Food Crisis and Related Risk Factors

With multiple crises plaguing food systems across the globe, Africa south of the Sahara remains particularly hard hit. As a result, policymakers and development partners in the region are faced with the need to balance sometimes conflicting priorities: ending hunger and reducing poverty, making diets healthier and more affordable, improving the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder households, and adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

An estimated 360,000 people in northern Burkina Faso are suffering extreme and worsening food insecurity and malnutrition, according to a recent alert from FEWS Net. While the risk of famine (IPC Phase 5) in the region is not a foregone conclusion, FEWS Net has determined that such a risk is possible through September 2023.

In Africa south of the Sahara, the share of the population facing food insecurity is more than double that of any other region in the world, according to IFPRI’s 2023 Global Food Policy Report: Rethinking Food Crises Responses. Approximately 282 million people in Africa south of the Sahara, or around 20 percent of the population, were undernourished and food-insecure in 2021.

The long rainy season in Kenya got off to a relatively good start in March, according to an update from FEWS Net. While the precipitation has begun to replenish water levels reduced by five consecutive seasons of below-average rainfall, however, much of the country continues to struggle with the high food prices, reduced agricultural productivity, and reduced livelihoods caused by the prolonged drought.