On his recent trip to Africa, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about food security at the AfricaRice Headquarters in Cote d’Ivoire. He expressed optimism that Africa will eventually be able to feed itself.
What is needed is technology to grow resilient crops and infrastructure to distribute the African harvest. “These are some of the things that we’re working on,” said Secretary Blinken, “including with the investments we’re making in the Lobito Corridor.”
The world recently faced an almost perfect storm of crises including the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which have had a devastating impact on food security, especially in Africa, said Secretary Blinken:
“And of course, when you’ve got that kind of crisis you want to jump in and do everything you possibly can on an emergency basis to help people. And that’s exactly what the United States did, providing billions of dollars in additional assistance to countries in need. We’re by far the number-one donor to the World Food Program.”
But what Africans really want is to be able to feed themselves. USAID’s Feed the Future is a longstanding program that has made a huge difference. But the U.S. has introduced a new initiative called a Vision for Adapted Soil and Crops, or VACS. Adapting current crops to be more resilient is part of the program said Secretary Blinken:
“Along with rice, there are other traditional crops in Africa that are remarkably nutritious – in other words, they don’t just bring a caloric benefit; they bring real nutrition with them, as you’re doing with the rice – that can be adapted to be climate resilient so that they can stand up to the extreme events and weather patterns that are afflicting crops around the world – and that will appeal to people here in Africa.”
If you put that together with the other half of VACS, which provides the technology to map the soil quality of a field, you can “raise productive capacity throughout Africa in ways that we haven’t seen before, and that can bring Africa to the point not only of self-sufficiency, but of feeding others,” said Secretary Blinken.
All of these innovations help answer one of the most profound needs that we have, said Secretary Blinken, “because as President Biden said, if you can’t feed your child nothing else really matters.”
