Things We Learned From the UN Food Systems Summit

This week, the United Nations hosted its 2021 Food Systems Summit. The summit — distinct from next month’s annual World Food Day, which celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, is designed to leverage the food system to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

In creating this summit, the UN is rightly making a strong statement about the centrality of food to achieving the SDGs. Food weaves its way into many of the goals, which encompass global health, livelihoods, and how we treat all life on the land and in the water, as well as a host of food, nutrition, and equity issues.

The UN is making an equally strong statement about the centrality of Africa in achieving the SDGs by appointing Dr. Agnes Kalibata, former Rwandan Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, as its special envoy to the summit. While Africa was central to the summit, its role in feeding us (and vice versa) was not center stage.

The event comes just after the World Bank released its Groundswell report which finds that climate change could drive up to 86 million people to emigrate from sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change is now shorthand for “not enough food being produced” as it brings severe weather, drought, and changes in growing conditions that make harvests less predictable.

The global policy dialogue recognizes that the future of our people and our planet will be shaped by what the next generation of Africans will eat. What’s missing is a recognition of the role Africa has already played in feeding us in America, and the important role of Africa as a driver of growth in our food industry. This is part of a much more positive view of the future that American food companies are beginning to embrace.

Africa Already Feeds America

That is something my firm focused on when we hosted a virtual Thank You Africa event during last year’s UN World Food Day celebration. Together with chefs, musicians, executives, and entrepreneurs from the U.S. and Africa, we showed appreciation for how African agriculture has already contributed greatly to the American pantry and helped to create substantial value for America’s food industry.

Foods we eat every day and think of as “American,” like rice pudding, jambalaya, chilis, and coffee are native to Africa. Tilapia, the fish that spurred the modern aquaculture industry, comes from Rwanda and the Congo. And cola nuts — along with many other seeds — were brought over by enslaved Africans during their middle passage journey’s to purify tepid drinking water.

John Pemberton, the inventor of coca-cola and a former lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army, gave much credit to the coca leaves from South America but somehow overlooked the equally important contribution brought by enslaved Africans to one of America’s favorite beverages.

Africa is Poised to Drive Growth for the Food Industry

Companies from PepsiCo to Krispy Kreme are looking for growth in Africa where, over the next generation, more people will be born on the continent than in the rest of the world, according to the World Bank, as well as the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Between 1960 and 2050, sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to grow from 227 million people to 2.2 billion, with about 1 out of every 4 people living on the African continent within the next decades.

This April, Burger King entered the Nigerian market where growth is forecast to be faster still, while General Mills is working to build capacity in the region’s food and agriculture sector.

But the persistent challenge of food insecurity may lead many to move and disperse the market into a necessary diaspora. From my interactions with philanthropic and development agencies, getting the right food may be as big a challenge as getting enough food. To date, much of that effort has been on replicating the western model of growing corn and soy to feed poultry and livestock.

However, food isn’t just calories. It’s also about culture. Both American companies and policy makers will do better if we recognize that Africa is substantially a fish-eating culture, especially in the sub-Saharan region. There, foods from lakes, rivers, and oceans makes up about half of all protein for those in the bottom half of the population by income. Their complex culinary traditions include smoked and dried fish cooked in ways that are only now reaching American menus and kitchens, and they reflect centuries of innovation in preserving fish that evolved before refrigerated storage and cold supply chains.

Top Chefs and Big Businesses Are Taking Note

Leading the way in sharing African culture and cuisine with the U.S. market is Chef Pierre Thiam, whose company Yolele Foods, is distributing the next generation of superfoods like fonio from east sub-Saharan Africa continuing the arrival of new flavors and foods from Africa to America.

Shifting the focus to providing fish and seafood is something that global protein companies like Cargill and JBS are already doing as they make their first major investments in aquaculture. BP, along with the venture fund Aquaspark, is also investing in aquaculture for Africa.

With the food summit now complete, aid and development agencies can, and should, tilt their policies towards aquatic foods, part of the now trendy “Blue Economy” that promises better livelihoods for coastal communities along with carbon sequestration.

For those making a business of producing and selling food, something more tangible and delicious than policy statements and position papers, we can be grateful that Africa can serve up the next several decades of growth, if we also pay attention to what’s growing in the ocean we cross along the way.

Arlin Wasserman is the founder and managing director of Changing Tastes, a food strategy consultancy. He is the creator of the Plant-Forward culinary strategy and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Fellow.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.