Undernutrition during childhood and early adolescence has long-term consequences for development and health, and for girls it can affect the survival and wellbeing of their children. Diet-related risk factors are estimated to cause 20% of global mortality, and changes in food systems have led to rapid shifts to unhealthy diets and reductions in physical activity, contributing to the increase in rates of overweight and obesity. Moreover, current dietary and population trends will exacerbate risks to humans and the planet.

The Learning Support for a Sub-Saharan Africa Multi-Country Climate Resilience Program for Food Security, launched in 2023, aims to enhance food security and climate resilience across 14 African countries. This collaboration among CGIAR, the World Food Programme, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) has three pillars: scaling disaster risk financing, transforming food systems with sustainable school meals and clean cooking, and supporting smallholder farmers.

More than half of low-income countries are at risk of debt distress or have already defaulted. The debt crisis, while exacerbated by recent crises, has been looming for several years. According to the United Nations, 3.3 billion people now live in countries that spend more on interest repayments than on education or health, and in sub-Saharan Africa, governments are spending 53 percent of revenue on debt servicing.

Livestreaming will be available on this page on the day of the event.

Malnutrition in early childhood is a major risk factor for premature death and disease, and is associated with 45% of all deaths of children under the age of 5. But malnutrition has important economic consequences too, by delaying learning and slowing down economic growth. Solving malnutrition requires multi-sectoral efforts, including more nutrition-oriented food policies. But how exactly can food policies improve nutrition?

Join us for an Agrilinks Policy Month webinar in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Union Development Agency (AUDA), and USAID, as we delve into a crucial discussion on the role of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) within the framework of USAID’s Feed the Future (FTF) strategy. This event holds particular significance as we approach the culmination of the Malabo Declaration in two years—a pivotal moment for reflecting on achievements and setting priorities for the post-Malabo Agenda until 2025.

Recent global food price spikes and household income losses pose significant challenges to people’s food security and diets, raising important questions for governments and international organizations about how best to support households. The new Income and Price Elasticities of Food Demand (E-FooD) dataset [https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OXZ0H6] and Food Security Simulators (FSS) provide rigorous, yet easy-to-use tools for forward-looking evaluations of direct, household-level outcomes of economic crisis and policy responses.

Climate scientists are anticipating an El Niño event in the upcoming boreal winter season (November 2023–February 2024), ending the recent three-year La Niña. In collaboration with USAID FEWS NET and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, IFPRI is hosting a presentation on the potential impact of the upcoming El Niño on the global agrifood system, with special emphasis on low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The event will be organized around four short talks.

To address rising domestic prices for rice, India banned exports of non-basmati rice on July 20, 2023—a move many feared would drive global prices even higher. Since then, these worries have been realized: Thailand’s benchmark price for rice has increased 14 percent, Viet Nam’s rice prices are up 22 percent, and India’s white rice prices are up 12 percent.

This session will examine the impacts of the conflict in Ukraine on food systems around the world. Russia’s February 2022 invasion triggered trade disruptions and dramatic price increases for energy, agricultural commodities, and fertilizers, which were already high following the COVID-19 lockdowns and value chain disruptions. While international prices have come down from the peaks seen in 2022, domestic inflation levels remain high in many low- and middle-income countries, and food and fertilizer affordability remains a challenge.