It’s well known that Africa faces an imminent dilemma as far as food security is concerned: the majority of its farmers are in the twilight of their careers, aged 60 on average, and their offspring – who see farming as not being chic enough – are not too keen on taking over when they call it quits in the next five years to a decade.

In recent years, the food security situation on the continent, particularly in our sub-Saharan Africa neck of the woods, has been exacerbated by natural disasters, most of them linked to climate change. Cases in point are tropical cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which pummelled the eastern part of Southern Africa in 2019.

Climate change is really bad news for sub- Saharan Africa, where an estimated 50% of the population depends on rain-fed agriculture, as well as herding and fishing, for their livelihood. This means a drought or any other climate shock, such as a cyclone or flooding, severely reduces food production, with the resultant shortages triggering price increases to levels many may not be able to afford.

The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. As Pritha Mitra and Seung Mo Choi, economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), observed in a recent article, measures taken by many governments on the continent to curb the spread of the disease have the potential to exacerbate food insecurity in the region. “Border closures, lockdowns and curfews intended to slow the spread of the disease are disrupting supply chains that, even under normal circumstances, struggle to stock markets and supply farmers with seeds and other inputs,” Mitra and Choi stated in the article, which was published early this month.

Against this background, they urge the governments of sub-Saharan African countries to include policies that mitigate food insecurity in their stimulus packages to counter the impacts of Covid-19 and measures taken to curb its spread. But they emphasise that these must be policies with outsized impacts.

“For instance, progress in finance, telecoms, housing and healthcare can reduce a family’s chance of facing food shortages by 30%,” they wrote.

Mitra and Choi elaborated that improved access to finance would enable households to afford food, even at the elevated price levels associated with periods of shortages. Access to mobile phone networks enable citizens to benefit from early warning systems, while ensuring that farmers have access to information on food prices and the weather. “Just a single text could help them decide when to plant or irrigate,” Mitra and Choi quipped.

Better-built houses and farm buildings, on the other hand, would protect both people and stored food against climate shocks. This, coupled with decent sanitation and drainage systems, would preserve people’s ability to earn an income by preventing injury and the spread of disease.

The IMF economists added that improved healthcare would help people to return to work quickly after a climate shock, which, along with education, raised people’s income and helped inform their decision-making.

Mitra and Choi noted, however, that implementing these outsized-impact interventions would cost a lot of money, estimated at $30-billion to $50-billion a year – equivalent to between 2% and 3% of the region’s gross domestic product – over the next decade. “Securing sources of financing is especially challenging against the background of the pandemic and global risk aversion. But by stepping up financial support for adaptation to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, development partners can make a tremendous difference in helping Africans put food on the table and recover from the pandemic,” they wrote.

Where countries are able to secure the requisite financing, it would be far less costly to invest now than to undertake frequent disaster relief in the future in terms of both lives and livelihoods.