Abstract:
The study examines food insecurity in Africa, its causes, impacts, and the efforts made towards solving it, taking Cameroon as a case study. The research lays emphasis on food shortage in Africa and ways of sorting it out, in order to reach food self-sufficiency and therefore prevent African countries from soliciting food aids, taking into consideration the challenges of climate change and political unrests most African countries are facing. The imbalanced industrial development between Cameroon urban and rural areas has led to rural exodus and has had a negative impact on agriculture. Moreover, lack of incentives for farmers interested in food products on the part of government has forced many farmers into growing such annuity products as cocoa, tea, cotton etc., which are generally subsidized. This phenomenon has caused the annual food consumption to be higher than the production, as people produce what they don’t consume and consume what they do not produce, despite the arable lands and the political stability that the country enjoys. This study reviewed eight research works and differs from them in the sense that it covers all African countries with Cameroon as acase study. The Thesis usedstatistical, descriptive, analytical, and statistical analysis’s methods. The main hypothesis of the study was that traditional agricultural system cannot help achieve food security. It also posited that instability and lack of cooperation amongst African countries in the domain of agriculture hinder food security.
The results revealed that food security in Africa is mostly affected by wars which cause mass displacements within and out of countries. Thus, the study recommends that the African Union should make more efforts towards reducing armed conflicts in Africa. It should also study benefit of taking francophone African countries out of the CFA franc zone. Finally, it should strengthen cooperation ties amongst African countries in the domain of agriculture by building a common silos where countries can store their grains in order to avoid unnecessary losses
