Food Security and Nutrition Has Top Priority for Africa

The year 2015 marked the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), launched by world leaders in 2000 to fight poverty in its multiple dimensions, to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with their sharper focus on food and nutrition security.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) made significant progress towards halving the proportion of its population suffering from hunger. The prevalence of hunger in the region declined by 31 percent between the base period (1990–1992) and 2015. The recent period of high global food prices and recurring droughts in the region are among the key factors accounting for only partial achievement of the MDG nutrition targets.

According to the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN, 2015), climate change and conflicts exacerbate these challenges, for example, pushing up food prices, worsening food security, and hindering the production and movement of food. Introduction Moreover, rising urbanization puts pressure on urban food systems, which are failing to keep up with the rapid growth of cities. Despite these impediments, impressive progress has been recorded across all of the sub-regions of SSA over the past 15 years, except in Central Africa. Because of rapid population growth, even while the percentage of undernourished people has declined, the absolute numbers of undernourished in SSA has risen.

About 42 million people were added to the total number of undernourished people in the region, with an estimated 217.8 million in 2014–2016 compared to 176 million in 1990–1992. According to FAO (2015c), 40 countries were assessed in terms of their state of food insecurity, are compounded by the complex nature of inequality in Africa. Also, the level of decline is much slower than the world’s trends.

In all the sub-regions of SSA, trends in the prevalence of underweight children have been decreasing. However, in most countries in SSA an estimated 3 out of 10 children under 5 years of age are still stunted. Undernutrition puts children at greater risk of dying from common infections, increases the frequency and severity of such infections, and contributes to delayed recovery. Undernutrition also has long-term effects that include mental illness, hypertension and diabetes, and impaired working capacity, leading to poor productivity causing negative consequences on individual health and standard of living of the affected individuals throughout their life.

Food shortages in sub-Saharan African countries have led governments to put in place policies and programs to improve food production, but mainly of cereal crops. For example, the Government of Malawi responded to the 2004/2005 food shortages by introducing the farm input subsidy program which mainly promoted maize production. Zambia, one of the biggest maize producers in SSA, owes its high volume of maize production to government policies such as the farm input support program and the Food Reserves Agency that buys maize from farmers at above market prices.

Although such policies greatly improve cereal production, for example, Zambia produces a surplus of more than a million metric tons of maize after a good season, leaving an imbalance in the nutrient content of the diet, with more than 50 percent of the dietary calories obtained from cereals. This is such an unbalanced ratio of calorie intake that can only be addressed by an improved, and more importantly, a visionary policy making that integrates the need to ensure that food production reflects the optimal response to the nutrition needs of the populations. Creating incentives towards nutritious foods Most African farmers are left with little or no incentive to produce foods that provide other dietary components such as minerals, vitamins and protein (vegetables, legumes, nuts and fruits among others).

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In the particular context of rural communities, indigenous foods are known for their high nutritious value which is unparalleled by that of some of the conventional and fashionable foods forming the bulk of their daily diet. Since fewer farmers produce such crops beyond subsistence, the cost of these foods, referred to as “orphan crops”, is often so high that poor urban and rural households may not consistently afford to buy them, despite their proven nutritional value. Yet, ensuring adequate supplies of high-quality food is a necessary condition for countries to achieve their nutritional targets, but it is certainly not a sufficient condition.

There is a need to adopt an integrated approach which comprises sustained implementation of a mix of complementary and comprehensive food security and nutrition policies and programs to effectively impact hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in SSA. Lessons for improving nutrition through agriculture include: efficient and effective production of diversified, highly nutritious and (bio)fortified foods; enhancing value chains to improve nutritional quality and food safety; effective participation of all stakeholders; involvement of the private sector in strengthening linkages within agricultural supply chains; setting up effective accountability systems; and better policies and investments.

Some recommendations for improved food and nutrition security include the following:

1. Incorporate explicit nutrition objectives and indicators into the design of agriculture program, and track and mitigate potential harms, while seeking synergies with economic, social and environmental objectives.
2. Facilitate production diversification, and increase production of nutrient-dense crops and small-scale livestock (e.g., horticultural products, legumes, livestock and fish at a small scale, underutilized crops, and bio fortified crops). Diversified production systems are important for vulnerable producers to enable resilience to climate and price shocks, more diverse food consumption, reduction of seasonal food and income fluctuations, and greater and more gender-equitable income.
3. To achieve a holistic approach, improve processing, storage and preservation to retain nutritional value, shelf-life, and food safety, to reduce seasonality of food insecurity and post-harvest losses, and to make healthy foods convenient to prepare.
4. Promote nutrition education around food and sustainable food systems that builds on existing local knowledge, attitudes and practices. Nutrition knowledge can enhance the impact of production and income in rural households, especially important for women and young children, and can increase demand for nutritious foods in the general population.
5. Empower women by ensuring access to productive resources, income opportunities, extension services and information, credit, labor and time-saving technologies (including energy and water services), and support their voice in household and farming decisions. Equitable opportunities to earn and learn should be compatible with safe pregnancy and young child feeding.
6. Collaborate and coordinate with other sectors (health, environment, social protection, labor, water and sanitation, education, and energy) and program, through joint strategies with common goals, to address concurrently the multiple underlying causes of malnutrition.

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