On the sidelines of the G20 in Brazil, the United Nations is launching the annual report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world on July 24, 2024. The prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity has remained unchanged for three consecutive years, the report notes, with different realities depending on the region. Notable progress has been made in Latin America. However, hunger continues to increase on the African continent. Bernard Hien, Regional Director for West and Central Africa of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the UN agency that co-authored the report, provides insights into the reasons for this deterioration.
RFI: Bernard Hien, what are the main conclusions of this report?
Bernard Hien: The report shows a situation that is stabilizing at the global level, but deteriorating in West and Central Africa. For example, at the global level, you have 733 million people who suffered from hunger in 2023, that’s one person in 11. On the other hand, in West and Central Africa, it’s one person in 5 who suffered from hunger in 2023. There is progress noted in East Africa, in Southern Africa, but worrying deteriorations noted in Central Africa and West Africa. Central Africa has the greatest deterioration: 8 million people affected by hunger were added last year. And, in West Africa, that corresponds to 6 million people.
The hunger situation in Central and West Africa is worse than before the Covid-19 pandemic. How can this be explained?
It must be said that there are structural factors that are multidimensional and sometimes linked to the context of fragility in the region. One in two countries in the region is classified by the World Bank as fragile. When you take the OECD classification, it is rather 80% of the countries in the region that operate in fragile contexts. Therefore, the preparation of investment projects must better take into account the determinants of fragility, whether it is extreme poverty, weak institutional capacities, vulnerability to climate.
The second factor can be conflict and insecurity. The region has several crises. Some of them are long-standing crises. For example, three of the five most neglected crises in the world are in the region. Which means little attention from the international community, little support for humanitarian action, little investment in recovery. So these crises cause internal displacement of people. In the region, we have 14 million people who are internally displaced, mainly in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, the DRC and the Central African Republic. This represents about 70% of the internally displaced population in Africa. And so, with these displacements, people lose their livelihoods and have to start over in new locations.
The third factor is the economic slowdown. Our economies experienced difficult times during the pandemic and only started to recover from 2022. So, this led to a concentration of States towards emergency health responses, which limited investment in the agricultural sector. There is also food price inflation. The region suffered the highest inflation in the world, at least 12%, driven in particular by Nigeria 25%, Ghana 38% and Sierra Leone 47%. So, this had an impact on the purchasing power of populations and affected food and nutritional security.
And finally, there is a fourth factor which is related to climate. When you look at the list of 185 countries, five of our countries are at the bottom of the list in terms of extreme vulnerability and capacity to respond to climate challenges. So we see land degradation, desertification, low agricultural productivity related to all of this, with implications for food security.
But even before Covid-19, there was chronic under-investment in the agricultural sector, in the agri-food sector, and also sometimes inadequate policies, which can also contribute to this situation.
I have only cultivated a small plot of one hectare. For the past six months, armed men have been disturbing us in the bush and the fields. We are not able to produce well.
Farmers in Central African Republic face the challenge of persistent food insecurity
Are states making enough efforts in this area?
There have been a lot of efforts made in recent years by several countries. In the region, the language itself has changed a little. Beyond food security, countries are starting to talk about food sovereignty. So, there is this high-level political will that we are starting to see. And that is already an asset. The second thing is that we are also starting to see a small increase in national budgets devoted to agriculture. Next year will be the end of the deadline for the Malabo Declaration under which countries had made commitments to allocate 10% of their national budget to agriculture, but the trajectory is not good. Only Sierra Leone is currently on the right trajectory to achieve this commitment. Benin and Uganda have also made significant progress.
What are the levers for improving the situation in these countries?
I think the first would be to boost the productivity of agri-food systems and nutrition by ensuring better access to the market. To do this, we need to support small farmers and their organizations to increase and diversify their production in a sustainable manner. There are 500 million small producers around the world who produce 80% of the food we eat. So, we will need to support them and this will require innovation, a technological leap in the use of fertilizers, machines, equipment. This will require better promotion of research and adoption of best farming practices. For example, Africa’s share of fertilizer use is only 3% in the world. Our small producers use about 12 kg of fertilizer per hectare compared to 120 kg of fertilizer used in northern countries.
Also, how do we help smallholders adapt to climate change? That includes switching to drought-tolerant crops, climate-adapted irrigation systems, early warning systems, and also ecosystem restoration, as well as crop diversification. In some countries, it’s corn, corn, corn. You can diversify, go to cassava, peanuts, sorghum, millet.
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A third action could be to invest in rural SMEs to create value, income and also offer decent employment opportunities to young people. The fourth action could be the construction of rural infrastructure, including roads, to have access to production basins and markets, warehouses, cold rooms, electricity… So all the infrastructure to be able to transform agri-food systems.
The fifth action could be to support stabilization efforts in the Sahel. We must invest in the Sahel, particularly in cross-border areas that have remained chronically underinvested since colonization. In this, we must optimize the absorption of allocated resources. This is what will reduce competition over resources, reduce conflicts and also strengthen social cohesion and consolidate peace in the region. And finally, it will be the political, legislative and regulatory frameworks that must be adequate to create a situation favorable to the emulation of all actors and attract the private sector.
What is the role of UN agencies in this process?
IFAD provides technical and financial assistance to Member States to support their national priorities and policies. At the level of sub-Saharan Africa, during our last funding cycle, we allocated more than 55% of our resources to sub-Saharan Africa, which shows that it remains a priority at our level.
IFAD is also in a process of decentralization to position ourselves as close as possible to our national partners and other development actors. We recently opened a regional office in Abidjan that covers 24 countries. We are currently implementing 54 programs for approximately $6 billion. This has already allowed us to reach 11 million people last year and by 2027, we plan to reach 36 million people.
As an international financial institution and a specialized agency of the United Nations, our innovation also helps to imagine new instruments to be able to invest in the rural sector. IFAD is the first specialized agency of the United Nations to issue sustainable bonds. We started in 2022 and so far, we have raised $530 million from pension funds and insurance companies. Yesterday, we issued our first $50 million nutrition bond through a partnership with a Japanese mutual insurance company. There are other innovations in financing, such as risk mitigation instruments, guarantees, financing, co-investments. So many possibilities that can support States.
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