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A Comparative Study of Food Security in Africa Amid Growing Population

Sustainable food security is every nation’s goal. For a nation to achieve sustainable food security, the food supply must exceed the demand. Using trend analysis, this study is an attempt to compare the nature of food security from 2000 to 2014 in Nigeria to selected African countries in each region. These countries are Angola, Ethiopia, South Africa and Egypt. The paper shows that Nigeria is food insecure in comparison to the selected African countries in terms of their population and food productions. The index used to select the other African countries from each regions are based on GDP and population. The parameter used for food demand are Food production index, Crop production index and Livestock production index. Meanwhile the parameter used for food demand is population density. The result showed that Angola is more food secured compared to other African countries as they the only country among the selected countries to food production index and crop production index of over 200, though it later fell short of that in 2014 which may be as a result of the factors discussed in the paper. Angola has also recorded the highest livestock productions so far. Meanwhile, Nigeria has the highest population density out of the selected countries which is more than the combined population densities of three of the selected countries in 2014(South Africa, Angola and Ethiopia). This shows that Nigeria’s demand for food is more than its supply due to the over population and low agricultural production which means Nigeria depends more on food importation than local food production. To achieve sustainable food security in Nigeria, this paper recommends a checkmate in the population growth and also improvement in agricultural production.