FAO: greener cities crucial to African food security

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has called on policymakers to act now to ensure that African cities will be “green” enough to meet their nutrition and income needs in a sustainable way. A new FAO report says that Africa’s urban population is growing faster than that of any other region, and many of its cities need to keep pace with the increasing demand for food that comes with that growth. The report draws on surveys and case studies from 31 countries across the African continent, and makes recommendations on how cities can better prepare to face the rapidly increasing demand for food and other basic amenities. Many African countries have recorded strong, sustained economic growth over the past decade, leading to more urbanization and raising hopes of a new era of shared prosperity. But increasingly, urban areas also draw people in search of a way out of rural poverty, only to find little, if any improvement in their lives, the report on FAO website said. More than half of all urban Africans live in slums, up to 200 million survive on less than $2 a day, and poor urban children are as likely to be chronically malnourished as poor rural children. “The challenge of achieving a “zero hunger” world – in which everyone is adequately nourished and all food systems are resilient – is as urgent in African cities as it is in rural areas,” reads the foreword by Modibo Traore, FAO Assistant Director-General for Agriculture and Consumer Protection. “African policymakers need to act now to steer urbanization from its current, unsustainable path towards healthy, ‘greener’ cities that ensure food and nutrition security, decent work and income, and a clean environment for all their citizens,” the foreword continues. By the end of the current decade, 24 of the world’s 30 fastest growing cities will be African, the report says, noting that between 2010 and 2030, the urban population of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double, from about 300 to 600 million.