African continent bears the brunt of global food insecurity, Speaker Abbas

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Abbas Tajudeen has posited that food insecurity has taken its toll on Africa.

However, he noted that with oneness of purpose and strong political will, parliaments on the African continent could reverse the negative trend.

He made this known while delivering an address at the third plenary session of the ongoing 18th Commonwealth Speakers’ and Presiding Officers’ Conference (CSCOP) in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on Thursday.

His address entitled: ‘Addressing Challenges of Food Security in Africa by Promoting Investment in Agriculture”, he explored the major causes of food insecurity to include armed conflicts, climate change,impact of COVID 19 pandemic, rising population, subsistence farming,lack of access to credit, poor infrastructure and lack of investment in agri-business.

“While food insecurity is a global crisis, Africa sadly bears the heaviest burden of the global lack of access to food and nutrition. The 2022 Global Report on Food Crises noted that one out of every five African goes to bed hungry daily while an estimated 140 million out of Africa’s one billion populations face acute food insecurity. These observations have been made by various speakers in this session, and there are several causes for this challenge,” Abbas said while addressing other heads of parliaments”.

Using the Nigerian case to drive home his point, the speaker said;“ The activities of Boko Haram terrorists in the North Eastern part of the country greatly contributed to Nigeria’s rising food insecurity as farmers could not have access to their farms following the sacking of several villages in the wake of the attacks which lasted for several years. The terrorist attacks equally impacted negatively on the activities of commercial fishermen within the Lake Chad region.”

He also noted that on the other hand, the recurring conflicts between herders and farmers in Nigeria is a fallout from the impact of climate change which brought in its wake, drought and extreme weather conditions in the Northern part of the country, which necessitated the need for herders to move their flock to other parts of the country for grazing

Highlighting his point, he noted that extreme weather conditions occasioned by climate change and global warming pose severe threats to agricultural production and increases food insecurity within the continent.

He said: “Our food insecurity is equally exacerbated with the poor infrastructure within the continent which ensures that farmers are unable to preserve produce, transform them as well as move their produce to urban centres for better pricing”.

Proffering solution on the numerous problems mitigating against food security, he pointed out that the legislature is very critical to tackling the ravaging scourge of food insecurity in Africa, through the three cardinal functions of legislation, oversight and represention