News

Senegal: Africa’s food security challenges along the supply chain

Dairy
Senegal
Published Jan 20, 2021

Tridge summary

Senegal is home to 350,000 herding families. But in Dakar, the West African nation’s capital, grocery store shelves are piled high with powdered milk—mainly imported from Europe. The situation is a stark example of the stubborn agriculture production and supply chain challenges most African countries face. Senegal’s dairy industry faces multiple challenges, including low productivity and a weak supply chain.

Original content

These obstacles affect the production of numerous foods across the continent, an issue exacerbated in some countries by inadequate access to inputs, financing and land, along with weak transport and logistics systems. It doesn’t have to be this way. Africa’s agriculture sector employs on average over half of the labor force, producing high-quality products ranging from rice, fruits and vegetables, to tea, coffee, cocoa and vanilla. Nonetheless, malnourishment persists across much of the continent. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that over 250 million people in Africa—almost a fifth of the population—were undernourished in 2019. In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change and the severe social and economic effects of COVID-19 are piling even more pressures on the region’s food sector. Supply-chain disruptions are raising retail prices, while households are being squeezed by shrinking incomes. The U.N. World Food Programme has warned that an additional 130 million ...
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