FSP Blog

If you look at traffic in Nairobi or go to a market in many parts of Kenya, you might think that COVID-19 is no longer a major problem. Public spaces seem as crowded and bustling as ever. But has the country really, fully recovered from this crisis?

The world continues to lose ground in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030, according to the recently-released 2022 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report. As many as 828 million people were affected by hunger globally in 2021 (around 10.5% of the world population)—an increase of 46 million since the end of 2020 and of 150 million since the COVID-19 pandemic began a year earlier.

Much of the early attention on the Russian-Ukraine conflict’s food security impacts has been concentrated on countries highly dependent on wheat imports from the Black Sea region. Given the important role that wheat products play in the diets of people in Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other countries, the interruption in Black Sea wheat trade and high prices have raised serious concerns about rising levels of food insecurity, poverty, and instability around the world.

The current rise in global market prices for major food commodities almost mirrors that of the 2008 food crisis, presenting a worldwide threat to food security. The situation is particularly severe in Africa, where the COVID-19 pandemic and now the Russia-Ukraine crisis have exposed the vulnerability of food systems to major shocks, particularly in countries like Nigeria that rely heavily on imports of major staple foods such as rice and wheat.

In 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sounded the alarm on a looming crisis: Climate change is generating a “code red for humanity” that requires urgent action. Food systems are deeply entwined with this crisis. In many regions, especially in the developing world, climate change has already started to reduce agricultural productivity and disrupt supply chains, putting pressure on livelihoods and threatening to significantly increase hunger and malnutrition, making adaptation efforts crucially important.