4 reasons why tackling social and economic exclusion within countries is the key to building the adaptive capacity of Africa’s agri-food systems

The Context: Have you ever heard the phrase “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”? The same can be said for nations looking to build climate-resilient and sustainable agri-food systems.

The agri-food system is a network of agricultural supply chains working to provide everyone with nutrition and food security. Supply chains comprise several interconnected, independent individuals and groups working together to ensure sufficient production, processing, distribution, and consumption of agriculture and food products. Strongly linked individuals and groups are necessary for supply chains to operate efficiently and effectively, even when faced with external shocks. Individuals and groups are strongly linked when they have access to resources, networks, and services to participate meaningfully in society's economic, cultural, and political domains for their well-being and social cohesiveness.  On the other his, when access and subsequent participation are hindered, they become weak links.

The consequence of hindered access and participation is social and economic exclusion. It affects certain individuals, communities, and regions more than others mainly because of institutional and structural processes that have produced biased norms and resulted in unequal access and participation barriers. From a climate change standpoint, the excluded are denied the capacities and opportunities to prepare, respond, cope and recover from climate-related shocks. In an agrifood system, they serve as weak links that compromise the system’s overall capacity to adapt to climate change. Given this, it is reasonable to argue that social and economic exclusion points to the citizens’ circumstances that make them and their communities vulnerable in the first place. As such, it may be considered the root cause of Africa’s agri-food system’s persistent low adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change effects. Here are the 4 reasons why:

1.      There are many weak links in the system.

A sizeable section of Africa's population—rural households, smallholder farmers, small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), women, and young people—is commonly socially and economically excluded—facing multiple and intersecting forms of inequality.  Yet, they are important players in every aspect of the food and agriculture systems. Rural households account for more than half of the population. Inadequate access to infrastructure, institutions, services and markets is a defining feature of their locations. Over 30 million households depend on rainfed smallholder farming as their primary source of livelihood and account for as much as 70% of the food supply. Even so, they are limited by their constrained access to technology, capital, and information. Millions of SMEs are filling the access gaps by giving smallholder farmers vital links to input and output markets—handling about two-thirds of the food consumed. However, access to finance is a major limiting factor. The female share of the smallholder farmers and agri-SMEs is 60-80% and a third, respectively. However, women typically have lesser access to and control over productive resources. Last but not least, 126 million of the 400 million youth (ages 15 to 35) on the continent are in the 20–24 age range and live in rural areas. Most of these young people are involved in unpaid family farming due to various obstacles that prevent them from accessing productive resources and skills for paid employment.

2.      The knock-on effects in the system are devastating.

In the last few decades, Africa's agri-food system has been damaged by the hazards of climate change, such as extreme weather events, because of the large number of excluded individuals. Even while the excluded groups have been disproportionately affected by each passing event, these effects have been far-reaching and frequently cascaded into several causal sequence effects inside the agri-food system and onto other sectors. It all begins with significant agricultural output losses, particularly in rural regions, brought on by the destruction of current production. The losses affect the availability and cost of staple foods in local, national, and international markets. For instance, the production of maize, a crucial staple food crop grown mostly by smallholder farmers, fell by more than 50% in some countries in Southern Africa during the drought that struck in 2015–16. This experience led to major shortages in the countries’ domestic maize supply and increased the need for food imports. The result was an escalation of domestic prices that ranged from 30% to over 100% above the five-year average. This response impacted people's ability to obtain and consume adequate amounts and quality food. Correspondingly, there was a noticeable rise in the number of food-insecure and undernourished people from 29.1 and 5 million in 2015 to 34.4 and 5.5 million in 2016, respectively. The rural population, women and children were among the most affected. Thus, impacting the health outcomes of the affected.

3.      There is a significant opportunity cost attached to the exclusion.

As in many other African institutions of governance, the excluded groups are seldom adequately represented in climate governance. Despite being the most impacted by climate change, they are rarely acknowledged as important players in the effort to combat it. They are frequently missing out on participation in decision-making processes impacting and influencing the formulation of climate action plans. For instance, of the 53 countries studied, only 5 had developed institutional frameworks for adaptation that reached the local level. Of those, only 2 included the traditional institutions mostly followed by the rural population. Consequently, most developed solutions overlook local socio-economic realities and related climate vulnerabilities. As an illustration, gender is cited in less than 20% of climate measures in three of the five sub-regions of Africa, according to an examination of the continent's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)[1].  The lack of involvement and consultation with the excluded groups has hampered the groups' capacity to solve problems and make decisions. The cost of this is the loss of social capital that Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)[2] provides to survive shocks and build the resilience of future agriculture. Consequently, local capacities and community-driven innovation to address climate change are weakened and vulnerabilities are worsened—leading to increased dependency and greater pressure on the already financially constrained public systems. This fact is confirmed by the millions of citizens who need food relief whenever an extreme climate event occurs. Amongst those that need relief, most are in rural areas and are women and children.

 4.      There is a vicious circle linking climate events with exclusion.

A sizeable fraction of the continent's excluded population is trapped in a high-vulnerability cycle because they have limited access to insurance and social safety net protections that help them recover from and mitigate the damaging socioeconomic effects of climate-induced disasters. Their capacity to recover both quickly and fully is further impeded by the harmful coping mechanisms they regularly use in response to the huge losses in their livelihoods that occur after every episode. A case in point is Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, where thousands of mostly rural farming households continued to live in temporary shelters a year after Cyclone Idai struck. Many could not return to their homes to rebuild and restart their agricultural production activities. Furthermore, the destruction of the planting stock and production infrastructure and the loss of access to savings hindered production for the growing season following the cyclone. In addition, unmet financial needs keep the most disadvantaged people from receiving the crucial relief and recovery aid that would otherwise enable them to start over—as was confirmed by the more than 75% funding shortfall in the initial responses to Cyclone Idai. Consequently, the vulnerability to climate change effects becomes entrenched. Those impacted suffer much greater losses when the next incident happens, and their production hardly ever recovers.

In conclusion: Evidently, the adaptive capacity of agri-food systems in Africa is weakened by the significant number of socially and economically excluded individuals in its population. Their exclusion refers to the circumstances that first make individuals vulnerable to climate change effects and turn them into weak links. Without addressing these persons' vulnerabilities, their exposure to climate events will continue to have far-reaching and long-lasting effects on entire systems. Hence, it is essential to prioritise strategies and policies centred on tackling social and economic exclusion, if Africa is to build climate-resilient and sustainable agrifood systems successfully.

[1] Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are climate action commitments to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts developed by all countries that are signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement.

[2] The term "Indigenous Knowledge Systems" (IKS) refers to a collection of customs, beliefs, methods, approaches, and abilities inherent in a particular culture and cultivated over time by local communities through trial and error and a deep understanding of the local environment. IKS is frequently passed down orally from generation to generation