Dietary pattern changes over Africa and its implication for land requirements for food

With socioeconomic development, the shift from staple food-based to diversified and nutrition-dense diet types will put pressure on land resources in Africa. In order to elaborate the impact of dietary pattern on arable land resources, we classify all African countries into five clusters according to their dietary characteristics and the change patterns of diet, and assess how much land needed for each cluster to feed its people from 1961 to 2011. We then quantify the contributions of dietary pattern, along with population growth and agricultural technology, to the land requirements for food (LRF) for each cluster. Most clusters’ dietary patterns in Africa were dominated by staple food and at low nutritional levels, lagging far behind those of developed regions, with great potential for change. Throughout the whole time period, population growth, rather than diet, was the major driver of the LRF. But after 1991, the contribution of dietary pattern gradually increased and exceeded the contribution of agricultural productivity for all five dietary clusters. Our results show that more research should focus on how to sustainably increase animal-derived food productivity. Meanwhile, a call for more researches needs to focus on the diet and its impact on food and nutrition security, especially in less-developed areas. As the African cities have been rapidly sprawling, it is important to focus on the interaction between food security and urbanization in Africa.