This is the 12th post in a blog series to be published in 2021 by the Secretariat on behalf of the AU High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET) and the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogues (CJED)

Several strategic intervention frameworks have been implemented to address malnutrition among African communities, such as the Africa Regional Nutritional Strategy (2015 – 2025), among others.[1],[2] Furthermore, the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals aspire to eradicate poverty, hunger, and malnutrition among African communities.[3] However, with such commitments and efforts rendered by decision-makers and policymakers to address malnutrition challenges across the continent, Africa's malnutrition problem persists.

Malnutrition is arguably one of Africa's greatest impediment to achieving sustainable and equitable socio-economic growth. As such, Africa is among the regions in the world where malnutrition is continuously increasing.[4] For instance, it has been reported that the number of malnourished African children has increased from approximately 50.4 million in 2000 to approximately 58.5 million in 2016.[5] It has also been reported that malnourished children delay achieving their expected education milestones by up to four years, compared to well-nourished children.[6] This highlights the direct and indirect impacts of malnutrition on the African populace

The several causes for malnutrition in Africa include household food insecurity, inadequate maternal and childcare, insufficient healthcare, education, clean water, environmental sanitation, and housing.[7] Consequently, this leads to increased poverty levels among African communities and causes them to overly depend on undernutritious food at the expense of nutrient-rich food.[8] In addition, resource-caused conflicts and subsequent armed violence occurrences in some parts of the African continent have led to massive population displacements and drastically limited access to basic social services. Inevitably, this exacerbates children malnutrition to unprecedented levels.[9]

The coronavirus pandemic has also aggravated malnutrition challenges across the continent in an already fragile Africa's socio-economic context. In addition, unpredictable natural disasters and increasing global warming and climate change have led to frequent flood occurrences, locust infestations, and increasing droughts and desert developments. This has caused massive losses of crops, fruits and vegetable production, and animal breeding suitable for nutritiously feeding African communities.

African scientists and innovators have developed Artificial Intelligence (AI) based nutrition management systems in order to address malnutrition through productive agro—food activities proactively. For example, an AI-based system known as the Nutrition Early Warning System (NEWS) has been developed to utilise satellite images to forecast natural disasters such as famine that can potentially lead to nutritional challenges. This is accomplished through manipulating and interpreting data by AI machine learning of past information towards better future climate and weather predictions.[10] Thus, the analysis generates algorithm patterns and trends that can be utilised to identify impending nutrition threats such as climate shocks and socio-economic strife. Therefore, this provides policymakers and decision-makers with the opportunity to proactively introduce strategic agro-food production activities interventions with relevant policy, operational, and infrastructural frameworks.

Furthermore, AI-enabled precision agriculture is increasingly improving food security by providing farmers with effective agricultural diagnostic tools for soil nutrient conditions, crop diseases, and related stress analysis. Therefore, AI technology has offered farmers the capacity to mitigate crop nutrient deficiencies through timely strategic and corrective initiatives. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has implemented two programmes focusing on AI-enabled food security through enhanced agriculture sustainability. These programmes are known as the FAO's Water Productivity Open-Access Portal (WaPOR) and Agriculture Stress Index System (ASIS). Both AI-based systems are utilised to monitor water usage during agricultural production.[11]

Notably, the FAO's WaPOR monitors water in the Near East and African regions and utilises remote sensing technologies to track and report on agricultural water productivity over Africa. This is executed through an open-source technology that gathers massive amounts of data and simultaneously analyses data through AI-enabled algorithms to determine the best water usage for different crops and regions. This AI-enabled data is uploaded in real-time to assist farmers in formulating proactive strategic and timely decisions pertaining to their irrigation schedules on farms. In addition, this helps farmers proactively prepare for impending droughts through enhanced water usage and effectively avail aid to the most troubled areas. Thereby preventing hunger and food shortages through improved agricultural and food security management systems.

AI-enabled Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can also be utilised to support the food supply chain across the Africa continent. Moreover, this emerging technology can potentially help African agro-food regulatory authorities and food suppliers to easily identify food fraud through sophisticated data and security analysis systems.[12] In addition, to enhance the technology adaptation value across agro-food supply chains, blockchain's DLT can be integrated into other technologies such as smart sensors, detectors, and business systems. Consequently, this can ensure secure and improved data verification and food supply management systems' governance.

The African Union High Level Panel on Innovation and Emerging Technologies (APET) encourages African countries to adopt and adapt AI-enabled technological systems that can transform nutrition and livelihoods across the continent. By adopting such technologies, African countries can address malnutrition challenges through enhanced agricultural and sustainable food supply systems. Therefore, African governments are persuaded to provide an enabling environment that can enhance harnessing AI-enabled technologies to address food security challenges across the continent. This entails enacting transparent, explainable, user-friendly, and inclusive AI-enabled food security systems that can impartially advantage Africa's agricultural and food security efforts. In addition, enabling policy and infrastructural frameworks pertaining to AI-based precision agriculture and food security should be strategically capacitated to recognise and protect the rights of African farmers and consuming communities. Thus, there is a need to bridge the digital divide within African communities that are without broadband, internet, mobile phones and digital signal.[13]

Decision-makers and policymakers in African governments, non-governmental organisations, and the private sector are encouraged to prioritise nutritional research, development, innovation, and strategic implementation to address malnutrition across the continent. African governments should recognise and incorporate emerging and innovative technologies towards nutritional management systems, sustainably address climate change and global warming, improve agriculture and food security, as well as food manufacturing and processing.

In conclusion, African countries are urged to take advantage of the opportunities that AI-enabled food security and precision agriculture present according to the Science, Technology, and Innovation Strategy for Africa (STISA-2024) aspirations. This can be implemented such that small-scale farmers are adequately supported to enhance rural development, eradicate poverty, and improve food security. Therefore, human capital investments and enabling policy and regulatory frameworks should be enacted to minimise the risk of exclusion and inequality. Hence, forward-thinking policymakers, innovative start-ups, Africa's global technology partners, civil society groups, and international global stakeholders are encouraged to mobilise and promote vibrant AI ecosystems' growth aimed towards robust food security in Africa.[14] Finally, African countries are encouraged to recalibrate their regulatory frameworks to reinforce data-driven food security technology systems and innovation-driven AI-based food supply growth. Such a strategic approach can strengthen the supportive and collaborative infrastructure for agro-food business development to bolster food security implementation systems for the African continent.

Featured Bloggers – APET Secretariat

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[1] https://au.int/sites/default/files/pages/32895-file-arns_english.pdf.

[2] https://www.icrw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/A-Leadership-Strategy-for-Reducing-Hunger-and-Malnutrition-in-Africa-The-Agriculture-Nutrition-Advantage.pdf.

[3] https://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/pdf/au/agenda2063.pdf.

[4] A.W. Onyango, J. Jean-Baptiste, B. Samburu, T.L.M. Mahlangu, Regional overview on the double burden of malnutrition and examples of program and policy responses: African Region, Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism 75 (2019) 127-130. doi: 10.1159/000503671.

[5] WHO’s Africa Nutrition Report highlights an increase in malnutrition in Africa, 16th November 2017: https://www.afro.who.int/news/whos-africa-nutrition-report-highlights-increase-malnutrition-africa.

[6] https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/good-news-for-the-fight-against-malnutrition/#:~:text=While%20one%20in%20nine%20people,to%2016.5%20percent%20of%20GDP.

[7] https://www.unicef.org/wca/malnutrition.

[8] https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/i-want-to-end-malnutrition-in-africa-thats-why-im-turning-to-big-data-and-algorithms/.

[9] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/west-and-central-africa-more-15-million-cases-acute-malnutrition-expected-2020.

[10] https://foodtank.com/news/2018/12/getting-ahead-of-malnutrition-through-big-data.

[11] https://borgenproject.org/ai-increases-food-security/#:~:text=AI%20increases%20food%20security%20by,the%20need%20for%20actual%20workers.

[12] https://stfc.ukri.org/files/d-champion-state-of-the-art-review-of-blockchains-in-the-food-sector/.

[13] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/3-reasons-why-most-africans-arent-on-the-internet-and-how-to-connect-them/.

[14] https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/7/ZP_Files/ai-for-africa.zp165664.pdf.