Africa south of the Sahara has faced several weather hazards during the first half of June, according to FEWS.Net.

In West Africa, between June 19 and 25, heavy rainfall followed several weeks of above-average precipitation. This led to flooding in several areas, including parts of Ghana, southern and western Nigeria, eastern Senegal, western Mali, Burkina Faso, and eastern Chad. In the coming 10 days, these and other areas of West Africa are expected to receive continued moderate to heavy rainfall, maintaining increased risks for flooding.

This piece originally appeared on IFPRI.org

Across Africa, countries have imposed emergency border restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19. These have delayed a continental free trade agreement, are contributing to fears of a new food crisis, and disrupted cross-border trade. In this post, Antoine Bouët and David Laborde review the border measures and their impacts and provide recommendations on how to make health and trade policies more coherent in a complex environment.— Johan Swinnen , series co-editor and IFPRI Director General.

An estimated 73 million people in Africa faced acute levels of hunger and food insecurity in 2019, according to the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises, released this week. The continent accounted for 54 percent of the global total of severely food-insecure people. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the world, developing countries in the region will likely see even further disruptions to food access. These disruptions will compound existing food crises and potentially create new ones.

This piece originally appeared in IFPRI.org .

BY ANTOINE BOUËT, DAVID LABORDE, FOUSSEINI TRAORÉ AND SWATI MALHOTRA

This post originally appeared on IFPRI.org .

By Claudia Ringler and Turhan Saleh

Extreme weather events and other climate change-linked disasters have devastated communities globally: Be it cyclones along the coast of Southern Africa, flooding in parts of Canada, drought-induced wildfires in California, or the recent El Niño (ENSO) induced drought in Eastern and Southern Africa that affected 60 million people.

By Samuel Benin and Ernesto Tiburcio

In 2003, African countries signed the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) and set the goal of investing 10% of their national budgets on the agricultural sector in pursuit of a 6% agricultural growth rate each year. Since then, it has become clear that the issue of what counts as agriculture expenditures is central in determining whether the numbers reported actually reflect improvements. An analysis of Ghana’s experience shows that an inconsistent approach can lead to misleading results.

Many areas of East Africa will continue to face high levels of food insecurity through late 2019, according to a new report from FEWS Net . The situation will hit its worst levels at the peak of the pastoral lean season in September and October.

As we approach the Eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference (MC11), taking place from December 10-13 in Buenos Aires, developing countries’ role in the negotiations remains in question. This will be the first ministerial to be held in South America and will provide an opportunity to reduce trade barriers and further liberalize the global trading system. In recent years, developing countries have accounted for an increased share in global trade, making them more relevant players in the negotiations.

Africa south of the Sahara continues to struggle against an invasion of Fall Armyworm. Since its first appearance in Nigeria in early 2016, the pest has spread to 28 countries. Driving the rapid spread of the pest is the region’s climate – fall armyworm tends to thrive in areas where drought is followed by heavy rains, a pattern that has intensified in recent years in many areas of Africa south of the Sahara.

FEWS Net has recently released regional updates for East Africa and West Africa , as well as a food security alert for the Horn of Africa .