Nigeria, April 16 -- Ademola Adenle, Colorado State University

During the lockdown in Lagos, Nigeria, I joined a humanitarian team to distribute food to poor people in the urban slums. The project was launched because food was not available and accessible to millions of people in Africa's most populous city.

Given my background in agricultural innovation, I set about trying to understand why the supply of food was so poor - a problem that I know preceded COVID-19. My question took me back into the deep structural flaws that continue to plague Nigeria's agricultural and food systems. I identified challenges that lie at the heart of food and nutrition insecurity in the whole country, especially the urban slums.

Firstly, that small-scale ...