insecurity is often rooted in poverty and has long-term impacts on the ability of families, communities and countries to develop and prosper. Prolonged food insecurity results in undernourishment, stunted growth, slows cognitive development and increases susceptibility to illness. The most vulnerable are the rural people and small-holder farmers who depend on agriculture to make a living and feed their families.
Food insecurity remains a major structural problem in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. Out of its 308 million inhabitants, 40 million people are undernourished and suffer from chronic malnutrition. Every year, food crises affect additional millions of people. The region is currently experiencing a food and nutrition crisis without precedent. Nearly 17 million people are in need of immediate assistance for the period, 51 million are currently under pressure, and could fall into crisis phase under the combined effects of insecurity and the consequences of the health crisis
ECOWAS adopted a common Ten Year Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP 2005 – 2015), to provide a regional response to these food-related challenges, and at the completion of the ten year period a successor policy ECOWAP 11 (2016 – 2025) was developed and being currently implemented. The has been and still remains the modernization of agriculture, to achieve self-sufficiency and food security at the regional level.
Growth in the agricultural sector has been shown to be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. Investing in smallholder farmers, many of whom are women, and the food systems that nourish them is more important than ever.
The food and nutrition insecurity are further exacerbated by the phenomenal population with increased rural to urban migration putting more pressure and increased demand for food in urban areas, and at the same time depopulating the rural and farming communities with able bodied youths to grow sufficient food and other agricultural produce. If this trend continues countries in our region will have to double their current food production.
The effect of Climate Change is also aggravating the food and nutrition insecurity in our region. The region is witnessing rapid deforestation and desertification of significant portion of its fertile agricultural land, and the persistent shortfall in the quantity and duration of rainfall is greatly impacting on agricultural production and productivity. Other climate change related phenomenon like depletion of both surface and underground water resources, coastal erosion, high temperatures and various pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are also greatly contributing to the food and nutrition insecurity our countries and peoples. Furthermore, scarcity of natural resources, low chemical and fertilizer inputs, and inadequate technologies are added challenges, that is aggravating the food and nutrition insecurity.
In April/May 2021, The ECOWAS Commission organized, an international conference to share with its partners and the other regions of the world, the experience of its regional food security storage system. The overall objective is to lay the foundations for a renewed multilateral partnership to strengthen, in a sustainable manner, the resilience of the West African Food Security Storage System and its capacity to respond effectively to the amplification and complexity of food, nutrition, and pastoral crises in the region.
Participants in the conference considered the following issues: Vulnerability of West Africa and the Sahel to food and nutrition insecurity
-food reserves and management of cyclical food, nutrition and pastoral crises in West Africa, role of stocks in the promotion of sustainable food systems and the building of the regional food market, role of food reserves in the building of the resilience and social protection of households, partnerships and innovative financing mechanisms and the strengthening of the resilience of the Regional Food Storage System and its capacity to respond effectively to the amplification and complexity of food, nutrition, and pastoral crises.
This strategy is built on four complementary lines of defense:
-local stocks set up and managed by local producers’ organizations or decentralized communities, national security stocks managed by States or co-managed by States and their financial partners, the Regional Food Security Reserve set up and managed by the ECOWAS Commission,
and, the resort to international Aid, when no solution can be found at the first three lines of defense.
After 5 years of implementation of the Support Project, an internal capitalization of the results made it possible to systematize important achievements, challenges and lessons learned for scaling up to make the Regional Food Security Storage Strategy, a pivotal instrument for the elimination of hunger in the region by 2030.
A major strategy ECOWAS is currently implementing is the creation of Food Reserve Banks, at both regional and country levels. Food and agricultural produce are being stockpiled in these food banks and distributed to needed areas and seriously affected food deficit areas as and when needed.
