The African Food Summit has ended on a positive note with great discussions and strong commitments made by key stakeholders. It is now time for action. It is crucial to build an action-driven agenda to meet the escalating challenge of food security in Africa.
The year 2022 had been set for recovery after a Covid pandemic season that adversely affected economies, including limiting farmers' access to critical input and output supply chains. The world has prioritized local agricultural value chains development to secure food sovereignty. This in turn caused an increase of fertilizer demand. However, as the world adjusted to these new circumstances, a war erupted in Eastern Europe disrupting the global fertilizer trade.
In Africa, the conflict drove a 30% increase in fertilizer prices, with the World Bank reporting that fertilizer raw materials were 60% to 70% higher in 2022 than the previous year, which only amplifies an already existing structural challenge of fertilizer affordability to farmers. Meanwhile, a 60% rise in energy prices shocked the global food and energy markets in 2022, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis that pushed more Africans into poverty. According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth decelerated to 3.3% in 2022 from 4.1% in 2021, on account of the tightening global financial situation and rising inflation.
It is against this backdrop that we at OCP Africa, a subsidiary of the OCP Group, a global leader in plant nutrition and the world's largest producer of phosphate - based fertilizers, derived a relief program to alleviate the situation, particularly for Africa's smallholder farmers. Throughout 2022, we provided 550,000 tons of phosphate-based fertilizer to farmers in Africa, a third of which were donations, and the rest offered at discounted prices.
The contribution represented approximately 16% of the continent's phosphate fertilizer needs, and was in line with our farmer-centric strategy that seeks to support, alongside institutional, public, and private partners, the transformation of food security and the increased incomes of Africa's millions of smallholder farmers.
In 2023, we are taking a step further by reserving 4 million tons of phosphate (P) fertilizers for African farmers, more than double OCP's supply to the continent in 2021. This represents over a quarter of the company's expected total capacity for 2023. This allocation is far greater than the projected continentwide fertilizer deficit and is estimated to boost the yields for more than 40 million farmers across 40 countries.
We are especially keen on ensuring the supply of P fertilizers, following research showing that 99.7% of Africa's soils are deficient of phosphorous, and that the continent's application of P fertilizers needs to increase by 8-12 times to achieve self-sufficiency in maize production by 2050. In preparation for increasing P fertilizer demand, at OCP, we have invested tremendously in the development of eco-responsible fertilizer production facilities, reaching 15 MT of finished phosphate-based products at 2023, from a base of 3MT in 2008.
Yet ours is not just a blanket push for fertilizer use. Across Africa, we are working with partners to strengthen the capacity of labs and develop programs for soil sampling and testing, ensuring that the formulations we deliver to farmers are crop and soil specific. We have so far mapped more than 50 million hectares of land across different African countries, conducted over 5,000 trials on major crops of maize, rice, cocoa, potato, soybean, groundnut, oil palm, sugarcane, cotton, and vegetables, and customized 44 specific fertilizer formulas.
Our approach responds to the fact that the fertilizer formulas used in many African countries are recommended based on outdated soil data, and many do not meet farmers' current requirements. Realizing that soil needs radical change in line with different ecological changes, we are keen to promote smart and environmentally responsible fertilization, moving away from generic formulas.
If technology is global, innovation is local, Africa cannot be satisfied with imported models and must lead the way in achieving its green agricultural revolution, setting an example for sustainable nutrition through customization This has driven our bid to invest in innovation & research over the past 10 years in partnership with the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and approximatively 100 African institutions including agronomic research institutes, universities, and governmental bodies.
Several customization programs have been developed to serve best the soil and crop needs based on constantly updated soil and fertility analyses, in addition to integrated soil health management ones addressing the major issues of soils in Africa such as acidity, salinity and biodiversity. These programs are always taking into consideration, economic, agronomic, social, and environmental rationale. For that we are using the latest technologies combining field information and trials, as well as satellite imageries, remote sensing, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
We pair this innovation by working through partnerships to provide holistic support to farmers in securing high quality agricultural inputs from upstream sources, appropriate capacity-building training, and the onboarding of off-takers, who in turn secure the farmers' market linkages, further facilitating and bolstering their access to finance.
We realize that the transformation of farmers' incomes is influenced by better-paying markets and that is why, for example in Senegal, we have an ongoing program that trains farmers on value addition, marketing and business management. In Sandiara, a commune some 100km away from the country's capital, Dakar, we are working with 15 women cooperatives, which are now reporting increased earnings through the processing of nuts into butter and fruits into juices, products that have higher margins than the sale of raw commodities. We are scaling this support in Senegal and for us, it is therefore, timely that this year's African Food Summit took place in Dakar, where we hope to support the transformation of the country's, and, certainly, Africa's agricultural and food systems.
The Dakar summit has been an excellent platform that brought together all food system stakeholders – including the private sector, governments, scientists, international organizations, farmers associations, product distributors, and others – to test and incubate ideas to support farmers through solutions that cater to the diverse environments we find across Africa. All the great discussions and strong commitments will hopefully lead to concrete actions towards achieving food security and building more resilience to external shocks.
