Will Africa’s year of nutrition bear fruit?

The African Union has declared 2022 as its year of nutrition. This year, as the agency celebrates its 20th anniversary, delegates at its annual summit for heads of states and government will reflect on the theme, “Building resilience in nutrition on the African continent: Accelerate human capital, social and economic development.” According to the Institute for Security Studies, the theme builds on the AU’s previous decisions such as establishing an African task force on food and nutritional development and the drawing up of an Africa regional nutrition strategy for the years 2015 to 2025. Though ISS said the new theme could help the AU to emphasize the importance of linking agricultural production and food security to health and nutrition, it noted that it would be important to ensure that “this statement of intent goes beyond mere meetings and events.” Africa’s grim nutrition outlook Last year, the continent recorded the sharpest rise in hunger. The estimated prevalence of undernourishment on the continent — 21% — is more than double that of any other region. The African Regional Overview Of Food Security and Nutrition report showed the number of people that are chronically undernourished continues to rise in Africa, reaching 250.3 million in 2019 — nearly one-fifth of the population. Chimimba David Phiri, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative to the AU and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, said urgent action needs to be taken to meet the nutrition goals set out. According to Phiri, about 282 million people are still undernourished in Africa but the AU wants this number reduced to zero by 2025. “We are far from winning the battle,” he said. “In fact, the numbers have been increasing rather than decreasing since 2014. For that reason, we believe that this theme will put nutrition and agri-food systems back on the agenda for them to consider.” Investing in nutrition Prior to the AU’s decision to focus on nutrition, the African Development Bank had also been actively involved in several initiatives to prioritize nutrition. In December 2021 at the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit organized by the government of Japan, the AfDB pledged an additional $1.35 billion to support nutrition smart investments over a six-year period. Babatunde Olimide Omilola, AfDB’s manager for public health, security and nutrition division, said nutrition has been an important part of the bank’s Feed Africa strategy. “We're not going to continue to depend on development assistance for what we need to do.” --— Babatunde Olimide Omilola, manager for public health, security and nutrition division, AfDB “All investments that we do in agriculture, in social protection, in health, in water, sanitation and hygiene and also in education, we ensure that they are nutrition-smart investments,” he said. “It means that we mainstream, we integrate nutrition into these investments.” Although Africa has 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land with billions in investment potential, it remains a net importer of food. Omilola said Africa should be able to produce and consume what it produces but this has not been the case. “Unfortunately, despite all of these, 246 million Africans still go to bed hungry every night,” he said. Omilola and Phiri agreed that this year’s theme is an opportunity to bring attention to these issues and remind African governments of the agreements they have signed. Phiri, whose organization has been actively involved in the development of the working paper for the theme, said unlike before, Africa now has a number of factors that better position it to be able to achieve the targets. “I think what Africa has now is a very active populace that understands a lot more about nutrition … and the importance of agri-food systems,” he said. According to him, Africa now has a new cohort of farmers who are ambitious, younger, educated, and understand the importance of farming as a business. Omilola also noted that African governments are now increasingly interested in knowing their country’s national nutrition status using the Continental Nutritional Accountability Scorecard launched by the AU and AfDB. Overcoming challenges But in spite of the increased interest, Omilola said a number of challenges still need to be addressed. The first being finance. “A lot of financial promises have been made, for instance at the global level for many African countries. When will those commitments become reality,” he said. “Finance is critical. It's really one of the constraints.” In addition to ensuring funds promised by the global community are released, Omilola said ensuring that domestic resources are used to support these goals is another challenge. The Africa regional nutrition strategy found that there is inadequate funding of national nutrition programs due to insufficient domestic resources. As a result, it said many AU member states may not be able to allocate sufficient financial and technical resources to manage and to implement national nutrition plans. “We're not going to continue to depend on development assistance for what we need to do,” Omilola said. Phiri added that strong political will is also needed as African governments tend to sign commitments but often lack the political will to see them through. “What happens is they sign agreements in Addis Ababa, or New York ... but then they do not domesticate what they themselves have signed on,” he said. “They move on to another agenda for other signatures, forgetting the need to work practically on these agreements because they're not going to serve themselves.”