by Justice Lee Adoboe
ACCRA, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Food insecurity affected 24 million more people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) between 2015 and last year, says a UN official, citing the 2016 State of Food Insecurity (SOFI) report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
In an interview on the report launched on Thursday, Assistant Director General (ADG) and FAO African Regional Representative Bukari Tijani told Xinhua that children and infants under five, women and teenage youth were the most affected.
"Globally, when we look at populations and people that are food insecure, we had 777 million in 2015. And this came as a result of sustained production policies," said Tijani.
"But in 2016 that figure rose to 815 million. Of the 815 million, we have a net change in rise in the Africa region from 200 million persons to 224 million persons who are food insecure," he said.
"So, of the global total of 815, 25 percent of that is actually in the African region," Tijani explained.
He listed climatic change conditions, economic challenges as well as insecurity situations in the region as some of the major causes of the drop in food security for SSA.
"Now, in terms of major highlights of the Regional SOFI, there are three main contributory factors," he said.
"We saw that natural causes, especially caused by climate change, have been some of the major factors. We had across Africa droughts as well as floods. The second major factor is the global economic slowdown," the ADG added.
These economic conditions, he said, were visible from the fact that there had been a fall in extractive and non-extractive commodities, especially petroleum products with many countries being affected.
In addition to the extractives, Tijani noted that there had also been a fall in the non-extractive commodities such as cocoa, oil palm, and cashew.
The commodity price falls, the ADG said, had caused a reduction in the incomes received by many countries in the African region from these commodities, resulting in a drop in the import of food and other related items due to a weakened import ability.
"The third major factor is the insecurities, including insurgencies in Africa," he said.
"In West Africa, most parts of the Sahel is insecure. We have conflicts in Mali, going through Burkina, Niger, and also we have the crisis in the Lake Chad Basin; Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger," he observed.
To deal with the causes for a food secure future in the region, Tijani said FAO had been working with the African Union Commission (AUC), development partners and individual countries to implement programs.
With other sister UN agencies, the ADG said FAO had been looking at a number of solutions, especially in countries that are in crisis, while the African Union Commission goes back with the Comprehensive Program for the Development of Agriculture in Africa (CAADP) which started in 2003.
"The follow-up and monitoring we have been carrying out together with the AU Commission on this program is what has made many of the countries actually to make more commitments in investing in agriculture.
"This is a platform which has seven pillars, but being a comprehensive program, it is addressing all aspects of food security and nutrition, the opportunities for livelihoods, opportunities for employment, opportunities for agro markets and also opportunities for value chain development and this is seen also as a platform to commit by African heads of state so that under Maputo Declaration of 2003," Tijani explained.
In addition to that, the FAO plays a role to support the AUC, regional economic commissions, and individual countries in partnership with others to see that it is on course and then to ensure that the level of investment being made reaches 10 percent.
