Africa, once considered the breadbasket of the world, is now highly dependent on food imports. Steady increases in African populations, high food and input prices and a shortage of food surpluses worldwide will require significant increases in production on the continent in the coming two decades. Many solutions to solve this problem are based on agricultural concepts coming from developed countries, whereas others are based on ideological concepts of production.
On the basis of extensive agricultural experience in and outside of Africa, it is planned to connect the realities of small scale grass-roots agricultural production, where 80 percent of Africans live on < 2 ha of land, with modern technologies. An attempt will be made to formulate multi-disciplinary-based concepts for dealing with the food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. The basic and applied scientific knowledge developed in South Africa will add to weight to the concepts proposed.
Findings on the food security issues will be presented in lectures as well as presented in review papers and strategic documents that: 1) Critically review the complex factors impacting food security in Sub-Saharan Africa 2) Evaluate the multitude of concepts put forward to solve food security problems in Africa and 3) Make proposals for innovative solutions to improve food production.
