[Civsoc-mw] As Africans get richer, they will eat more meat and live longer, healthier lives

[Tony Thontholani]

The learned folks over @ The Economist:

Many sub-Saharan Africans still eat almost no meat, dairy or fish. The FAO estimates that just 7% of people’s dietary energy comes from animal products, one-third of the proportion in China. This is seldom the result of religious or cultural prohibitions. If animal foods were cheaper, or if people had more money, they would eat more of them. Richard Waite of the World Resources Institute, an American think-tank, points out that when Africans move to rich countries and open restaurants, they tend to write meat-heavy menus.

Yet this frugal continent is beginning to sway the global food system. The UN thinks that the population of sub-Saharan Africa will reach 2bn in the mid-2040s, up from 1.1bn today. That would lead to a huge increase in meat- and dairy-eating even if people’s diets stayed the same. But they will not. The population of Kenya has grown by 58% since 2000, while the output of beef has more than doubled.

Africa already imports more meat each year than does China, and the OECD’s forecasters expect imports to keep growing by more than 3% a year. But most of the continent’s meat will probably be home-grown. The FAO predicts that in 2050 almost two out of every five ruminant livestock animals in the world will be African. The number of chickens in Africa is projected to quadruple, to 7bn.

This will strain the environment. Although African broilers and battery hens are more or less as productive as chickens anywhere, African cattle are the world’s feeblest. Not only are they poorly fed and seldom visited by vets; in many areas they are treated more as stores of wealth than producers of food. Africa has 23% of the world’s cattle but produces 10% of the world’s beef and just 5% of its milk.
[...]
People will probably become healthier, though. Many African children are stunted (notably small for their age) partly because they do not get enough micronutrients such as Vitamin A. Iron deficiency is startlingly common. In Senegal a health survey in 2017 found that 42% of young children and 14% of women are moderately or severely anaemic. Poor nutrition stunts brains as well as bodies.

Animal products are excellent sources of essential vitamins and minerals. Studies in several developing countries have shown that giving milk to schoolchildren makes them taller. Recent research in rural western Kenya found that children who regularly ate eggs grew 5% faster than children who did not; cow’s milk had a smaller effect. But meat—or, rather, animals—can be dangerous, too. In Africa chickens are often allowed to run in and out of people’s homes. Their eggs and flesh seem to improve human health; their droppings do not. One study of Ghana finds that childhood anaemia is more common in chicken-owning households, perhaps because the nippers caught more diseases.


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