Leaders from Nigeria and other African countries, as well as the broader global development community, have been urged to view food security as the foundation of sustainable peace, rather than just a development concern.
Speaking in Chicago at the Food Security and Global Peace Dialogue held over the weekend, development communication expert and publisher of Africa Indicator magazine, Olatunji Oke, drew attention to the direct link between hunger and rising insecurity across the country and continent.
“When families go hungry, they don’t just lose weight, they lose hope and desperation too often becomes a catalyst for violence and migration. Food security is not just a development goal; it is the bedrock of global peace,” he said.
Citing figures from the United Nations and World Food Programme, Oke described a dire picture of food insecurity across Africa. In 2023, over nine per cent of humanity remained undernourished, with sub-Saharan Africa bearing the brunt. Over 52 million people in West and Central Africa alone are facing acute food insecurity this lean season, many of them in conflict zones where hunger has become a recruitment tool for insurgent groups.
“In places like Mali and Burkina Faso, armed groups offer food and protection in exchange for loyalty. In the Lake Chad Basin, Boko Haram continues to exploit hunger, especially among displaced populations.”
Noting that the situation in Nigeria is particularly alarming, he said over 2.9 million people are food insecure in the Northeast and over two million are internally displaced due to conflict. He added that hunger has become both a symptom and a driver of instability, noting that farmer-herder clashes in central Nigeria, especially in Benue and Nasarawa, have further compounded the problem, leaving farmlands abandoned and markets disrupted.
He, however, noted that Africa holds the keys to its transformation. “We possess 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet we import over $50 billion worth of food yearly. This is a paradox we must resolve.”
He outlined several paths forward, including scaling the African Development Bank’s Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones across Nigeria, supporting youth-led hydroponic and vertical farming in cities like Lagos and branding agritourism and indigenous food festivals as economic drivers.
