Africa-Press – Angola. At least 799 million people in Africa are affected by food insecurity, said Wednesday in Addis Ababa, the African Union Commissioner for Agriculture, Angolan Josefa Sacko.
The diplomat advanced the data at the 42nd ordinary session of the Executive Council of the AU, when presenting the annual report on the implementation of activities on the roadmap for the year 2022.
He said African peoples face incredible intersecting challenges that are unfair and impossible to ignore.
According to the AU Commissioner, the Covid-19 pandemic, conflicts, supply chain disruptions, inflation, debt crises and food price spikes contribute to a growing malnutrition crisis that falls hardest on those who less have.
According to the official, access to sufficient safe and nutritious food, essential for the survival, health and productivity of future generations, has been limited.
Recent statistics show that currently 61.4 million African children under the age of five are stunted, 3 million are wasted and 10.6 million are overweight.
Josefa Sacko noted that the last time Africa saw such a food crisis was in 2007-2008. “States had more budgetary flexibility and were more resilient.”
He reported that the challenges of food security and nutrition in recent decades have deserved special attention by Member States.
For him, without urgent action, the lives, well-being and prosperity of millions of Africans, including future generations, are at risk and high-level political leadership is needed to effectively re-enact this crisis”.
The presented report recommends the Heads of State and Government to support the establishment of country-led mechanisms that ensure the generation and availability of quality data on nutrition to inform, plan, monitor and evaluate nutrition programs by the Member State.
Impact of the AU Year Theme
Advocacy and popularization of the AU Year 2022 theme was undertaken by high-level decision-makers including Heads of State and Government, ministers, parliamentarians, nutrition and food security experts, media, youth and wider outreach. with bases and communities.
Activities in this strand have contributed to increasing commitments towards addressing nutrition and food security challenges on the continent and helped to further verify that nutrition and food security need multi-sectoral collaboration
The report describes that resources for nutrition are still limited in many African states and where they exist, they are largely donor funds and draws attention to the urgent need for Member States to prioritize increasing domestic financial investment in food security and nutritional.
It encourages innovation by identifying financing options for nutrition, promoting investments in multi-sectoral programming in the humanitarian context.
Calls on the AU Assembly to consider adopting the Abidjan declaration “Accelerating investment, implementation and coordination to improve nutrition and food security in Africa”.
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