There’s a saying in Yoruba land, in southwestern Nigeria: “Once food is taken out of poverty, the shame of it disappears.” Regrettably, Africa has done the opposite, building food systems that feed the world, while leaving its own people hungry.
Nigeria, a country that produced 5.6 million metric tonnes of rice in 2024, according to estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, plans to import over 2.3 million metric tonnes more during the 2024/2025 marketing year.
While warehouses in Kebbi State overflow with paddy awaiting processors, ships unload fresh consignments of Indian rice at Lagos Port.
This isn’t just a Nigerian problem. It is a continent-wide paradox. Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the world’s most food-insecure regions, even though it exports more agricultural goods than it imports. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2023 that more than 330 million Africans face moderate to severe food insecurity, one in four people across the region.
Meanwhile, the African Development Bank says the continent holds 60 percent of the planet’s uncultivated arable land. So if land and labour are abundant, why the persistent hunger? The reasons, experts argue, are less about drought or poor soils and more about systems designed for extraction, not nutrition.
A colonial blueprint that still shapes agriculture
African agriculture was deliberately structured for export under colonial rule. Crops like cocoa, cotton and tea were prioritised, while local food staples were neglected. “Colonial policies destroyed traditional food systems,” says Henning Bjornlund, a professor of water economics at the University of South Australia, who co-authored a 2022 regional review on food insecurity.
His research describes how local food markets, communal granaries and crop-rotation traditions were sidelined. Land access became tied to export quotas. Farmers were taxed in produce and punished for planting staple crops over colonial cash crops.
Pre-independence habits persist
After independence, many governments stuck with the old formula. They doubled down on export-led farming, backed by foreign consultants and loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
In Nigeria and Ghana, as much as 90 per cent of agricultural budgets went to commercial farms, according to the same study, while the smallholders responsible for most food production were left behind.
Even as exports increased, per capita food production fell. FAO data shows that African food imports jumped from around 2.5 million tonnes in 1960 to more than 15 million tonnes by 2000.
When development fails the farmer
Structural adjustment policies in the 1980s and 1990s cut subsidies, dismantled grain reserves and slashed budgets for agriculture, education and health. Meanwhile, subsidised food aid from the US flooded local markets, undercutting African farmers.
Infrastructure remains a key bottleneck. According to the African Postharvest Losses Information System, Nigeria lost around 974,000 tonnes of rice after harvest in 2021, roughly 11 percent of what was grown. With inadequate roads, storage or market access, farmers often sell under pressure just to repay loans.
Trade barriers don’t help. Intra-African trade in food remains below 20 percent, according to the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat. Countries still rely more on imports from Europe or Asia than from their neighbours.
Regional integration, while debated in Addis Ababa and Abuja, has yet to deliver results for farmers in Ogun or traders in Goma.
Distorted priorities continue to skew production. In Kenya, farmers grow roses for export while maize mills remain idle. In Ghana, fresh tomatoes rot on roadsides while supermarkets stock canned varieties from Italy.
“We’ve created a food system that doesn’t feed us,” Bjornlund noted in an interview.
“Food doesn’t move where it’s needed,” says agribusiness expert Ifeoma Okeke. “We’ve built an economy where it’s easier to buy frozen chicken from Europe than from a farmer 20km away.”
Building systems that feed Africans first
His 2022 study calls for strengthening local food value chains, building rural roads, decentralised storage hubs and processing plants closer to farms. It recommends giving farmers access to real-time pricing, affordable loans and secure land titles.
Above all, it advocates protecting domestic food systems not with bans, but with incentives and public investment.
FAO estimates that smallholder farmers still account for 80 to 90 percent of Africa’s food output. Yet they are routinely excluded from policy decisions.
“If you don’t involve the people who grow your food in planning your food system, you’re planning to fail,” Bjornlund argues.
Fixing Africa’s food systems will take more than seeds and subsidies. It requires breaking from a past rooted in extraction. That means rejecting cookie-cutter blueprints from global lenders and funding research that respects local crops, climates and cultures.
It also means seeing food not just as calories, but as a source of stability, dignity and sovereignty.
Connecting what we grow to what we eat
Africa’s food crisis is not one of production, but a failure to link farms to tables, knowledge to policy, and investment to those who need it most. It’s a failure that can be reversed.
Africa has the land. It has the people. It has the know-how. What it needs now is the courage to end its dependence and build food systems that feed its people first before feeding the world.
