By Peter Ngare
Delegates during the just concluded Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in Nairobi have sounded an alarm over the continued degradation of African soils, severely risking the continent’s ability to feed itself.
The three-day summit revealed that Africa’s soils have become the poorest in the world mainly due to continuous soil nutrient mining. It is estimated that the continent loses over US$4 billion worth of soil nutrients each year. This comes as efforts to tackle the problem get hampered by a lack of access to and affordability of fertilizers and other inputs needed to add life to their soils.
The over 4,000 delegates who included heads of state and ministers of agriculture were in agreement on the need to enhance access and affordability of organic and inorganic fertilizers by farmers in the continent, most of whom are small-scale producers. They underscored the importance of developing the capacity of African countries to produce fertilizer locally as a way of mitigating against high cost of the input and making it more accessible.
At the end of the meeting, the Nairobi Declaration on fertilizer and soil health was arrived at with a commitment to triple domestic production and distribution of certified quality organic and inorganic fertilizers by 2034 to improve access and affordability, especially for smallholder farmers
They also committed to make available to at least 70% of smallholder farmers on the continent, targeted agronomic recommendations for specific crops, soils, and climatic conditions to ensure greater efficiency and sustainable use of fertilizers by 2034.
The declaration also undertook to operationalize the Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism (AFFM) to improve production, procurement, and distribution of organic and inorganic fertilizers, and soil health interventions as well as developing and promoting systemic national capacity building for locally relevant fertilizer and soil health management practices and technologies.
There is however caution on the commitment of the African governments to implement the Nairobi Declaration given that earlier declarations, including the Abuja, Malabo, and Maputo Declarations, as well as the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) have largely been disregarded by most countries
