africa

Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
the greater participation of poor households in value chains, providing a means for
them to escape poverty and achieve longer-term livelihood security. To engage the
private sector for these purposes entails building strategic partnerships around the
common goal of reducing households’ vulnerability (ACF, 2014; Fan and others, 2014).
25.3.3 Economic transformation
Economic transformation entails both the movement of people and resources out of
traditional agriculture and herding, and a modernization of those traditional sectors
through changes in technology, investments in physical capital, and increases in
human capital. To accelerate this transformation, Africa needs to significantly boost
its agriculture and fisheries, which together provide livelihoods for roughly two-thirds
of all Africans (Africa Progress Panel, 2014).
Existing transformation paradigms have largely ignored the role of resilience, which
is a goal in itself as well as an instrumental factor for asset accumulation, as the
literature on poverty traps indicates (Barrett, and others, 2008; Barrett and McPeak,
2006). In arid and semi-arid lands, there is evidence that people are falling out of
pastoralism into low-return and relatively unsustainable activities, such as firewood/
charcoal collection (Devereux, 2006).
25.4 Recommendations
Tackling food and nutrition insecurity in Africa will require an integrated, multi-sectoral,
holistic approach. Reducing food losses and wastage is one of the critical aspects
that will go a long way in helping the continent to meet its food and nutrition needs.
The following are some recommendations for this purpose.
Improve post-harvest storage. New storage technologies have been developed,
such as green technologies (solar dryers) that improve the lifetime of products in
storage and, in turn, increase food security and economic benefits for the producers
(Lipinski and others, 2013).
Raise awareness about food losses. There is a significant lack of coherence in
data gathering, data sharing, and data analysis, in addition to limited capacity to
carry out these activities. This makes it difficult to estimate the environmental impact
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