Food Security

Demand for cereals in Africa south of the Sahara could triple by 2050, and increasing current yields on the region’s existing farmland alone may not be enough to meet that demand, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Widespread drought is driving high food insecurity in several parts of East Africa, including central and southern Somalia, southeastern Ethiopia, northern and eastern Kenya, northern and eastern Tanzania, and southeastern Uganda. According to a special report released by FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS), these areas received less than one-quarter of their normal rainfall from October to December.

A recent Food Security Outlook Report released by FEWS Net forecasts that for November 2016 – May 2017, food security conditions throughout southern Africa will worsen for many poor households. Deteriorating food security will be driven partly by normal seasonal trends, as this period is the peak of the lean season in the region, and partly by the 2015-2016 El Niño cycle, which delayed or reduced harvests in many countries.

Reliable, timely data is crucial to fight hunger and malnutrition and to drive overall development in Africa south of the Sahara; however, significant research and data gaps exist, in terms of both the availability of information and the effective, transparent use of that information by policymakers. (For further discussion of existing research gaps, read about our side event at the recent 2016 ReSAKSS Conference). Improving food security information (FSI) is therefore a development goal that goes hand-in-hand with eradicating hunger.

Better linking Africa’s rural smallholder population to national, regional, and international agricultural value chains is a key rural development and poverty reduction priority. Which types of interventions will be successful in improving such linkages is highly context-specific, however, depending on the country, the target population, and the specific product being marketed. In a new book , IFPRI researchers examine how to best evaluate and implement context-specific value chain development (VCD) interventions, with several case studies conducted in Africa south of the Sahara.