What's New

FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning Systems (GIEWS) has released several new country briefs for Africa south of the Sahara. This series of briefs provides an overview of the food security situation in monitored countries, focusing on the current agricultural season, harvests prospects for staple food crops and livestock, estimates and forecasts of cereal production, and food price and food policy trends.

Ethiopia continues to face increased food insecurity, despite heavy rains in April that have improved prospects for the 2016 Belg harvest, according to the latest regional alert from FEWS Net.

FEWS Net has released a special report with a series of maps illustrating the extent and severity of the ongoing drought in southern Africa. The drought, driven by the 2015-16 El Niño cycle, has limited crop production throughout the region, worsening food insecurity during the lean season and making it likely that food insecurity will continue throughout the remainder of the year.

According to a recent FEWS.net alert, Mozambique is currently facing severe drought and food insecurity through much of the country as a result of El Niño-driven weather patterns.Weather forecasts predict that El Niño conditions will continue to cause below average rainfall in southern and parts of central Mozambique for the remainder of the season; the northern part of the country will likely see average to above average precipitation.

In 1961, annual milled rice production in Africa south of the Sahara was 2.8 million tons; this number reached an estimated 16.6 million tons in 2011. [1] Despite this increase, however, demand for rice in the region has outpaced local production, leading SSA to import more rice; according to a journal article in Agriculture and Food Security , the share of imports in SSA’s overall rice consumption reached 43 percent in 2009. This trend has caused policymakers and experts throughout the region to attempt to strengthen the domestic rice sector.