African leaders call for help to solve food insecurity as improving nutrition becomes top priority

24 Feb 2023 --- Organized by the African Bank Development Group, African leaders across the continent merged to call for “more commitment and accountability in Africa’s efforts to achieve continental and global goals for nutrition, ahead of the 2025 World Health Assembly Nutrition target deadline.” 

While helping to bring new funding and other political commitments, the event served as a “wake-up call for African nations as political actions need to step it up for reaching the nutritional targets,” following the “African Union’s African Year of Nutrition” in 2022.

“Their willingness to invest in tackling imminent challenges contributing to malnutrition and food insecurity has intensified across the African Union member states,” says the African Bank Development Group (ABDG).

“I believe that nutrition is a central pillar for Africa’s development,” says Dr. Beth Dunford, Vice President of agriculture, human and social development at the African Development Bank. 

“While the Bank has made significant progress in the reallocation of resources, there’s a need to translate these funding reallocations into stunting reductions on the ground,” she adds.

Leaders across Africa meet to discuss the year of nutrition and how to move forward (Image credit: African Development Bank Group).Reducing stunting
Dunford further detailed that the goal is to see a 40% reduction in stunting by 2025. “The plan is catalyzing nutrition-smart investment across Bank operations, resulting in the Bank re-allocating $2.8 billion of its investment in its portfolio to be nutrition-smart.”

“It is unacceptable that we stay silent and indifferent at a time when 60% (799 million people) of our continent’s population is affected by moderate or severe food insecurity – making Africa the highest level globally,” says Samuel Ntsokoane Matekane says on behalf of King Letsie III, of the Kingdom of Lesotho.

“This means one-third of the world’s undernourished, or 282 million people, live in Africa,” Matekane adds.

The African Development Bank’s initiative mainly focused on feeding Africa, improving people’s quality of life and ensuring nutrition and food access for children during their first 1,000 days of life. 

In June last year, UNICEF warned that eight million children below five years old are at risk of death from severe wasting in the horn of Africa. Recently, a report from the humanitarian agency CARE accused mainstream media of underreporting and neglecting humanitarian crises across ten African countries. 

“It is now more crucial than ever to support vulnerable communities with multiple and innovative solutions to build their resilience and transform agri-food systems to deliver better nutrition,” says Dr. Qu Dongyu, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations.

“Stunted generation”It’s crucial to support vulnerable communities with innovative solutions to build their resilience and transform agri-food systems to improve nutrition, says Dongyu.
The Vice President of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, also says nutrition improvement is the country’s main priority.

“If we don’t make these efforts and do it seriously, the sheer number of children whose mental and physical development will be stunted, is mind-boggling. We must not allow a situation where in the years to come, we ask ourselves whether we couldn’t have done better.”

He further stresses that the lives of young people in Nigeria depend on the private and public sector’s collective effort to improve human nutrition nationwide.

Nigeria faces a risk of a “generation of stunted adults” due to conflict, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. It has become the second country with the highest percentage of malnourished children, followed by India. 

Nemat Hajeebhoy, head of nutrition for UNICEF in Nigeria, says the numbers are frightening.

“Essentially, after the age of five or so, it’s irreversible. Without intervention, a child who is stunted will be a stunted adult,” she says.

By Beatrice Wihlander