Why Africa can't win the war against hunger with donated money

In January 2025, African Heads of State and governments met in Kampala and adopted the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Kampala Declaration, the latest chapter in a story that began in Maputo in 2003 when our leaders first committed to allocating at least 10 per cent of national budgets to agriculture. Two decades later, we are still talking about fulfilling that promise, even as the hunger situation quietly worsens across the continent.

The irony? We grow the world’s coffee, cocoa, and cashews but when it comes to feeding ourselves, we look outward, not inward. As we fail to invest in feeding ourselves, we spend an estimated USD 70-85 billion every year importing food, much of it the same maize, rice, and wheat that we could easily produce at home. It’s what I call a negative-sum game. We lose twice, first by not investing, and again by paying others to feed us.

Our continent’s food systems sometimes feel like a pot that never boils, no matter how long it stays on the fire. The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report confirms what we already know but often pretend to be surprised by: 307 million Africans are chronically hungry, and over a billion cannot afford a healthy diet. That’s not a statistic, it’s an indictment. Hunger is human-made, but so are the solutions. People are going hungry not because we lack food, but because of our inaction. Hunger isn’t a tragedy; it’s a failure of leadership, and every empty plate is a result of political inaction and ignored voices.

We have become experts at diagnosing hunger but are allergic to funding the cure. The 4th CAADP Biennial Review shows that no African country, including Kenya, is on track to meet the CAADP Malabo target of ending hunger by 2025. Only a handful of countries, sporadically, have ever met the 10 per cent public expenditure commitment to agriculture. Where the promise was met, these critical investments rarely reached those who needed it the most, our smallholder producers and processors at the very local level.

We make beautiful declarations of Maputo, Malabo and now Kampala, but when it’s time to open the wallet, the enthusiasm suddenly fades. Let’s be honest, we’ve been trying to fight hunger with other people’s money. And that, right there, is the problem.

External support has its place, but when nearly every food transformation strategy, school feeding programme, or climate-smart agriculture plan is pegged to donor cycles, it’s like building a house on rented land. At some point, the landlord comes knocking.

It’s time we took our food security seriously and vigorously invested in shaping our food systems for healthy people and the planet. Because hunger in Africa isn’t just a food problem, it’s a poverty problem, a governance problem, and a systems problem. Our farmers don’t just want to feed us, they aim to make a living from their sweat, pay for their children’s education, health care and maybe enjoy a holiday.

To sustainably tackle this, we must invest in a systems approach. We can’t fix hunger by focusing on farms alone. We have to look at the whole ecosystem, from soil health and water access to markets, social protection, and gender equity and more importantly for African countries, research and development. Poverty, after all, is the invisible ingredient spoiling Africa’s food story.

When smallholder farmers, most of them women, are the poorest in the chain, no amount of yield increase will solve hunger. Systems thinking is about seeing those connections, how climate change dries up rivers, how weak infrastructure raises food prices, how poor nutrition lowers productivity, and how all these factors deepen poverty.

If we strive to fix one without the other, then we may just be rearranging maize sacks in a leaking granary.

Of course, I state this fully aware that most of our African governments are fiscally strained. We should welcome external support to fill gaps, but not replace our own committed domestic investments. Because it isn’t just about money, it’s about ownership. When we fund our own food systems, we decide our priorities. We invest in what works locally, not what looks good in a report. We can align our agricultural budgets with nutrition outcomes, climate adaptation, and youth employment all at once. That’s what systems thinking is all about: Joining the dots before drawing new ones

And the benefits would ripple out. Imagine if local (county) governments had flexible budgets for school meals sourced from nearby farmers. Imagine regional trade corridors actually moving African food surplus to deficit areas without customs offices holding them hostage.
Sounds ambitious? It is. But it’s cheaper than the USD 70 billion import bill that Africa spends each year. 

Ending hunger in Africa isn’t about discovering a new miracle crop or creating another grand strategy. It’s about putting our money where our mouth is. It’s about African governments recognising food systems as the foundation to peace, national security and a guard to our sovereignty.

As we mark the Africa Day for Food and Nutrition Security, may we also mark the beginning of Africa’s self-funded food systems transformation.