Why food is the new gold in Africa.

In the near future, food will be the new gold. The price of food is going up everyday, exposing the already vulnerable African states. What's worrying is that even though Africa has large tracts of arable land, the continent still grapples with food shortages year in year out. Famine in the horn of Africa and the Sahel region of Africa is no longer news. Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa in terms of food, but you all know what happened to the lands. Foreign companies are gobbling up African land in the so called land grabs, further pushing small holder farmers into poverty. 

African small farmers cannot borrow against their capital. Middlemen are rife, waiting for farmers to grow their produce, and only come around when the produce is ready, and since the farmers are desperate, they sell their produce at a throw away price. Land title deeds are a thorny issue, and according to respected property rights economist Hernando De Soto, property rights such as land are not respected in the
developing world, Africa being included. Irrigation of arid and semi arid areas is still something in the policy papers rather than something practical. It is laughable that we import food products that can be grown in Africa. Nigeria imports rich, yet it can produce rice. Kenya imports sugar from Brazil, yet it can grow sugar. Come on, we even import eggs, DR Congo imports chicken from Portugal and Brazil. What's going wrong in the agricultural sector. How can we revive it?

According to Zakariyyah Freeman Musa, a Yali network member, the youth need to embrace agriculture,95% of educated youths in Africa are not agricultural inclined, as they search for white collar jobs..Thus, we need to work in direction of food security for Africa ..we need to direct our organization and communities towards that.. African governments are not helping the situation..Its the responsibly as youth to help acknowledge the problems and provide practical solutions to it.

According to Madison Ayer, the Chairman and CEO of Honey Care Africa and Executive Chairman of Farm Shop - which serves smallholder Farmers by providing farm inputs through a modern retail platform of franchised shops in villages in rural Kenya. Mr. Mayer mentions that in some cases, brokers and other middlemen play a very valuable role in the supply chain by providing storage, quality control, transportation, distribution, or other services that individuals cannot provide. However, there are also many cases when middlemen take advantage of vulnerable smallholder farmers. Sometimes, technology can be helpful - for example, new applications on mobile phones can provide pricing and other market information directly to smallholder farmers, so they have the same market information as the middlemen and are therefore less vulnerable.