Food Security

The latest Africa Agriculture Status Report , launched last week by the Alliance for a Green Revolution Africa (AGRA) , reports significant progress in Africa’s agricultural sector following a decade of intensified attention from governments and the international community. Investment in agriculture by both governments and private sector actors has increased in many countries in the region, and there is evidence of increased agricultural productivity, enhanced nutrition, and increased off-farm job opportunities in the region’s expanding agri-food system.

The April 2016 meeting of the CAADP Partnership Platform called for renewed efforts to meet the 2003 Maputo commitment to invest at least 10% of public budgets in agriculture, as reiterated in the 2014 Malabo Declaration.  Mainstreaming nutrition in the National Agricultural Investment Strategies has been a goal for regional planners but a number of knowledge gaps still exist.   Research has shown that CAADP has been successful in improving the effectiveness and transparency of agricultural policy-making in Africa, increasing the political cachet of the agricultural secto

While agricultural productivity has increased in Africa south of the Sahara in recent years, it remains far below productivity in other developing regions, and this gap is only increasing, according to a new book released by IFPRI’s Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) program this week. This low productivity has undermined the competitiveness of Africa’s agricultural sector both at home and abroad and could exacerbate both poverty and food insecurity in the region due to a growing reliance on increasingly expensive food imports.

IFPRI’s “Stories of Change in Nutrition” series of publications examines evidence from countries with high burdens of malnutrition in order to better understand how nutrition policies are made and how these policies are implemented on the ground. In Africa south of the Sahara, the series thus far covers Ethiopia , Zambia , and Senegal .

In recent years, a combination of increased food prices, slowing agricultural growth, and a rapidly rising population have put pressure on Nigeria’s domestic food security. According to IFPRI’s Nigeria Strategy Support Program (NSSP), the average share of income spent on food within the country rose from 45 percent in 2007 to 80 percent in 2008 as a result of the global spike in food prices.