Three decades of fighting against hunger in Africa: Progress, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Tackling hunger is a challenge for many African governments because of its endemic nature on the continent. Many African countries have found it difficult to achieve significant reductions in hunger and malnutrition since 1990. In this paper, we review the progress of African countries in the fight against hunger over the past three decades, using the Global Hunger Index (GHI) scores. Ghana had the best GHI improvement (-53.1%) while Zimbabwe and Central African Republic had slightly increased GHI scores (+1.6%). Within this time period, few countries had significant reductions in their GHI scores, while some suffered increases. Furthermore, in assessing the three indicators of GHI: (i) prevalence of undernourishment (percent population), (ii) prevalence of stunting in children (%) and (iii) prevalence of wasting in children (%), we found that no country in Africa was able to achieve all three targets. Six countries (Tunisia, Ghana, South Africa, Morocco, Mauritius and Algeria) were able to achieve targets for two of these while the majority achieved only one. We present country-level evidence of clear links between GHI scores with score for human development, social protection and terrorism. Some challenges that made the zero hunger target a difficult task in Africa are reviewed while opportunities for moving the continent towards the zero-hunger target by 2030 are also explored.

African Lives Matter: Wild Food Plants Matter for Livelihoods, Justice, and the Environment—A Policy Brief for Agricultural Reform and New Crops

“…In the marginalised communities of developing countries, this dysfunctional situation is manifested as hunger, malnutrition, abject poverty, and the severe degradation of natural and social capital, culminating in crop failure and famine. Consequently, hunger has greatly increased over the last three decades [2]. These severe consequences are exacerbated by pollution, water extraction, nutrient mining, habitat change, and fragmentation, which threaten sustainability, reduce resilience, and increase vulnerability to climate change.…”

Low Economic Class Might Predispose Children under Five Years of Age to Stunting in Ethiopia: Updates of Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The relative stability of stunting [ 6 ] independent of the improvement of food consumption in Ethiopia [ 7 ] is the other reason to update the title despite the presence of these two systematic reviews with limitations. Despite the description to update the former systematic review, malnutrition is remained as a major public health problem in developing countries, including Ethiopia, all over the world [ 8 ]. Unfortunately, children and women are the most vulnerable population for malnutrition globally [ 9 ], and in Ethiopia [ 7 ].…”

Impact of COVID-19 policy measures on food insecurity among urban residents in Blantyre City, Malawi

“…A recent report by the World Food Program (WFP) shows that in the year 2020, nearly 137 million people worldwide faced acute food shortages, and this gure is signi cantly higher as compared to the initial estimates before the inception of COVID-19 (World Bank, 2021). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals came up with a very ambitious goal---to end hunger by 2030 (Otekunrin, Otekunrin, Sawicka, & Ayinde, 2020), unfortunately, the pandemic has disrupted this goal as over 150 million people globally today are trapped into extreme poverty (Varanasi, 2020). Scientists predicted that poverty would persist until 2050 as millions of households in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries such as Ghana, Senegal, and Zimbabwe are food insecure (Varanasi, 2020;Otekunrin et al, 2020) .…”

“…The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals came up with a very ambitious goal---to end hunger by 2030 (Otekunrin, Otekunrin, Sawicka, & Ayinde, 2020), unfortunately, the pandemic has disrupted this goal as over 150 million people globally today are trapped into extreme poverty (Varanasi, 2020). Scientists predicted that poverty would persist until 2050 as millions of households in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries such as Ghana, Senegal, and Zimbabwe are food insecure (Varanasi, 2020;Otekunrin et al, 2020) . Since the geography of SSA is well known for its multiple problems such as extreme poverty, hunger, water insecurity as well as disease burdens, there is no doubt that COVID-19 has posed a serious socio-economic dilemma, which has disproportionately affected food security.…”