Tackle postharvest loses now or face hunger, African leaders urged

Experts across Africa have called on national governments and regional bodies to adopt effective policies and technology-driven interventions to reduce post-harvest losses destroying food security. They made the call during a webinar on ‘Accelerating Access to Post-Harvest Management Technologies for Enhanced Food Security and Trade in Africa’ organised by the AATF. Dr Emmanuel Okogbenin, the […]

Experts across Africa have called on national governments and regional bodies to adopt effective policies and technology-driven interventions to reduce post-harvest losses destroying food security.

They made the call during a webinar on ‘Accelerating Access to Post-Harvest Management Technologies for Enhanced Food Security and Trade in Africa’ organised by the AATF.

Dr Emmanuel Okogbenin, the Director of Programme Development and Commercialization at AATF, said the promotion and uptake of integrated post-harvest management systems, which include best of technologies, was the best approach to manage post- harvest losses.

He called for the upscaling of the traditional and modern post-harvest management techniques to encourage uptake and use.

Dr Okogbenin advocated selling technologies at discounted prices for farmers to try at home and see the value in purchasing and setting up easy and affordable demonstration trials for post-harvest management.

He also called on African governments to increase investment in Agricultural Biotechnology through development of varieties that can curtail post-harvest diseases and enhance resistance to bruising.

Dr Komla Bissi, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Coordinator at the African Union Commission, noted that post-harvest loss is not unique to Africa as 1.3 billion metric tons of food representing about 30 percent of global food produced is lost every year to post-harvest related issues.

Dr Bissi, who spoke on “Creating an Enabling Environment for Efficient Post-harvest Management to Facilitate Regional Trade in the context of AfCFTA: The role of regional bodies” said, Africa was losing 100m metric ton of food every year which is equivalent to $4bn. These losses have the potentials of meeting the food need and requirement of about 44 million people annually.

“There is need to improve systemic capacities of national institutions across the continent. At the AU level, we are already working with national governments to develop strategies to reduce these losses but there is need for the involvement of the private sector players as we strive to explore options to attract and increase finances to address this critical area,” he added.

Dr Gabriel Rugalema, the Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa region at World Vegetable Center, said that eliminating postharvest losses is an imperative for social, economic, environmental and food security reasons.

Dr Rugalema noted that the use of off-the-shelf technologies and practices such as sun drying, blanching, smoking, and salting to reduce PHL exist and are accessible, but added that political will is urgently needed to support scale up and wide adoption of such technologies.