TITLE:
Agricultural Infrastructure Deficit and Production of Export Commodity Crops as the Epicenter of Food Insecurity in Africa, Nigeria
AUTHORS:
Moses Madubueze Okonkwo, Ikechukwu Ogwu, Philipha Nwadi Okonkwo, Dassy Kakuru, Juliet Nwadiuso Okonkwo
KEYWORDS:
Agriculture, Infrastructure, Export Raw Materials, Food Security, Food Insecurity
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.13 No.12,
December
26,
2025
ABSTRACT: From colonization through the 2007-2008 world food price crisis, Western governments and philanthropies have supported a multitude of programmes to transform agriculture in Africa and connect farmers to commercial supply chains. This approach, however, cannot cause an increase in productivity because the continent cannot supply what it cannot produce. A more realistic approach would have been one that connects the supply base to modernized production infrastructure well suited for agricultural mechanization and industrialization. The colonial experience affected most of the world, creating patterns of unequal relationships between a European core and a periphery of dependent lands. In Africa, agricultural production for local food security has not been of interest to the West; the emphasis has been on producing more export raw materials for their manufacturing and industrial sectors. The pretense is that the continent would earn enough foreign exchange with which to then buy food. This paper emphasizes the fact that this Western-based interest has not only underscored and strongly infiltrated the content of agricultural production policy in the continent, but has also, over time, denied the continent the possibility of building agricultural infrastructure for local food security, subsequently keeping her as a resource-dependent economy with several potential pitfalls as associated with the “resource curse” and Dutch Disease. The paper argues that even though there are abundant mineral resources in the continent which can yield higher foreign exchange, the interest of the West to keep the continent trapped in economic imprisonment and resource-dependence, has consistently emphasized export commodities without local value addition, thus creating a deficit in agricultural infrastructure development. With the large expanse of arable lands in Africa, this situation could be reversed so that the continent stops making agricultural development policies and actions based on whatever financial support or market access comes from the West. Africa must chart a path from within on how to enact sustainable agricultural infrastructure development for food security in the continent.