ACROSS Africa, unco-ordinated agricultural programmes by government and development organisations have continued to increase food losses and undermine efforts to build strong business cases.
At national level, there is often no connection between government and donor-driven programmes that focus on the same value chains.
Commodities from diverse similar interventions often converge in the same market, whose capacity cannot be stretched to absorb over-production.
Since fragmented production makes it difficult to define existing production systems, it also makes it difficult to frame business cases for communities where particular commodities do well naturally.
For instance, communities in which avocado is the main economic driver should be able to build viable business cases around that fruit.
Likewise, where indigenous poultry and goats thrive naturally, there should be business cases around these commodities.
Fragmented production also fragments market information as each programme can work with different market actors who do not share information with other actors targeting the same consumers.
Without market intelligence and statistics, it becomes difficult to build viable business cases around particular value chains.
Quantities of commodities provoked by unco-ordinated production try to get into market ecosystems that have developed their own pathways and relationships over time.
Key questions should include: To what extent are these commodities filling new gaps, supplementing or compromising/disrupting existing supplies?
In addition to categorising diverse production models, it is important to understand production practices and changes in land use that often happen without alerting the market or demand side.
To what extent do changes in land use complement supplies, gaps, gluts or shortages? What are the trade-offs?
All these questions need answers.
The value of paying attention to cross-cutting mandates
Cross-cutting mandates are some of the issues that have not received sufficient attention in most African countries.
For instance, some food standards issues that are under the Health are also the domain of the Industry and Commerce ministry.
These duplications can be addressed through codifying food standards and setting clear boundaries on who should do what.
It is also often taken for granted that many farmers and food traders may not have the capacity to carefully grade and handle food in ways that minimise physical and economic losses.
Farmers lose income if they lack capacity to grade their commodities and only wait for buyers to set grading standards.
Other cross-cutting issues relate to mechanisation and infrastructure.
These are often missing in African mass food markets.
If mechanisation is poor, it leads to poor quality products and economic losses.
To what extent does market infrastructure create food loses?
Careful positioning of infrastructure is critical.
Some infrastructure set up by non-governmental organisations, government, local authorities and the private sector has become white elephants because users were not consulted.
More importantly, many local authorities like municipalities and rural district councils lack evidence-informed growth plans.
Data and evidence can help them to answer questions like how can we expand market infrastructure without destroying the existing market and trading patterns?
Local authorities need to learn from commodities that are coming from the Agriculture ministry.
Policies need to support value chains in communities where they thrive naturally
Instead of foisting wheat, tobacco, sugar cane, cocoa, soya or any other external crops in communities where indigenous commodities grow with minimum effort, policymakers need to support existing opportunities.
When communities are empowered, they become competitive in the market and demonstrate capacity to produce surplus for economic benefit.
What are policymakers doing to support natural economic drivers and fair trade?
If leaders do not promote their own indigenous food, outsiders will not do so because they do not know much about local food systems.
African policymakers cannot claim to support food sovereignty when they are not offering competitive prices for indigenous food.
Giving economic value to indigenous food will ensure gross domestic product is not only about tobacco, wheat and maize, but bringing to the world the value of natural products and indigenous food systems.
Funding should be designed in ways that enhance community resilience as opposed to siloed funding models that have been promoted across Africa for decades.
Fragmented funding models make it difficult to assess whether farming communities are going forward or going backwards and losing their original food systems.
With the right funding, local leaders can become champions of indigenous food systems.
A fundamental question for African leaders at every level is what are you doing to support indigenous food system, culture, tradition and protect natural resources?
