for
- stats - Africa - food insecurity
- adjancency - food colonialism - food insecurity - food dependency
stats
- food insecurity
- 20 plant species make up 90% of food consumed in Africa
- 3 crops introduced by the Green Revolution make up 60% of all calories consumed
- wheat
- maize
- rice
-
African countries have become reliant on
a few food items.
-
Just 20 plant species now provide 90% of our food, with
three
accounting for 60% of all calories consumed on the continent and globally.
- This deprives the continent of diverse food sources,
at the very time when research has found
massive food and nutrition insecurity in Africa.
- By 2020, about 20% of the continent’s population (281.6 million) faced hunger.
- This figure is likely to have increased,
- given the impacts of successive droughts, floods and COVID-19.
Yet historically, Africa had
- 30,000 edible plant species, and
- 7,000 were traditionally cultivated or foraged for food.
The continent is a treasure trove of agrobiodiversity (a diversity of types of crops and animals) and
- its countries could easily feed themselves.