This study focuses on the effects of the global economic recession on the food crisis in Africa. It draws from the fact that for nearly a decade, sound economic policies and greater external support, in the forms of debt relief and increased investment and inflows contributed to robust economic growth in many African countries. During 2007 and 2008, though, food and fuel price shocks put inordinate strains on these nations’ balance sheets, growth prospects and potential to reduce poverty. The study then goes on to argue that these strains have since been compounded by the global economic crisis, which now threatens to reverse the region’s more recent movement toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The global recession has effectively reduced export demand, commodity prices and foreign investment and inflows, generating negative effects on terms of trade and household incomes. These negative effects exacerbate living and working conditions in Africa that were already worsened by the food crisis. African farmers in particular have had little resources with which to respond to these crises. The findings of the paper list poor infrastructure, poor quality seeds and soil, limited technology and investment in research and development and a lack of access to capital, among the obstacles that leave African farmers with a diminished capacity to respond to the current crisis. African nations, made more vulnerable by the food and fuel crisis, now face a worsened outlook given the deeper vulnerability imposed upon them by the economic crisis’ adverse and potentially prolonged effects. This potentially dire outlook begs the question, what kinds of policies and programs are needed to protect the vulnerable? The paper answers this question with some recommendations to African nations:
- must ensure the most vulnerable – specifically, the small scale farmers and urban poor – are protected from starvation and malnutrition in the short-term;
- increase agricultural productivity of both small and large scale farmers in the medium-term;
- invest in human capital development in the long-term.
- invest in research and institutional building for better service delivery, strengthening local governance in decentralized countries and implementing effective and well-targeted social safety net programs.
- targeting the agricultural sector, a sector that has proved more resilient than others, may help direct the continent back toward the path of economic growth, increased food security and reduced poverty that it had started on nearly a decade past