The Road to Food Security: How Targeted Transport Investments Can Reduce Waste and Food Prices

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the journey from farm to table is fraught with challenges. Across this vast continent, food supply chains are long, fragmented, and inefficient. They are also highly vulnerable to extreme weather, making food security a daily concern for millions.

Even though food production in Africa has increased by 160% in the past 30 years, the food insecure population has continued to rise—by 60% in the last decade alone. Today, 58% of Africans are food insecure, double the global average. 

The drivers of food insecurity are complex and include extreme weather and conflict, among others. But an often-overlooked aspect of the issue is something much more straightforward: transport. Poor transport connectivity, failures at critical ports and border crossings, and high trade costs create hunger zones and long food supply chains that fail to get staple products to consumers reliably. 
 

A Broken System: The Price of Inefficient Transport

Across the continent, a tangled web of routes and connections creates an extremely long food supply chain. On average, food in African countries is transported a staggering 4,000 kilometers and takes 23 days en route, four times longer than it does in Europe. With supply chains this lengthy, there are dozens of potential failure points that increase the chances of food going to waste before it ever reaches consumers. Whether it’s backlogged ports, impassable rural roads, or cumbersome border processes, weak links cause food to arrive late, damaged, or simply never at all. Thirty-seven percent of Africa’s perishable food is lost in transit, long before it ever lands on anyone’s kitchen table.

Unpredictability in the supply chain has a profound effect on food prices. Transport inefficiencies contribute up to 30% of the final cost of goods, meaning that food becomes unaffordable for millions of low-income families. This often leads to an unfortunate paradox: while food is available in some regions, the cost of getting it from one place to another is so high that many cannot afford it.
 

The Human Cost: Stories of Struggle and Resilience

For people like Volatsarasoa, a mother of four in southern Madagascar, the stress of acquiring food is constant and exhausting. In 2015-16, when the El Niño phenomenon triggered a severe drought, Madagascar’s crop yields plummeted by 90%. 

When local rice supplies ran low, Volatsarasoa and her neighbors had to find new sources for their pantry staples. But due to inefficient transport, imported food was not always available, and when it was, it cost more than most families could afford. This is a reality faced by millions of people across the continent, where food insecurity is a daily struggle.

What can be done? “Investing in transport infrastructure would go a long way towards ensuring that all Africans have enough to eat,” says Charles Kunaka, lead transport specialist at the World Bank. “Targeted investments in ports, roads, and major trade routes can reduce food waste, reduce shipping costs, and ultimately keep the prices of staples down."

Finding the Critical Links: Mapping Africa’s Food Supply Chains

But where to start? There are 379 land border crossings, 147 ports, millions of miles of roadways, and a labyrinth of trade networks on the African continent. To understand how food moves (or fails to move) across the continent, the World Bank developed a model called FlowMax. It tracks the movement of staple foods such as rice, maize, cassava, and wheat, across 786 zones throughout Africa.

The model identifies the critical choke points in the continent’s food supply chains—hotspots that prevent a stable, efficient flow of food. Researchers were able to pinpoint 10 critical ports and 20 key border crossings that have an outsized impact on Africa’s food supply. 

“Just 10 African ports handle food for 89 million people,” notes Kunaka. “Similarly, 20 critical border crossings supply food to 66 million people in 35 countries. If policymakers can put a strategic focus on these 30 places, they could really foster economic growth by better connecting people to markets—and food supplies.” 

For example, back in Volatsarasoa’s home country of Madagascar, Port Toamasina is one of these 10 critical ports. It handles 75% of the country's freight traffic. Despite its large capacity, it is extremely vulnerable to natural disasters—six cyclones hit the city in a 13-month period between 2022 and 2023, putting additional stress on food imports. With few alternate routes available, disruptions at just one port like Toamasina can have ripple effects elsewhere. 

One solution to this problem is to address trade barriers within the African continent. Just five percent of food trade occurs between African countries, forcing a heavy dependence on distant markets for essential food staples. This disconnect means that food surpluses in one country, or in one region of a country, aren’t fungible: they cannot reach neighboring areas experiencing shortages.
 

A Roadmap for Change: Strengthening Africa’s Food Supply Chains

Food and nutrition insecurity falls intensely on the poorest countries, with 60% of people in low-income countries classified as food insecure. In 2023, 282 million people were food insecure, the highest number in modern history. According to Axel van Trotsenburg, Senior Managing Director at the World Bank, “In response to the global food crisis, the World Bank Group committed $45 billion in 2022–2023. Since then, our operations have helped over 200 million people gain better access to food.”

Many of these operations focus on making agriculture more resilient. But, it is becoming more common for the World Bank to address food security through the transport lens.

A new World Bank report, Transport for Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Strengthening Supply Chains, proposes several priority actions to reduce transport costs and improve food security across the continent. These recommendations can help transform Africa’s hunger zones to places where food is more abundant and easily distributed:

• Invest in Advanced Infrastructure: Develop and equip priority ports with advanced infrastructure for bulk food handling, especially those serving captive hinterlands.

• Remove Trade Barriers: Eliminate obstacles and enhance border management practices to reduce delays and costs at borders.

• Strengthen Resilience: Prioritize the resilience and redundancy of critical links that facilitate food flows for large populations.

• Expand Storage and Distribution: Invest in robust storage and distribution infrastructure and services to minimize food loss and waste.

• Boost Transport Competition: Enhance competition within the transport sector to drive efficiency and reduce costs.

• Scale Access to Markets: Expand access to resilient infrastructure and markets to ensure food reaches those in need.

One place where some of these strategies are being put into practice is in Ethiopia, where agriculture accounts for one-third of the country’s GDP and 64% of employment. A confluence of natural disasters, conflict, locust infestations, and the COVID-19 pandemic all put a huge strain on the country’s food supply, resulting in 15 million people depending on food aid. The Ethiopia Roads Development Program for Results, supported with a $300 million grant from the World Bank, is designed to link every rural community in the country with a main road. 

“Rural connectivity is crucial in Ethiopia’s fight against hunger,” notes Binyam Reja, Transport Practice Manager at the World Bank. “By constructing a network of all-weather roads and bridges, we can connect agricultural, manufacturing, and consumption hubs to markets. This project is an opportunity to address related objectives such as road safety, resilience to natural disasters, ongoing road maintenance, and employment. When complete, we expect this project to benefit over 11 million people in rural Ethiopia.”
 

A Future Where No One Goes Hungry

While these recommendations can help reverse Africa’s food insecurity, the real question is: will they be implemented, and can they lead to lasting change?

The answer depends on a concerted effort from governments, businesses, and international organizations. By investing in resilient and efficient transport systems, we can reduce food waste, lower costs, and ensure that nutritious food reaches even the most remote corners of the African continent. The cost of inaction is simply too great—millions of lives are at stake, and a more stable and secure food system is within reach.

“Africa’s food system is in desperate need of an overhaul,” notes Nicolas Peltier, Global Director for Transport at the World Bank. “By prioritizing transport infrastructure and regional cooperation, we can create a future where no one goes hungry.”

Together, we can make this vision a reality—one that ensures that every African, from the smallest village to the largest city, has access to the food they need to thrive.