Media coverage of recurring famines that affect the African continent could suggest that hunger is a fatality. The risk of a massive famine by 2020 seems like a repetition of the misfortunes that have been plaguing the continent. The current ravages of famine in the East and in the Horn of Africa, which have been forecasted for the past two years, seem to prove that the international community acts at the very last moment, when it comes to avoiding the worst.
Demographically, the African continent will have doubled its population by 2050, a quarter of which already being in a state of under-nutrition. Yet the hope of a self-sustaining African agriculture rests on two pillars. The first one is that Africa has everything to succeed: arable land and water resources are abundant on the continent. Secondly, the international community – foundations, states, multilateral organizations - has already successfully mobilized in the 60s to accompany the Asian Green Revolution, when the continent achieved its demographic threshold.
Should we rely on the recipes that have proved so successful in the Asian agricultural sector, a mix of systematic irrigation and use of fertilizers? Probably, yes. But other innovations could be introduced: one is better regulation of the trade of agricultural goods; another is an overhaul reform of multilateral institutions working on this issue.
