A new report published by the United Nations (UN) says that hunger is on the rise in Africa after many years of decline, threatening the continent’s zero hunger agenda and the attainment of the 2030 sustainable development goals.
The report on food security jointly published by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia shows that the prevalence of undernourishment continues to rise in Africa and now affects 20 percent of the population, which is more than any other region.
The annual UN report indicates that compared to 2015, there were an additional 34.5 million more undernourished people in Africa, of which 32.6 million were in sub-Saharan Africa and 1.9 million in Northern Africa.
According to the report, there are 821 million undernourished people in the world, some 257 million of them currently living in Africa, of which 237 million are in sub-Saharan Africa and 20 million in Northern Africa.
“Nearly half of the increase is due to the rise in the number of undernourished people in Western Africa, while another third is from Eastern Africa,” the report states.
The report also notes that at the regional level, the prevalence of stunting in children under five is falling, but only few countries are on track to meet the global nutrition target for stunting.
Similarly, it states that the number of overweight children under five continues to rise and is particularly high in Northern and Southern Africa.
The report also shows that progress towards meeting the World Health Organisation’s global nutrition targets is slow at the continental level.
The UN report called for more collaborative efforts to achieve the second goal of the sustainable development goal and the global nutrition target, amid high youth unemployment and issues of climate change challenging the continent.
“The worsening trend in Africa is due to difficult global economic and worsening environmental conditions and in many countries, conflict and climate variability and extremes, sometimes combined. Economic growth slowed in 2016 due to weak commodity prices, in particular for oil and minerals,” Abebe Haile-Gabriel, assistant director-general, FAO and Vera Songwe, executive secretary ECA, said in their joint foreword of the report.
“Food insecurity has worsened in countries affected by conflict, often exacerbated by drought or floods. For example, in Southern and Eastern Africa, many countries suffered from drought,” they both said.
Also, the report identified the opportunities for agriculture in developing intra-Africa trade, harnessing remittances for development and investing in youths.
Josephine Okojie
