Since 2015 sub-Saharan Africa has experienced severe climate-induced disruptions, affecting the livelihoods of tens of millions of poor households. This has been compounded by civil strife and conflicts, trans-boundary plant and animal pests and diseases, and socio-economic shocks that could reverse years of progress.

This year’s edition of the Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition reports that the food security situation on the continent continues to worsen. For Africa, 20.4 percent of the continent’s population – 257 million people – are undernourished, up from 19.7 in 2016 – 241 million people. In sub–Saharan Africa, there are 237 million undernourished in 2017, up from 222 million in 2016. The worsening situation in Africa is due to difficult global economic conditions and, in many countries, conflict and climate-related disasters, sometimes in combination. Economic growth slowed in 2016 due to weak commodity prices, in particular for oil and minerals. Food insecurity has worsened in countries affected by conflict, often exacerbated by drought or floods, and in Southern and Eastern Africa many countries have been adversely affected by prolonged drought. Notably, several countries have achieved sustained progress in reducing food insecurity in the face of challenging circumstances. The deterioration of the food security situation and the lack of progress towards the WHO global nutrition targets makes it imperative for countries to step up their efforts, if they are to achieve a world without hunger and malnutrition by 2030. The need for greater efforts also emerges clearly from the findings of the inaugural biennial review of progress in implementing the goals of the Malabo Declaration. In addition to specific food security and nutrition policies, this year’s report reviews four important cross-cutting topics, namely, youth employment, remittances, intraregional trade, and climate change. It highlights their interplay with the food system and their role in food security and nutrition. The thematic part of the report presents an evidence–based assessment of the threat posed by more frequent occurrences of climate extremes and rising climate variability to food security and nutrition in the region. Climate change in combination with poor development planning, poverty and environmental degradation increases the risk of a climate event becoming a disaster. A collective approach that combines climate change adaptation with disaster resilient development is an opportunity to address climate and disaster risks within the context of broader development goals.

In the 2017 and 2018 editions of the Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, FAO reported that the prevalence of undernourishment was rising in the region. The latest data shows that the deterioration has slowed, but there remain 256 million hungry people in Africa today. The report further documents that although many African countries are making progress towards reducing malnutrition, progress is too slow to meet six key nutrition targets, which form part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) monitoring framework and the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets. Food insecurity has been rising in Africa in recent years and the continent is not on track to eliminate hunger by 2030. The 2017, 2018 and this year’s report identify and report in detail on conflict, climate extremes and economic slowdowns and downturns as the key drivers of the rise in food insecurity. In most cases, the economic slowdowns and downturns that contributed to rising undernourishment in 2014–2018 were the result of commodity price falls. Many effective policy tools are available, but their adoption will depend on the availability of fiscal space to effect the desired policy action. In the longer-term, countries must develop policies and invest to achieve a more diversified economy and achieve an inclusive structural transformation. However, sustained economic growth is not enough: reducing inequalities, including gender-based and spatial inequalities, is essential to strengthening household resilience, laying the path to inclusive growth and reducing food insecurity and tackling the multiple forms of malnutrition.

Africa is not on track to meeting the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 targets to end hunger and ensure access by all people to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round and to end all forms of malnutrition. The number of hungry people on the continent has risen by 47.9 million since 2014 and now stands at 250.3 million, or nearly one-fifth of the population. The 2017, 2018 and 2019 editions of this report explain that this gradual deterioration of food security was due to conflict, weather extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns, often overlapping. A continued worsening of food security is expected also for 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to hunger, across all countries in Africa millions of people suffer from widespread micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity are emerging as significant health concerns in many countries. This report shows that the food system in Africa does not provide food at a cost that makes nutritious food affordable to a majority of the population, and this is reflected in the high disease burden associated with maternal and child malnutrition, high body-mass, micronutrient deficiencies and dietary risk factors. The report also shows that current food consumption patterns impose high health and environmental costs, which are not reflected in food prices. The findings presented in this report highlight the importance of prioritizing the transformation of food systems to ensure access to affordable and healthy diets for all, produced in a sustainable manner.

This year’s edition of the Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition reports that after a prolonged decline hunger appears to be on the rise. In sub-Saharan Africa there were about 224 million undernourished people in sub-Saharan Africa in 2016, up from 200 million in 2015. In many countries, the worsening situation in 2015 and 2016 can be attributed to adverse climatic conditions, often linked to the El Niño phenomenon, resulting in poor harvests and the loss of livestock. Conflict, sometimes in combination with drought or floods, also contributed to severe food insecurity in several countries. Lower commodity prices and a difficult global economic environment have furthermore contributed to the worsening food security situation. The worrying trend in undernourishment is not yet reflected in the series of indicators referring to nutritional outcomes in the region, with the prevalence of stunting and wasting for children under the age of five continuing to decline gradually. However, progress towards the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets has been generally poor. While a relatively large proportion of countries are on track to meeting the target for overweight in children, the rates for adult obesity are soaring in all regions and are especially high in Southern Africa. 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.

The 2017 Near East and North Africa (NENA) edition of the Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition comes under the theme of “building resilience for food security and nutrition in times of conflict and crisis”. The report establishes a baseline against which to measure future progress towards achieving SDG 2 on ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in NENA by monitoring the latest indicators for the SDG targets on hunger and food insecurity (SDG Target 2.1) and malnutrition (SDG Target 2.2). Beyond numbers, the report focuses on the fundamental factors that have driven improvements in food security and malnutrition: poverty reduction, economic growth, improvements in maternal and childhood nutrition and public health, increases in the quantity and quality of the food supply and cessation of violence. Moreover, the report brings into sharp focus the issue of conflict, which is the major driver of food insecurity in the NENA region. Food security in the NENA region is fast deteriorating, driven by conflict and leading to a widening gap in well-being between conflict and non-conflict countries. Conflicts have long-lasting impacts on the food security and nutrition of both affected and surrounding countries in the region. Not only is food security deteriorating in the conflict and spill over countries, but the high costs of perpetrating, containing, preventing and dealing with the consequences of violence undermine their ability to mitigate the decline in living standards.

This report examines data available prior to the Covid-19 pandemic that affected the region and the world in 2020. By 2019, the Arab Region was already off track to achieve hunger and nutrition-related SDG targets by 2030. In fact, after good progress during past decades, since 2015-17 the number of undernourished people in the region has been increasing steadily. In 2019, the number of hungry people stood at 51.4 million, or 12.2 percent of the region’s population. If such trends continue, even ignoring the potential impact of Covid-19, the number of undernourished in the region will exceed 75 million people by 2030.

The Near East and North Africa Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition provides new evidence for monitoring trends in food security and nutrition within the framework of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The in-depth analysis of progress made against Sustainable Development Goal 2 Target 2.1 (to end hunger and ensure access to food by all) and Target 2.2 (to end all forms of malnutrition), as well as the state of micronutrient deficiencies, is complemented by a review on rural transformation policies aimed at addressing food insecurity and nutrition issues. Updated estimates shows that the food security situation on the region continues to worsen since 2011 -2013. For, the Near East and North Africa, 11% of the region’s population – 50.2 million people – are undernourished. The findings of the report showed that the failure to reduce hunger in the area is closely associated with the increase in conflict and violence in several parts of the region, as also highlighted in last year’s edition. While the prevalence of undernourishment has risen from 23 to 26 percent in conflict countries since 2011-13, it has remained stable at about 5 percent in non-conflict countries. This year’s report goes further to explore the relationship between food insecurity, economic growth and rural transformation. It demonstrates that economic growth in the Near East and North Africa region has been slow compared to other regions, and suggests that rural transformation can improve growth rates and generate decent employment through strengthening rural-urban linkages, improving agricultural productivity, and expanding the rural non-farm economy.

This report consists of two main sections: 1) a situation analysis of Sustainable Development Goal 2 Target 2.1 (to end hunger and ensure access to food by all) and Target 2.2 (to end all forms of malnutrition) and analyses of the diets of children and of current food consumption patterns relative to dietary guidelines; and 2) a special look at the cost and affordability of healthy diets in Europe and Central Asia. The new estimates confirm that the prevalence of hunger at chronic or severe levels is relatively low in the ECA region. However, the prevalence of food insecurity at moderate or severe levels can be quite high. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to add people to the ranks of the food insecure. The ECA region is making progress overall in reducing malnutrition, but it is not on track regarding childhood overweight, adult obesity, anaemia and exclusive breastfeeding. Healthy diets protect against the effects of malnutrition, in all its forms, and promote better health.This report shows that healthy diets cost, on average, five times more than diets that meet only dietary energy needs, making them unaffordable for many people throughout the region. To increase the affordability of healthy diets, the costs of nutritious foods must be lowered. This report also shows that hidden costs are much lower with healthy diets than with current consumption patterns, meaning that adopting healthy diet alternatives could lead to large cost savings.

The past few decades have seen dramatic improvements in the region in access to food, reduction in stunting rates, in premature death and disability caused by communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases. However, the gains in the fight against hunger and malnutrition have reversed in the wake of conflicts and violence that have spread in many parts of the region in the last decade. Today, nearly 55 million people in the Arab States, 13.2 percent of the population, are hungry and the situation is particularly worrying in countries affected by conflicts and violence: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen. Displacements and forced migration are widespread in the region, especially among the growing youth population segment. Many countries carry a double burden of malnutrition, including overweight and obesity and undernutrition. A high or very high prevalence of stunting in children under the age of five persists in nearly half of the Arab States, while anaemia is a severe public health issue in certain countries. The trends of overweight and obesity continue to worsen for children and adults. Beyond these numbers, the report explores food systems in the Arab States and the policies that support them. It also explores how the latter have contributed to poor nutritional outcomes by failing to make safe and diversified healthy diets available to all. While there has been significant progress in policies designed to reduce caloric deficiencies in the population, the policy reaction to address existing malnutrition problems, particularly in relation to overweight and obesity,