By Saul Daniel Ddumba, Brad Hounkpati, and Bernice Waweru
The notion that every person should have a right to adequate food, health and education is still far from reality in most parts of Africa. With the exception of a few other developing regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the largest percentage of hunger and malnutrition. The population in this region is increasing steadily and is likely to be among the highest populations across the world in the next three decades.
In 2014, as Borlaug LEAP Fellows, we were fortunate enough to take part in the World Food Prize events. During the week-long events, the presentations and discussions highlighted success stories of increased food production and income generation by smallholder farmers. Given that more than 60% of all farmland is cultivated by smallholder farmers, we feel there is clear evidence for a promising future for agricultural development in Africa. The question that emerged then was, “how can these success stories be used as a launch pad for even wider increased food production and income generation across Africa?”
During one of our dinners, a few Borlaug LEAP fellows had a very heated debate on ways to realize development and growth in Africa. The result of that debate was a commitment to work on a joint book project to highlight and stress the notion that there is still hope for Africa. While Africa may be undergoing a number of challenges including hunger, there are ways through which this cycle could actually be reverted. Thus the need to document the perspectives from the next generation of African scientists, the success stories, and strategies to achieve a food secure Africa.
There are a lot of publications on the subject of food security in Africa but proposed book is quite a different one. In this book, we hope to show the opportunities for Africa’s future in the midst of challenges being faced now. We intend to catalog success stories and lessons learned from the African perspective. We intend to capture opportunities for Africa’s future in the midst of challenges being faced now from the viewpoint of the next generation of African scientists.
We are calling on all Borlaug LEAP Fellows to contribute to this project. For the details, click here. The deadline to submit an abstract of your proposed paper is 10 November 2015.