Regional overview of food security and nutrition in Africa 2017

The food security and nutrition–conflict nexus: building resilience for food security, nutrition and peace

This report provides an overview of food security and nutrition across the African region, including trends, challenges and progress against key indicators. In particular, this report highlights the reversal in progress in the fight against hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 and 2016, attributable in many countries of the region to adverse climatic conditions, often linked to the El Niño phenomenon. Lower commodity prices and increasingly challenging global economic conditions, coupled with the outbreak of conflicts – at times concurrently with natural calamities such as droughts or floods – further exacerbated the food security and nutrition situation across the continent.

The report also finds that across the board, countries have developed and are developing policy frameworks and investment plans that are aligned, or efforts are being made to align them, with the goals of the Malabo Declaration and SDG 2. Through CAADP, policy processes are coherent, and this initiative has raised the profile of agriculture and heavily influenced agricultural policy at regional and national levels. However, the worrying trends in undernourishment underline the need for even greater efforts to achieve the SDG 2 by 2030. 

The thematic part of the report focuses on the food security and nutrition–conflict nexus. Conflict is not only an increasingly important cause of food insecurity and malnutrition but food insecurity and malnutrition can also become conflict multipliers. Addressing the causes of conflicts and supporting food security and livelihoods can help build resilience to conflict and contribute to sustaining peace.