How an African Bioeconomy Can Strengthen Agrifood Systems in the Context of a Changing Climate

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Opinion by Ousmane Badiane (dakar, senegal)Monday, December 16, 2024Inter Press Service

DAKAR, Senegal, Dec 16 (IPS) - From increased pests and diseases to lower crop yields and extreme weather events, the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture in Africa cannot be overstated.

Climate shocks will present major roadblocks to the continent's rapidly growing population, especially if global temperatures remain on their upward trajectory. Urgent and effective action is therefore needed to mitigate these threats to food security and livelihoods. Despite the growing stresses on Africa's agrifood systems, the bioeconomy offers opportunities to improve food security, tackle climate change, and support development goals. The solution lies in sustainably leveraging Africa's natural resources. While the continent is highly vulnerable to climate change, its rich biodiversity offers tangible opportunities to address multiple challenges simultaneously. New evidence shows that Africa can leverage a much broader and more systemic approach to addressing the impacts of climate change on agrifood systems and beyond through its bioeconomy. Characterized by sustainable production and use of biological resources to create innovative products, processes, and services for all economic sectors, bioeconomy involves the use of scientific knowledge to add social and economic value to biological resources in an environmentally sustainable way. The latest ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) makes a case for converging the two pressing agendas of climate change and the bioeconomy toward building resilient agrifood systems in Africa. Harnessing Africa's ecological wealth and investing in the continent's bioeconomy can yield multiple development benefits across various sectors while contributing to climate resilience, sustainable agriculture, and economic growth. Science and technology offer a viable pathway for the development of bioeconomy solutions. African countries will benefit from establishing robust science, research, and technology systems to leverage opportunities offered by the bioeconomy. Research initiatives to develop climate-resilient tools for farmers can go a long way in protecting food security and livelihoods from climate shocks. A successful example is the redesign of Uganda's research system through the National Agricultural Advisory Services program. This program focused on rebuilding relationships across the country's agrifood system value chain, from the farm level all the way to regional chiefs, district coordinators, and private or semi-private service delivery companies. Through this approach, farmers defined demand and had their research and innovation needs addressed through a national coordination network combined with the private sector. This has improved the availability and quality of advisory services provided to farmers and promoted the adoption and use of modern production technologies and practices. Furthermore, Africa's bioeconomy can create rural and agriculture-adjacent jobs for its youthful population while enabling economic diversification and growth. Leveraging Africa's vast untapped potential will open up new industries and value chains that can drive job creation and livelihoods across the continent, especially for rural youth and other marginalized groups. Emerging innovations like biological waste conversion using black soldier flies (BSF), and earthworms have opened up new markets and, consequently, new job opportunities. At the same time, these circular solutions benefit natural ecosystems, in turn supporting better conditions for crop and livestock production systems. Domestic and cross-border trade also plays a vital role in facilitating economic growth through the bioeconomy. Increasing food demand can drive specialization and intensification of the agrifood sector and bioeconomy, ultimately incentivizing productivity, supply, and income increases. Existing policy tools such as the AfCFTA can reduce trade barriers across the continent's bioeconomy and deliver better economic outcomes. Recent research argues for a nutrition-sensitive circular bioeconomy that can be adopted to drive food security and nutrition outcomes while tackling waste management. For example, converting biowaste to vermicompost, biofertilizers, and biopesticides can reduce the costs and environmental burdens of synthetic chemicals while simultaneously improving agricultural productivity and food availability. Strengthening the bioscience environment across sectors is critical. Under the Advanced Agriculture and Food cluster, South Africa's Council for Scienti?c and Industrial Research (CSIR) aims to increase the output of high-value foods, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, and traditional African medical products. The Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC) has advanced over 100 bioproducts in cosmetics, nutrition, and biotechnology. A key success story from this case study is VIDA Pharmaceuticals, which produces accessible and affordable nutritious food products from baobab and maize. In the wake of COP29, channeling more climate finance toward Africa's bioeconomy is critical. Increasing investments in innovative financing models such as blended finance which leverages concessional capital from public and philanthropic sources to de-risk private investments can support climate goals in Africa's agrifood systems. There is political momentum for Africa's converging climate change and bioeconomy agendas. South Africa was the first African country to develop a dedicated bioeconomy strategy in 2013, followed by Namibia, which published its national bioeconomy strategy in 2024. The East African Community (EAC) is the first regional economic bloc to develop a dedicated regional bioeconomy strategy in 2022. The global shift toward sustainability and the green economy presents new opportunities for Africa to position itself as a leader in the bioeconomy. Policy action to embrace an African bioeconomy would entail the ability to deploy tailored and contextualized interventions to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity while advancing sustainable growth. Increased investments in Africa's resilience and green growth agendas from the continent's leaders, private sectors, and other stakeholders are the first steps towards realizing this potential. The promise of a robust bioeconomy offers a viable growth and development pathway that can contribute to lower carbon emissions, better preservation of biodiversity, and greater prospects for decent jobs and livelihoods.