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When 60,000 tonnes of grain stored for export smouldered as Russia pounded Ukrainian ports in July, and a renewed blockade of Black Sea ports again curbed food trade, it stoked a simmering global food crisis.
Within weeks, India’s government announced a ban on rice exports, increasing fears of rising prices and food shortages elsewhere.
Most concerning of all, these developments came as the impacts of climate change took an increasing toll on food production, with July the hottest month ever recorded on our planet.
Africa is among the world regions most impacted by climate change. All signs point to a rising risk of climate-related humanitarian crises like the multi-year droughts that have decimated farming in East Africa and this year’s record-breaking, 36-day-long cyclone across the continent’s South East that displaced 400,000 people.
Less obvious is the slow but steady erosion in the production and quality of staple foods like maize, beans, milk, meat and eggs due to extreme heat and the spread of crop and livestock pests and diseases.
The need for agricultural adaptation to climate change is glaring. Yet most attention to climate change has been directed at mitigating the climate crisis. While this is clearly essential, Africa has contributed less than four per cent to global greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change, while disproportionately suffering its worst impacts.
As conflict and climate change ramp up prices and reduce crop yields around the world, Africa has increasingly relied on imports of food staples like wheat and rice. This dependence is increasingly untenable.
In preparation for next month’s Africa Climate Week and the global climate summit (COP28) in November, government leaders can rally behind a common priority: adaptation to safeguard food systems that feed more than a billion people on the continent.
Cassava, for example, and a host of native African crops offer potential alternatives. Cassava’s resilience in harsh conditions makes it particularly promising. But it is not invincible. Worsening climate extremes decrease yields and promote pests – but scientists can address these vulnerabilities through breakthroughs in breeding.
In generating these developments, combined with more precise market research and improved community engagement, science institutions like the CGIAR global agricultural research network have enhanced cassava’s sustainability and applied this model of crop improvement to other African crops with climate resilience potential, such as millets and sorghum.
In the face of increasing heat extremes, adaptation must include water-saving innovations. In West Africa, smallholder rice farmers are working with agricultural experts from the research organisation AfricaRice (a part of CGIAR) to improve their operations amid increasingly erratic rainfall, soaring demand for rice, and costly imports.
Across areas with limited irrigation, farmers introduced periodic saturation of fields, rather than constant, shin-deep saturation. This decreased water usage by 30 per cent while maintaining harvests and cutting weed infestations by half.
It even enabled some rice farmers to diversify their operations, branching into aquaculture and vegetable production within one growing season. As global rice supplies tighten, this model of adaptation could enable African production to increase in an increasingly unfriendly environment.
Climate change is also taking a huge toll on soils that are already often depleted. A range of adaptation approaches can address this problem, from the use of digital soil maps that reveal the precise composition of soils and their nutrient balances to drip irrigation systems powered by solar mini-grids – an approach being implemented widely in Ethiopia.
Other solutions rely on increasing the number of different crops that farmers in Africa grow. For example, “intercropping” beans with maize makes the most of the bean plant’s natural ability to increase the nitrogen content of soils and alleviates the need for manufactured fertilisers.
Crop diversity, water conservation, and soil health are not subjects that exist in silos. Farmers and farming communities must be able to access the knowledge, technology, and financing needed to embrace these and other improvements, understanding where they overlap and where they do not so that they can adapt to a swiftly changing climate.
The money and resources needed to deploy these new techniques do not grow on trees. At last year’s COP27 climate summit, African leaders were quite vocal about the need for more adaptation financing. Senegalese President and then President of the African Union Macky Sall called for a doubling of the global US$100 billion pledge for climate adaptation support. This call will no doubt be taken up again at COP28 in November.
Delegates at COP28 need to go further, however. As difficult as this year has been so far, the weather and so many other factors can only get worse. With so much of humanity on the razor’s edge of survival, we must produce a comprehensive strategy for the global food system to adapt to global warming and move decisively toward a climate-resilient food future.
Enock Chikava is the interim director of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Climate change is happening – Africa must adapt to it to survive
Leaders must rally behind a common priority: adaptation to safeguard food systems that feed more than a billion people on the continent