Industrialization nourishes food security

Xu Shouzhi and his 12 colleagues are typical of many groups of Chinese workers operating across Africa today.

The 63-year old from Qingdao, in eastern Shandong province, is in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, to build a cashew nut processing factory.

"It is exactly like our factory at home," he says.

"All you need to do is put cashews into this tunnel and they will come out cooked at the other end, and then they can be canned," he says.

He takes out a blueprint for the site and points to it proudly with his ballpoint pen.

"The whole cooking process is done by microwave - it's the very latest technology, and it comes straight from China."

Cashews remain a major agricultural export of Mozambique, and Xu's sparkling new production line allows the nuts to be cooked, canned and exported from there, instead of the cashew kernels having to be processed abroad.

According to Christian Mersmann, managing director of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, this emphasis on developing local production is much preferred to straight raw food exports from Africa. Along with local jobs and income, it also delivers what is still considered one Africa's key needs when it comes to its agricultural sector and nutritional security.

Mersmann's Germany-based organization has become a mainstream platform for donors and partners to exchange knowledge and coordinate efforts to improve the quality of global rural development.

During the recent "Building Resilience for Food & Nutrition Security" conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he told China Daily that Africa remains the most fragile continent when it comes to food security.

Organized by the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute - which since 1975 has sought what it calls "sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty" - the three-day event attracted more than 800 policymakers, practitioners and scholars to discuss how Africa's food and nutrition security can be strengthened.

In 2012, the United Nations noted that 28 of Africa's 54 countries faced serious food security issues.

Its figures showed that in 2010, the continent, with a population of over a billion people, accounted for just 165 million tons of grain, or 6.64 percent of the world's total.

Historically, many have blamed Africa's natural conditions, specifically drought, salty soil and erosion, for its food insecurity, but Mersmann says much deeper economic problems across the vast continent also persist.

The basic issue remains that Africa relies on agriculture as the main pillar of its economy, but margins are still low from its agricultural exports, and countries cannot buy sufficient food in return to feed their own people.

In short, its primary agricultural products, he says, remain at the lowest end of the global value chain. "Currently Africa is exporting coffee beans, fruit and lumber, for instance, to people globally, but its processing profits are being earned in Europe, Japan, America and China," he says.

A 500g pack of Ethiopian coffee beans produced by TO.MO.CA - an abbreviation of the Italian name Torrefazione Moderna Caf - the leading coffee company based in Addis Ababa, costs between 96 and 150 birr ($4.90-$7.65), even in the most expensive international hotel near the conference.

But the price for the same size package of coffee powder is $19.99, plus a shipping fee, on Amazon.com in the United States, or 160 yuan ($25.70) in retail outlets in China.

zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn