African nations need to improve food security and food safety while normalising the sourcing of food from within the continent, Kubyane says. “Both these priority focus areas can be addressed via Blockchain.”
Investment in Blockchain has been slow to take off in Africa. According to Standard Bank, African Blockchain ventures secured $127 million in funding in 2021, just 0.5% of the global Blockchain total. Food security is an area where innovation is badly needed. The continent has the highest level of food-borne disease in the world, with 91m cases of sickness each year and 137,000 deaths.
- That leads to annual productivity losses estimated by the International Finance Corporation at $16bn. The World Bank has estimated that in Kenya alone, the annual cost of unsafe food is about $800m, or nearly 1% of GDP.
The transparent and immutable nature of Blockchain transactions means that the
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