Question

Explain five causes of food shortages in Africa today.

Answer 1

• Many parts of Africa experience little or no rain at all over several years leading to crop failure and hence food shortages/natural hazards.
• The rapid population growth rate has overtaken food production rate resulting into food shortages.
• Inadequate/food storage facilities had contributed to food wastages as farmers cannot store store food for a long period.
• Poor state of roads in many African countries hinders transportation of food from the areas of surplus to those of deficit.
• Low prices of food stuff has discouraged many farmers who may have invested so much capital leading to food shortages.
• Many farmers in Africa lack enough capital to buy required farm inputs.
• Due to crop diseases and pest, a lot of food is destroyed either on the farms or in stores resulting to food shortages.
• The emphasis on cash crop farming at the expense of food crops has contributed to low food production leading to food shortages.
• Environmental degradation through deforestation/overgrazing of animals had led to soil erosion leading to wasteland, hence low food production/desertification.
• Civil wars in many African countries have displaced people from their farms and therefore diverted their attention from farming resulting in food shortages.
• Poor food policies have discouraged farmers as they are not given enough incentives incase of crop failure/poor economic planning.
• The young-able bodied persons migrate to urban centres thus leaving farming to the aged who are not able to contribute much towards food production.
• HIV and AIDS pandemic has impacted negatively on the labour force in food production.
• Poor land tenure system/land fragmentation has reduced the acreage that would have been used for production scarcity.
• Over reliance/dependence on famine relief food/other forms of aid has made people not to look for permanent solutions to food shortages.
• Lack of modern farming methods her led to low food production.