Introduction

“Food safety is poised to play a key role in Africa’s agricultural transformation due to increased demand for food fueled by the continent’s rapid population growth and the entry into force of the exciting era of the African Continental Free Trade (AfCFTA) Area Agreement. Within the broader context of Sanitary and PhytoSanitary (SPS) measures, food safety presents an enormous opportunity for food trade under the AfCFTA since over 75% of trade in Africa is dominated by agriculture products. However, Africa’s food safety records remain the worst compared to other regions, and accounts for 30% of global deaths associated with foodborne illnesses.

A situation which if not addressed could seriously jeopardize the attainment of the goals set in the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agriculture Growth and Transformation because of the cost of lost productivity to African economies that could prevent the achievement of the goal set of tripling intra-African trade by 2025.

The Food Safety Strategy of Africa (FSSA) will provide a harmonized framework to implement activities that mitigate various food safety threats that negatively impact consumers’ health. The strategy will help to address non-tariff barriers, particularly those related to Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures or standards that have the potential of slowing down the attainment of the Malabo Declaration aspirations and ultimately the African Union Agenda 2063 and related flagship programmes impacted by food safety.

H.E. Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, Commissioner for the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Development

Challenges and Opportunities

With the Malabo Declaration coming to an end in 2025, the post-Malabo policy choices that Africa will make are critical for the implementation of the United Nations Food Systems Summit recommendations, to achieve a common position on sustainable food systems transformation in the continent. The increasing evidence on burden of unsafe foods indicates that poor food safety is a key factor leading to food systems underperformance, and in particular the ability of food systems to deliver nutrition and health outcomes. Africa and the world at large have long ignored food safety as an important driver of food and nutrition security and economic empowerment. While the recent prioritization of food safety is encouraging, there is a need for transformative ideas to fully integrate food safety into food systems transformation efforts and avoid costly delays and setbacks.

• Food safety is a good example of the complexity of the challenges facing food systems transformation that can be addressed effectively only through systems approaches with multisectoral and multidisciplinary measures.
• Africa has made some progress in its food safety system and management, particularly some of its policy practices and legal policies. These are particularly related to the emergence of its continental food safety policy agendas, which seek to improve coordination among the different drivers and actors of food safety systems, while moving from fragmented food safety management.
• However, significant gaps exist that need to be bridged to enable the emergence of an improved food system capable of ensuring safe and sustainable food system transformation for the continent. These gaps are in respect to a food safety investment framework, poor generation of credible evidence and data for state-of-the-art risk assessments, and food safety management, as well as poor food safety culture and norms, and others.
• The continent is currently experiencing a rapid growth of the intra-African agri-food market fueled by high population growth, rapid urbanization, dietary change and income growth. Intra-African food demand is projected to increase by 178% by 2050. Africa’s net food import bill is currently over USD 40 billion a year and is projected to reach USD 400 billion by 2030. While these rapid transformations provide major commercial opportunities, they also present major challenges such as the management of food safety risks and related foodborne diseases due to unsafe food. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Africa currently has the world’s highest per capita incidences of foodborne illness.
• The “Africa We Want” as expressed in Agenda 2063, the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation, and the AfCFTA have a set of goals that contribute to ensuring food security and the wellbeing of the African populations.

The Kampala Strategy 2026-2035

The African Union’s (AU) Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Strategy and Action Plan (2026-2035), launched alongside the Kampala Declaration, aims to transform Africa’s food systems for food security, nutrition, and economic resilience through intensified sustainable production, agro-industrialization, investment, and climate resilience, with goals like increasing food output by 45% and mobilizing significant investment.

The strategy for the third phase of implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), launched in January 2025, during an Extraordinary Summit held in Kampala, Uganda and marked “The Kampala CAADP Declaration on Building Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems in Africa” and the associated CAADP Strategy and Action Plan (2026-2035) outlined a 10-year plan to transform Africa’s agrifood systems.

FSSA: Food Safety Strategy for Africa

• The proposed Food Safety Strategy for Africa (FSSA) will help operationalize the AU SPS policy framework by providing a harmonized framework on how to address SPS issues related to food safety with the overall objective to protect consumers and at the same time facilitate trade.
• The development of the strategy drew from the concept of a food safety life cycle that creates a gap between need and capacity of managing food safety risks as economies develop and the concept of “pull and push” in improving food safety.
• The Strategic approach adopted is based on the concept of shared responsibilities in the management of food safety risks by the three key players: a) government with its oversight and enforcement functions; b) food business sector which has the primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of food; c) consumers as risk managers at their level.
• The strategies defined in the FSSA will lead to enhanced protection of consumers’ health and facilitation of trade through the implementation of national food safety systems which are context specific but based on international standards. In Africa, the majority of the population source their food from the domestic informal food markets, this is also where there is minimal application and compliance with food safety standards. Emphasis will therefore be placed on creating innovative policy and regulatory environment that facilitate bridging capacity gaps in informal food markets. This will enable the sustainable delivery of safe food. The FSSA will further promote knowledge and awareness on food safety to enable consumers to demand for safer food and to manage food safety risks within their control.

Six strategic objectives:

1. Strategic objective 1: Strengthen food safety policy, legal and institutional frameworks
2. Strategic objective 2: Strengthen the human and infrastructure capacity for food control systems
3. Strategic objective 3: Promote food safety culture, evidence-based advocacy, communication, information and knowledge sharing to raise consumer awareness and empowerment
4. Strategic objective 4: Improve trade and market access at national, regional, continental and global levels
5. Strategic objective 5: Strengthen research, innovation, technology development and transfer
6. Strategic objective 6: Establish and strengthen coordination mechanisms and enhance cooperation at national, regional, continental and global levels

Sources: African Union Food Safety Strategy for Africa 2022-2036; Cordis.Europa.eu; FAO/WHO Regional Conference Zimbabwe October 2005; World Bank Food Safety in Africa/Global Food Safety Partnership (GFSP); Akademya 20263; ReSAKSS.org A paradigm shift in Food Safety for Africa