Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives

This book focuses on food security and safety issues in Africa, a continent presently challenged with malnutrition and food insecurity. The continuous increase in the human population of Africa will lead to higher food demands, and climate change has already affected food production in most parts of Africa, resulting in drought, reduced crop yields, and loss of livestock and income. For Africa to be food-secure, safe and nutritious food has to be available, well-distributed, and sufficient to meet people’s food requirements.

Contributors to Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives offer solutions to the lack of adequate safe and nutritious food in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as highlight the positive efforts being made to address this lack through a holistic approach. The book discusses the various methods used to enhance food security, such as food fortification, fermentation, genetic modification, and plant breeding for improved yield and resistance to diseases. Authors emphasize the importance of hygiene and food safety in food preparation and preservation, and address how the constraints of climate change could be overcome using smart crops.

As a comprehensive reference text, Food Security and Safety: African Perspectives seeks to address challenges specific to the African continent while enhancing the global knowledge base around food security, food safety, and food production in an era of rapid climate change.

Professor Olubukola Oluranti Babalola (Pr.Sci.Nat, MASSAF) is the Vice President of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, and a National Research Foundation rated established, scientist. She received her PhD (Microbiology) in 2000 from the University of Ibadan and completed an MBA in Science Leadership from the North-West University (NWU) School of Business. She is a product of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and had postdoctoral experiences from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She is the Research Director of Food Security and Safety at NWU and previous Head of Biology Department and without reservation leading, as the Principal Investigator, a Microbial Biotechnology laboratory. Olubukola is a trainer of trainees; she leads a research team of over a dozen scholars from different tribes and tongues. Her laboratory is a mini united nation, with students from within and outside Africa. She has graduated 14 PhDs, 16 masters, and 48 Honors students. Olubukola’s areas of research interest are Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, Soil Metagenomics, Food Security, and Microbial Ecology. She enjoys international collaborations, research grants, and many awards. Olubukola is a prolific author with 200 publications. She has over 40 professional certificates from the University of California, Berkeley, USA; University of Mauritius, Reduit; NWU, South Africa, and Bradford University, the UK, to mention a few. Her wealth of international experience spans through the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.