Building Stronger Food Systems: Q&A with Adesuwa Akinboro for World Food Day
In this Q&A for World Food Day, we explore the importance of food systems in ensuring food security and shaping the future of nations. As Africa's most populous country, Nigeria faces challenges and opportunities in this area. To highlight these issues, we spoke with Adesuwa Akinboro, TechnoServe’s Nigeria country director, about how sustainable food systems can help address these challenges and support communities beyond Nigeria.
TechnoServe: What is a sustainable food system?
Adesuwa: Food systems represent all the people, places, processes, structures, and systems involved in the entire food value chain—from production to distribution, processing, marketing, and food consumption. It’s everything from farm to fork.
For these systems to be sustainable, they must be locally led, locally driven, inclusive, resilient, and resistant to shocks and stresses. This means that the people within the food system must also be resilient to shocks and stresses, whether economic or environmental.
TechnoServe: What key factors are needed to build a sustainable food system?
Adesuwa: When we talk about sustainability and food security, the critical factors to building a sustainable food system include:
- Understanding and mapping out all the players within the food system—their roles and where they operate in the value chain.
- Identifying the gaps, what’s broken, and what needs to be fixed to make the food system efficient, resilient, and sustainable.
- Understanding the major shocks and stresses that impact the value chain and determining which players are affected. These could be environmental, economic, or climate-related.
TechnoServe: What are the major challenges facing Nigeria’s food systems today, and how do they impact food security and sustainability?
Adesuwa: The significant challenges impacting Nigeria’s food systems today include:
- Low yield and productivity across various crops in the value chain.
- High levels of food loss and waste: Post-harvest losses in some value chains can reach as high as 40-50%.
- Access to quality inputs, skills, finance, and markets for smallholder farmers across different value chains and crops, whether food crops or cash crops.
- Knowledge and skills gaps among smallholder farmers: This includes needing additional knowledge of good agricultural practices, organic farming, regenerative practices, and other techniques that help them produce optimal yields and high-quality crops acceptable for both local and international consumption.
- Insecurity: This issue is widespread across various regions, particularly in rural and remote farming areas.
- Inflation and macroeconomic policies: High prices negatively affect both farmers and consumers.
- Infrastructure: This includes poor road networks and other infrastructural deficits.
- Environmental issues: Changing weather patterns, flooding, and drought further compound the challenges.
TechnoServe: What opportunities exist to improve the efficiency and resilience of local food systems?
Adesuwa: Opportunities exist across all levels of the value chain:
- At the market and distribution level, there are opportunities to improve distribution channels, market access, and overall efficiency. This can be achieved by strengthening connections between farmers, logistics providers, financial institutions, processors, and other players across the value chain—while also reducing post-harvest losses.
- At the food processing level, we can enhance processors’ efficiency, support them with good manufacturing practices, and improve their incomes and product quality. There are also opportunities to increase access to finance and local and global markets, enhance products’ nutritional value, and support market entry for small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs. Additionally, we can improve investment in processing to reduce post-harvest losses.
- Lastly, although often overlooked, we can drive the circular economy by reducing food waste and reusing or recycling solid waste materials, including packaging and plastics that are harmful to the environment.
TechnoServe: How does TechnoServe’s work improve sustainable agriculture and food security in Nigeria?
Adesuwa: At the market level, we connect farmers to markets and processors, facilitating linkages across the market. For example, through our Citi Foundation-funded horticulture project, we work to reduce post-harvest losses at the storage level, improve yields, and connect farmers to food processors, markets, and consumers.
At the processing level, we provide processors with technical assistance and capacity building to improve their efficiency. For example, in our U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded Prosper Cashew project, we are building the capacity of cashew processors, enhancing their efficiency, and increasing the volume of cashews processed locally in Nigeria and across the continent.
Additionally, we support food processors in fortifying their products to ensure they remain nutritious, as nutrients are often lost during processing. Through our Inspiring Good Nutrition Initiatives Through Enterprise (IGNITE) project, we help processors of wheat flour, edible oil, rice, and sugar to fortify their foods and ensure these products are nutritious when they reach consumers.
Finally, we also support the circular economy through a project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Coca-Cola Foundation. In this project, we promote recycling plastics used in packaging food and drinks, helping to reduce the environmental footprints of the food and beverage companies involved.
TechnoServe: Can you share an innovative solution that TechnoServe has introduced to enhance the resilience of Nigeria’s food systems?
Adesuwa: One innovative solution is our focus on building the capacity of farmers in regenerative agricultural practices. Regenerative agriculture is not entirely new, but it’s a key opportunity to improve soil health and reduce environmental damage in the agricultural sector. Through our programs, we train farmers in these practices, helping them improve their crop volumes and the raw materials supplied to food processors.
Another innovation is the technology-based early warning system we’ve implemented in our Citi Foundation-funded horticulture project, Horticurity—Food Security for Resilient Communities. This system helps farmers, who are often affected by flooding, receive early warnings about upcoming rains and their potential impact, allowing them to take protective measures in advance.
At the processing level, in our Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Technical Assistance Accelerator Project (TAAP), we’ve developed a market-driven platform called the Micronutrient Fortification Index (MFI). The MFI allows private sector companies to rate themselves against government fortification standards. Since it’s market-driven, it puts the private sector in the driver’s seat, ensuring they meet these standards.
TechnoServe: What are you most excited about regarding the future of food systems in Nigeria?
Adesuwa: First of all, it’s very important to strengthen food systems. They need to be resilient and inclusive and provide nutritious foods that feed our communities, countries, and beyond. On World Food Day, no one should be left behind.
One of the most exciting aspects is the ability to reduce food loss and waste. If we can improve productivity but still lose 50% of what we produce, we face a significant deficit. So, reducing food loss and waste while increasing productivity is vital.
Another exciting opportunity is linking farmers to international markets. This allows them to feed their local communities and export their products beyond Nigeria. I find this extremely exciting.
Finally, I’m excited about our work in the circular economy. This is relatively new for us, but looking beyond just food systems and reducing our environmental footprint is incredibly promising. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of these projects and sharing their successes with the world.
Adesuwa Akinboro, based in Abuja, Nigeria, joined TechnoServe as country director in 2022 and leads TechnoServe’s work in Nigeria, including projects focused on food systems transformation, regenerative agriculture, and job creation. TechnoServe Nigeria has over a decade of experience improving productivity and incomes for smallholders in the maize, rice, cashew, tomato, cassava, soy, and poultry value chains, while also enhancing access to inputs, finance, and market linkages.
Additionally, TechnoServe supports small retail shops to become more profitable and expands access to clean water through sustainable business models. The organization is also helping food processors comply with national fortification mandates, increasing nutrient availability in local markets.
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