Posted on July, 11, 2024 at 09:31 am
Morocco on Tuesday outlined its expertise and commitment to continuing its vital contribution to food security in Africa.
The country stressed the importance of food security during the UN High-Level Political Forum held in the presence of high-level officials, including Morocco’s permanent representative to the UN Omar Hilale, and OCP Chairman Mustafa Terrab.
During the event, Terrab recalled untapped opportunities in Africa, recalling that the continent is home to 60% of the world’s unused arable land.
It is necessary to change the world’s perception of Africa’s role in the global race to achieve food security, he argued, stressing; “Africa must play a positive role on a global scale in terms of food security.”
The OCP chief also emphasized the key role of fertilizer in transforming land into fertile and productive assets, saying that without this essential component of modern agriculture, only half of the food produced today could be produced.
Terrab further lamented that while Africa remains the largest exporter of natural resources that produce fertilizers, the continent is frustratingly a net importer of finished fertilizer.
“As a result, the African farmer faced the fundamental problem of having fertilizers that sometimes cost two to three times the price of fertilizers elsewhere, even though these fertilizers were made from the continent’s own natural resources,” he explained.
This is not the first time that the OCP chief has emphasized the critical importance of fertilizers and urged the continent to redouble its efforts to embrace domestic production of finished fertilizers.
In an interview in May 2023, Terab lamented that the average use of fertilizers in Africa in terms of kilograms is one-tenth of the global average.
“The world average is about 150 kilograms per hectare. Africa has less than 15 on average,” he said, adding that one way to look at the lack of fertilizer use is inaccessibility to them.
Terrab’s comments come as OCP has repeatedly shown its keenness to make fertilizer more accessible to African countries, especially to smallholder farmers.
The group is supplying about 40 African countries with customized fertilizers depending on farmers’ needs and each country’s specificity.
The Moroccan company has also introduced several initiatives, including donations targeting small farmers.
These initiatives include discounted fertilizer to support smallholder farmers, which will provide 550,000 metric tons of fertilizer in 2022 to mitigate the impact of rising commodity prices and drought.
Source: Morocco World News