Food scarcity elevates malnutrition among women, children — AFDB

Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, the senior special adviser to the president of the African Development Bank Group on Industrialisation, has said the level of food scarcity in the country has elevated malnutrition among women and Children.

Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, who is also a Professorial Fellow, United Nations University, the Netherlands, said this at a recent Agriculture Summit Africa Conference held in Abuja.

Oyelaran-Oyebanji titled his keynote, ‘Building a Production Nation,’ said the level of scarcity has elevated malnutrition among women and children.

According to him, “As of August 2024, around 32 million Nigerians were acutely short of food due to security challenges and reforms of the economy. This scale of food scarcity has led to elevated malnutrition among women and children.

“These Nigerians will not be able to afford enough nutritious food every day. Those who can afford food in Nigeria pay on average 60% of their income on food, according to data from the World Economic Forum. That is the highest that citizens in any country pay worldwide for food right now. In the USA, people spend 6.4% of their income on food, in the UK the amount is 8.2%. Nigeria’s situation denotes an absolute state of emergency.”

He noted that scarcity has multi-dimensional vectors as the most evident is income scarcity is reflected in Nigeria’s poverty rate, showing 63 percent (133 million) are multidimensionally poor, citing NBS/MPI 2022.

According to him, Multidimensional poverty is higher in rural areas, where 72 percent of people are poor, compared to 42 per cent of people in urban areas.

He highlighted that the transition from scarcity to security requires a strong industrial base, noting that transforming the rural economy is a prerequisite to industrialisation.

He continued, “Countries that have successfully made this transition, such as China, the United Kingdom, and the United States, did so by developing robust rural industrialisation strategies that linked small-scale production with larger industrial economies. In China, for example, the emergence of township-village enterprises (TVEs) played a critical role in transforming rural areas into hubs of production.”