Investment, power and protein in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The place of protein in sub-Saharan Africa’s food system is changing rapidly, raising complex international development, global health and environmental sustainability issues. Despite substantial growth in the region’s livestock agriculture sector, protein consumption per capita remains low, and high levels of undernourishment persist. Meanwhile sub-Saharan Africa’s population is growing and urbanising rapidly, creating expectations that demand for protein will increase rapidly over the coming decades and triggering calls for further investment in the expansion and intensification of the region’s meat and dairy sector. However, growing disquiet over the environmental impacts of further expansion in livestock numbers, and growing sales of alternative protein products in the Global North, has raised questions about the future place of plant-based, insect and lab-grown proteins in African diets and food systems. This report examines financial investment in protein production in sub-Saharan Africa. It begins from the position that investors play an important role in shaping the development of diets and food systems because they are able to mobilise the financial resources required to develop new protein products, infrastructures and value chains, or to prevent their development by withholding investment. It therefore investigates which actors are financing the production in sub-Saharan Africa of: a) animal proteins such as meat, fish, eggs and dairy products; b) ‘protein crops’ such as beans, pulses and legumes; and c) processed ‘alternative proteins’ derived from plants, insects, microbes or animal cells grown in a tissue culture. Through analysing investment by state, philanthropic and private sector organisations – as well as multilateral financial institutions such as development banks – it aims to establish which protein sources and stages of the value chain are financed by different groups of investors and to explore the values and goals which shape their investment decisions. To this end, the report examines four questions: 1. Who is currently investing in protein production in sub-Saharan Africa? 2. What goals do these investors aim to achieve (or what sort of future do they seek to bring about) through making these investments? 3. Which protein sources and protein production systems do they finance? 4. What theory of change links their investment strategy to these goals? In addressing these questions, this report explores what sorts of protein production and provisioning systems different investor groups might be helping to bring into being in sub-Saharan Africa. It also considers what alternative possibilities might be marginalised due to a lack of investment. It thus seeks to understand whose priorities, preferences and visions for the future of food might be informing the changing place of protein in the region’s diets, economies and food systems.