On January 12, 2024, trade between Rwanda and Burundi came to a halt when the border crossing was unexpectedly closed. Food prices in Rwanda may have been expected to fluctuate more than normal as a result—both falling prices for commodities typically exported to Burundi that instead began flooding local markets and rising prices for commodities typically imported from Burundi that faced suddenly limited local supply.

Food insecurity is escalating in West Africa and the Sahel region, according to the latest Regional Report on Food Security and Nutrition in West Africa and the Sahel (RRSAN) from the Food Security Information Network (FSIN). Between June and August 2024, as many as 50 million people across 16 countries could face CH Phase 3 (Crisis) or above food insecurity.

In October 2023, the Baidoa district of Somalia experienced severe flooding, impacting more than 120,000 people, including nearly 100,000 internally displaced people. In a new IFPRI learning brief, researchers explore how this extreme weather event affected households in the area and how the country’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) intervention can play an enhanced role in protecting vulnerable populations from future shocks.  

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.

As 2025 – the deadline for the Malabo Declaration commitments – approaches, African policymakers are taking stock of the region’s progress toward the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) framework for agriculture-led growth and development and determining what CAADP implementation will look like post-Malabo. The 2023 ReSAKSS Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) examines these questions, with a particular emphasis on the future of Africa’s food systems.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has imperiled global food security—creating suffering within Ukraine and displacing millions, while disrupting agricultural production and trade from one of the world's major exporting regions. The latter threatens to drive rising food prices still higher and create scarcity, especially for regions most dependent on exports from Russia and Ukraine—particularly the Middle East and North Africa.

Our window of opportunity for achieving SDG 2 — eradicating hunger and malnutrition and ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all by 2030 — is closing rapidly. However, far from moving closer to that goal, the world has seen a resurgence of hunger and food insecurity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented countries with enormous policy challenges. Policymakers have had to balance limited resources between health, food systems, and economies in a continually evolving public health emergency and an associated recession. Low-income countries have faced especially difficult choices because of their limited budgets and administrative capacity.

By: Sara Gustafson