An IPAR-RASA-SenRTT Webinar, scheduled on April 26, starting at 10:30 GMT

While the world has never been so rich and advanced, hunger will affect more than 800 million people in 2022. This paradox is accentuated by the consequences of COVID 19 and more recently by the war in Ukraine.

The successive food crises and the cyclical surges in the prices of basic cereals such as rice (hunger riots in 2008) and wheat give an even more dramatic face to an equally structural phenomenon. Indeed, hunger and malnutrition are above all revealing of the injustices and inequalities that characterize international economic relations in an ultraliberal logic perpetuating the subjugation of the countries of the South and their peoples.

Food sovereignty is a concept that runs counter to the logic of extraversion that has underpinned the economic and social policies of African countries since independence. It is linked to the realities of the African peasant world, which call for the recognition of values and practices that are consubstantial with the type of society and its family mode of functioning. However, it was developed in the mid-1990s by peasant social movements in the North, such as Via Campesina and the Peoples’ Food Sovereignty Forum, which, along with the alter-globalization movement, still inspire the positions of African peasant organizations that are demanding food sovereignty. It allows us to have an ambition that goes beyond the notion of food security and emphasizes the availability and access to sufficient, healthy and nutritious food.

Since the last century, Africa has been the most food-dependent continent with 30% of the population suffering from hunger (source FAO). Chronic hunger and malnutrition have had serious consequences for generations and this goes beyond the images of Ethiopian or Nigerian children condemned to beg. They have consequences on the mental and physical health of millions of Africans as well as on performance of all kinds.

Mastering the means of clean production or giving up food sovereignty
Halfway to the MDG horizon (2030), the manifestations of food insecurity deeply affect African populations: cyclical food deficits, sometimes cyclical, linked to the variability of the world market for certain imported cereals to which countries are overexposed, climatic variability, and inappropriate agricultural policies.

The structural factors of the continent’s food dependence are more significant. However, despite the fragility of its ecosystems and multiple aggressions, Africa is one of the continents of the future where there is still enough land and resources to meet its own needs. The lack of investment and financial resources conditions the control of water and irrigation.

The difficult conditions of production have, among other factors, generated a destructuring of peasant societies increasingly confronted with the exodus of their living forces and a loss of technological and cultural memories. African agricultural lands are invaded or threatened by multinationals and national or foreign entrepreneurs. The revival and development of African agriculture are the main conditions for food sovereignty in Africa. They in turn depend heavily on the control, securing and regeneration of soils, a mastered technological revolution and massive investment in family farming, without excluding inclusive business models carried by the national and international private sector.

But the agricultural revolution cannot be a copy of the Western or Asian revolutions. It must promote a modernized family agriculture, based on techniques that protect the soil, water and climate, everywhere in the world, but especially in Africa, where this model is still close to the current reality.
Political authorities seem to be increasingly aware of the challenges facing Africa, but do they have the endogenous means to define and control the desired trajectory? What content should be given to food sovereignty in Senegal in the sense of the general mobilization suggested by President Macky Sall during his address to the nation on April 4? How can we evaluate the investments made over the past decades to achieve self-sufficiency in rice? What are the ways to accelerate food sovereignty based on local production and processing methods adapted to the needs of new consumers?
To answer these questions, the Think Tank IPAR, RASA, and SENRTT are organizing a public webinar.