Pathways to African Food Security: Challenges, Threats and Opportunities towards 2050 (Earthscan Food and Agriculture)

This book examines Africa’s current food system and future challenges for food security over the next 25 years.

Africa is on the rise and by 2050, the continent will be home to a quarter of the world’s population. The analysis presented in this book clearly shows that the African food system needs to transform at a much faster pace to ensure that the people it serves are food secure. This book begins with four contrasting case studies that focus on country-specific challenges in Egypt, Ethiopia, Senegal and Zimbabwe. This is followed by 15 thematic chapters organised in three sections on challenges, threats and opportunities. Individual chapters address a wide range of topics including climate change, water security, farm sizes, crop yields, conservation trade-offs, food prices, trade, conflict and structural change. The book concludes by discussing key pathways to improve Africa's food system and food security for the decades ahead.

This book is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners who work on global food security, sustainable food systems, food, health and nutrition and African development.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Michiel de Haas is Assistant Professor of Economic and Environmental History at Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands.

Ken E. Giller is Emeritus Professor of Plant Production Systems at Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands.