One in five Africans – some 260 million people, most of them in rural areas – are going hungry. No region faces a more severe food-security crisis. While smallholder farming and rural livelihoods still account for over half of employment on the continent, African farmers have been pushed out of local markets, and the region’s overall food import bill has risen from $7.9 billion in 1993-95 to $43.6 billion in 2018-20. This development is symptomatic of a wider loss of food self-reliance in Africa, owing to population growth, urbanization, and an expanding middle class’s increased demand for food. Though the Senegal River Valley was one of the world’s earliest rice centers, Senegal’s farmers now struggle to compete in the country’s urban centers against imports from India. Yet Asian rice accounts for over 40% of consumption in the region, making Africa the world’s largest import market for the grain. After maize, it is Africa’s most important food staple. Rice has been cultivated in Africa for more than 3,000 years, and it is now grown by more than 35 million farmers in 40 countries across the region. But one thing is not in dispute: Much of the rice now used in jollof is grown not by West African farmers, but in India, Thailand, and Vietnam. While Senegalese can claim to have invented the popular rice-based dish, Nigerians, Ghanaians, and others across the region will fiercely defend their own recipes as the tastiest. If you are looking for an argument in West Africa, try asking which country serves the best jollof.
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