Market News

Within 10 years, one in five people on Earth will live in Africa. By 2050, it will be one in four.

The recent State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025 (SOFI) report of the UN reveals a bittersweet truth — while hunger is declining globally, in Africa more people are undernourished each year. More than 300 million Africans faced hunger in 2024, and this number is projected to rise as climate change has a disproportionate impact on African food production.

It is against this backdrop that African leaders and partners are gathering at the Africa Food Systems Forum in Dakar, a platform where political and business leaders from across the continent set the agenda for agrifood transformation.

We are already witnessing how hunger undermines the right to food, fuels grievance politics, and drives conflict and displacement.

For example, in Sudan, a sudden threefold increase in bread prices in late 2018 sparked nationwide protests that began over hunger and quickly spread into broader social unrest. This crisis sent  3.3 million people fleeing to neighboring countries, straining already fragile resources.

As Africa’s population grows and shocks intensify, transforming food systems will become increasingly critical to stability at home and abroad.

On the flipside of this reality, lies an enormous opportunity. Investing in Africa’s food systems can deliver the promise of the African Century,  transforming African agrifood systems and helping to end poverty and achieve  global food security.

Africa has already developed its own plan — the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Plan 2026-2035 (CAADP), adopted by African leaders at the African Union 2026 Kampala Summit after wide consultation with African civil society and businesses.

African governments are already taking decisive steps. From mobilizing domestic resources to establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), these efforts lay the groundwork for a stronger, more self-reliant food system.

The new CAADP commits countries to clear policy targets, deeper cooperation across borders, and mobilizing $100 billion in public and private investment by 2035. Securing this finance is one thing — ensuring it delivers on the CAADP goals is another.

Advertisement

To realize their full transformative potential, the CAADP plan needs to be matched by scaled, fully coordinated investment from the international community.

The true challenge will be ensuring that investment is directed where it will have the greatest impact, aligned to country-specific priorities, so that every dollar delivers the highest possible returns. Africa’s future is the world’s future, and so the right investment in Africa’s food systems now can sow the seed for a more stable, peaceful and prosperous world for us all.

For maximum impact, new finance must align with each country’s priorities. Rather than development aid agencies, NGOs, philanthropic organizations, Multilateral Development Banks, UN agencies and climate funds having to each determine separately how to support the CAADP goals, international support should rally behind the leadership of African societies. It is time to act together in a fully coordinated and synergistic way.

This demand-driven approach removes duplication, reduces transaction costs, and ensures that resources are targeted to where they will deliver the greatest impact, while delivering additional gains for nutrition, climate resilience, gender equality, and rural livelihoods.

Pooling funding and collectively supporting African efforts through financing platforms such as the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), channels contributions from developed countries, philanthropies, and multilateral institutions into a single pool. This empowers African governments, businesses and producer organizations to determine how that investment can be used most effectively to accelerate agrifood systems transformation and strengthen food and nutrition security.

For example, a GAFSP-funded initiative in Ethiopia accompanied by FAO and the World Bank, supported almost 700,000 farmers, helping them to raise yields — with some staple crops by 82 per cent — and increase revenues — some up by a quarter —  harboring prosperity and climate resilience to some of the country’s poorest rural areas.

Another country-led initiative in Senegal, accompanied by the African Development Bank, is enhancing food and nutrition security by improving productivity and water management systems in five key food insecure regions. The initiative is supporting nearly 40,000 farmers, more than half of whom are women and a third youth — underscoring the importance of integrating under-represented groups for maximum impact.

What these successful initiatives show is that when priorities are set locally, and partners rally behind them, the results and the synergies can be considerable. In time, they have a catalytic effect in scaling up impact through coordinated financing and development finance and investor confidence in a given country’s agricultural sector.

The right investment can turn proven approaches into a continent-wide transformation, but only if all actors work together to close the agrifood systems investment gap and channel financing through country-led plans.

The challenge now is ensuring resources flow where they will have the greatest impact, and the Africa Food Systems Forum in Dakar is the moment to pivot from commitment to delivery.