“Enhanced coordination among stakeholders is key to implementing the Malabo Declaration on halving Post Harvest Losses by 2025,” says AUC Head of Rural Economy at the Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture, Dr. Janet Edeme.

She was speaking at the opening of the African Union Commission (AUC) and Food Agriculture Organization high-level consultative meeting on Post Harvest Losses (PHL), organized to develop specific actions for addressing PHL within the framework of the Implementation Strategy and Roadmap for the Malabo Declaration on Agriculture and also to propose specific actions for implementing the recommendations on PHL reduction in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) National and Regional Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plans.

Dr. Edeme reiterated the AUC’s commitment to prioritize the formulation of concrete and deliverable actions to combat PHL in response to the Malabo declaration.

She noted that the AU Heads of State and Government in their 2014 Malabo Declaration on Agriculture committed to reducing PHL as they realized it was very critical for achieving the continental agricultural transformation goals and targets.

“This commitment by Africa’s leaders means we have the political mandate to come up with specific and concrete actions to halve the current level of PHL by 2025. We are also coming up with a roadmap to implement the Malabo declaration; so this is a chance to feed into the roadmap,” Dr. Edeme said.

FAO Representative for South Africa, Dr. Tobias Takavarasha said, “In Africa, food losses are significantly higher than those considered acceptable or unavoidable for efficiently functioning food supply chains.’’

He said total quantitative food loss in Africa, south of the Sahara had been estimated at 100 million metric tones per year. He however emphasized that food loss and waste is a global phenomenon not restricted to the African continent hence the need for a global coordinated support.

Dr. Takavarasha quoted the FAO report, ‘Global food losses and food waste’, which states that roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tones gets lost or wasted. Food losses and waste amount to roughly USD 680 billion in industrialized countries and USD 310 billion in developing countries.

He said that the need, therefore for interventions to reduce PHL become even more imperative when the environmental impact of losses, loss in nutritional value and market opportunities, as well as the possible adverse effects on the health of populations consuming poor quality products, are taken into consideration.

The two day event has brought together, African Government representatives, Regional Economic Communities, Civil Society, Private Sector, Farmer organizations and development partners.