West Africa faces a number of urgent and interconnected challenges. With temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than global averages, intense climate variability, reliance on rain-fed agriculture, and limited adaptive capacity, the region is fast becoming a climate hotspot. This, in combination with other stresses, is projected to lead to highly unpredictable agricultural productivity, loss of biodiversity, greater food insecurity, as well as socio-economic and political instability. These risks come in a context where 70-80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and where the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to plunge millions more into poverty and food insecurity. With one of the youngest populations in the world, questions are also arising about the capacity of West African economies to absorb millions of young people into the labour force.
Food systems are at the heart of these challenges – and are changing fast. Agriculture, livestock, and fisheries account for 35% of regional Gross Domestic Product and employ more than 60% of the population. On one hand, West African agriculture is still characterized by diverse agro-sylvo-pastoral production systems: 90% of agricultural production is accounted for by family farms, producing a range of foods for their households and communities on small plots of land. But export commodity zones, large-scale land acquisitions, and huge influxes of foreign investment (‘FDI’) are also a feature of this complex and varied landscape – signaling the accelerating efforts to commercialize and industrialize all aspects of West African food systems.

This report is the culmination of a 3-year process of research and collaboration between IPES-Food and a wide range of local, regional and international partners to support the development of sustainable food systems in West Africa. The authors would first like to thank the IPES-Food panel for providing feedback and guidance at various stages of the process.