Africa Manifesto and Plan of Action on Forgotten Foods

Food security globally is constrained by several factors including the heavy reliance on very few key staple crops. In Africa, food insecurity has been increasing due to the effects of climate change, insecurity caused by terrorism, social and boundary conflicts, uncontrolled rapid population growth, persistent economic inequality, youth unemployment, undernourishment and other menace among others. One of the reasons for this situation is that Africa has deviated from embracing her traditional food system which involves cultivation and use of the traditional foods. Forgotten foods have enormous nutritional, medicinal, and economic values and when promoted, could highly contribute to poverty reduction and improve food security in Africa. In spite of the value that forgotten foods can potentially contribute to Africa food system, they have not attracted sufficient research and development attention.