How Climate Change affects Food Security in Africa

Undoubtedly, climate change is felt all over the planet. Extreme rains or extreme drought is rampant to almost all regions. Unexpected phenomena happen throughout the globe but most especially stroked Africa. Many African countries are already experiencing longer and deeper droughts, floods and cyclones in its history. Because of global warming, the whole continent is subject to disproportionate food security versus its population.

Low supply, high demand

Africa constitutes increasing population. Because of that, they should be able to produce more food by themselves. Unfortunately, drought in their plantation as well as extreme rains caused low food production.

In Egypt, if their temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius, 15% of their wheat crops are expected to be lost. More so, if their temperature increases by 4 degrees Celsius, 36% is more probable to be gone.  While Morocco can sustain their crops until 2030, it will drop quickly after that year. Most North-African countries import crops, but it is highly vulnerable to price increase because of droughts elsewhere.

Price shock

Temperatures are expected to rise several degrees in some regions soon. The good news is that there’s a new study of 11 West African countries expects most to be able to grow more food as temperatures rise and rainfall increases. The bad news about it is that the growing population of these countries maybe doubled, thus, double food prices.

Studies by IFPRI suggest crop yields across sub-Saharan Africa may decline 5-22% by 2050, pushing large numbers of people into poverty. A UN study suggests climatic conditions in southern Africa will worsen by 2050. Africa's staple crops are expected to be badly hit by increasing severity of weather. Unpredictable weather here has already left millions poor and dependent on relief food from the government.

Impacts

Food is the primary need of the human body to survive that goes with water. The primary impact of the climate change is imbalance in the natural flow of events in the earth’s surface. When the products of these natural events became short in addition to ever increasing population is starvation that cause poverty and even death.

It’s surely a domino effect from the planet to every individual not just in Africa. It just so happened that Africa is in bad shape right now in terms of the disproportion of demand and supply.

These numbers and expectations can never pursue or be changed. What we can do today is to make the most out of what we have and never, ever abuse the resources because just like anything on Earth, the planet can be gone. That may be a fact, but what we can do now is to prolong that phenomenon.