Food Insecurity Futures
In this issue, we bring you two feature articles about the future of food insecurity in Africa.
The Future of Food Insecurity
“It’s been a long day,” thinks Bulelwa Tafeni. It always is. As usual she got up at 5am to get to her cleaning job in the suburbs on time. As usual all she had before she left was a cup of coffee with condensed milk. As usual her elder child took the younger one to the unregistered neighbourhood child care on her way to school. At least both of them get breakfast at school. But today, as she sat in the minibus taxi waiting for it to fill up before it could go, she was hungry. She’d been hungry when she left work and that was a bus and a taxi ride ago. It’ll still take another hour to get home.
Read the full feature article.
Food Security in Africa, What The Future Holds
A woman with a basket on her head, with a malnourished child at her side with obvious internal bone structure displayed, due to lack of proper feeding, suffering, poverty, hunger and food insecurity. This is a typical picture of what many go through in Sub-Saharan Africa. One might say to him or herself, “I don’t look that bad, I feed well and look good.” The sad truth is that billions all over the world are hungry and we should all be concerned for our future and for that of generations to come.
Read the full feature article.
|
|
Futurist profiles of the month
 Dr Jane Battersby is a researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. She is an urban social and cultural geographer with ongoing research interests in Urban Food Security. Read more...
 Olawale OJO is an Agricultural Engineer / Agriblogger at the Young Professionals’ Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD). Olawale answered a few questions about his perspective and on being a futures thinker. Read more...
Interested in being profiled as a futures thinker on FFD? Submit your profile here.
Food Insecurity Bibliozone
Featured in Bibliozone this month is a collection of publications related to food insecurity, food security, the future of food, food policy and sustainability futures. The selection of documents is partial and based on accessible material. Therefore, we would like to invite everyone to supplement our library with additional materials.
Publications from our FFD library: 
Various other publications are available in our FFD library on the future of food insecurity.
Read more...
Why are we hungry?
Africa’s backbone is agriculture. It is our greatest resource. It is to Africa as industrialization was to Europe in the 1800s during the Industrial revolution. While this is my opinion, and I know that we are all entitled to our opinions, but I think that we have a dire situation at hand.
Sub-Saharan Africa today has 265 million people that are hungry. They are neither from the Indian Islands nor from the Maghreb region. 70% of the land in Africa is arable. We, by far, have the best climate, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and our soils at the moment use very little fertilizer if none at all to be productive. The fertilizer, if used, is organic. And yet with those credits, a large percentage of the people on the continent go to bed hungry. According to the African Development Bank a lot of aid has been given to Africa to help it combat the hunger crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa in the last 40 years has received about US$4.6 million per annum towards this cause. Does anyone feel the impact of this grant or aid? If so, why are we still hungry?
Read the full FFD Blog.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Southern Africa Horizon Scan
Included in this month's edition of the Searchlight newsletter:
• The status of renewable energy in Africa
• Shack walls that provide a source of fresh produce
• Design that wants to improve lives |
|
Talk-@-tive
A selection of quotes about Food Insecurity Futures.
"Africa has the knowledge, the technology, and the means to end hunger and food insecurity."
Tegegnework Gettu
|
|
Videophile
Our selection of videos on this month's theme.
Including videos about Food (In)Security: Access, Equity, Frameworks, Feeding The Future, Africa's Food Systems in 2030 and many more.
View the videos... |
|
|
Noticeboard
World Food Day
16 October 2013
“ Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition” will be the focus of World Food Day in 2013.
Read more on our noticeboard
|
|
Blog on EU-Africa Relations
The European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) has launched a blog on EU-Africa relations to provide a space for dialogue in the lead-up to the EU-AU summit early next year. Read more...
|
|
|
