STOCKHOLM - SIPRI has released a paper outlining the drivers of food insecurity in Africa and ways of addressing them.
This paper explores how climate change, violent conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis combine to drive rapidly increasing levels of food insecurity. These drivers play out differently across and within regions and countries, and this paper focuses on how a combination of the drivers plays out on the African continent. It looks at four subregions—North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and Central and Southern Africa—and several countries within these regions.
Africa is the continent with the highest proportion of people—just over 20 per cent—facing hunger. Africa also carries the heaviest burden from the impact of climate change. In 2021 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa experienced armed conflicts. The economic fallout of climate change, conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic has widened inequality and sharpened societal divisions.
Addressing the impacts of these compounding crises and breaking the vicious cycle of climate change, food insecurity and conflict requires a concerted effort by local, national, regional and global humanitarian, development and peacebuilding actors, governments, and donors. To this end, the paper concludes with nine recommendations on the way forward.
Introduction
Global food insecurity is rapidly increasing. In 2021 an estimated 29.3 per cent of the global population (2.3 billion people) was moderately or severely food insecure while 828 million people in the world (10.5 per cent of the world population) faced hunger.
There are significant regional disparities and Africa bears the heaviest burden. In 2021, a total of 20.2 per cent of the African population was facing hunger, compared to 9.1 per cent in Asia, 8.6 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 5.8 per cent in Oceania and less than 2.5 per cent in North America and Europe.
Current projections indicate that the situation will worsen in the coming years. The key drivers of the increasing levels of food insecurity are violent conflict, climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.This paper provides an overview of the impact of these four drivers on food security in Africa.
Africa is host to a large proportion of the world’s armed conflicts and exceptionally exposed to climate change compared to other regions. Since 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic has pushed around 40 million African people into extreme poverty.3The pandemic, coupled with the food and commodity price inflation triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has generated the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, hitting people living in or near poverty the hardest. This multidimensional crisis poses significant challenges to governments and other actors respond-ing to the crisis.
Considerable disparities exist across the continent and the paper maps how these drivers play out across four African subregions. Nine key recommendations are made on action to build resilience and contribute to the prospects for peace, which is an essential precondition for reducing hunger.
About the authors
Dr Caroline Delgado (Sweden) is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Food, Peace and Security Programme at SIPRI.
Dr Kristina Tschunkert (Germany) was a Researcher with the Food, Peace and Security Programme at SIPRI.
Dan Smith (United Kingdom) is the Director of SIPRI.
For the full paper text, visit: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2023-01/2301_sipri_rpp_food_insecurity_in_africa_0.pdf
