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Africa south of the Sahara has continued to face alarmingly high levels of acute food insecurity in 2024, according to the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) Mid-Year Update. This includes populations in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe) food insecurity in Sudan, South Sudan, and Mali, with famine plausible in some areas of Sudan.

As in previous years and reported in the April release of the GRFC, conflict, extreme weather events, economic shocks, and forced displacement of large populations have driven worsening food and nutrition security outcomes across the continent.

Strong agricultural cooperatives could be a powerful pathway to protect vulnerable populations from food insecurity caused by shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent paper in Agriculture & Food Security.

The challenges of climate change and food security are closely intertwined, with agriculture both driving and being impacted by extreme weather events. Policymakers around the globe are faced with the need to increase food production to feed growing populations while reducing that production’s negative impacts on the environment. According to a recent article in Global Environmental Change, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) provides an effective way to enhance countries’ climate resilience while simultaneously ensuring food and nutrition security.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI.org

Migration is a crucial element for economic development, as it offers workers in low- and middle-income countries ways to diversify and increase their income as well as ways to smooth their consumption over time. In addition, migration allows workers to send remittances, providing their households with the resources needed for investments. Yet social norms and income constraints also influence who migrates and why.

The number of African countries facing acute food insecurity rose in June, according to the latest AGRA Food Security Monitor. The Food Monitor defines acute food insecurity as occurring when more than 50 percent of the population lacks access to sufficient food supplies. Acutely food-insecure countries in the region now include South Sudan (60%), Burkina Faso (59%), and Mali (58%).