Africa lagging behind Asia, Europe in food production

More than 200 million people face hunger in the world's poorest continent, in part because of Africa's low-yielding soils.

The parlous situation was due to poor infrastructure, lack of access, the high cost of fertiliser and lack of incentives in Africa, said experts at the first African fertiliser summit, which started on Friday.

"Lack of infrastructure is killing Africa," said Norman Borlaug, the 92-year-old Nobel peace prize winner and "father" of the Green Revolution in India and Pakistan of the 1960s.

Asia had irrigated crops, good transport infrastructure, subsidies and large unmet commercial market demand, Borlaug told the summit in Ajuba, Nigeria.

Africa, on the other hand, made do with rain-fed agriculture, poor transportation, market-driven input supply and grain input market systems, and small unmet commercial market demand.

He said that while the United States, France and Japan could boast respectively of around 21,000, 12,700 and 9,000 kilometres of paved roads per million people, African countries such as Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo had respectively 1,600, 230, 94 and 59 kilometres of road per million.