News in brief:
– The World Bank’s report attributes the food crisis in West and Central Africa primarily to conflict and insecurity, rather than weather conditions.
– Despite Nigeria having the region’s largest population facing food insecurity, the overall number of severely affected people remains relatively low compared to other countries.
In its latest Food Security Update, the World Bank has revealed that the food crisis in West and Central Africa is not primarily caused by weather conditions. Although, the international financial institution said that it still affected the some countries in the region’s food security due to erratic rainfall, floods, and rainfall deficits hampering food production.
Chad, Niger and Nigeria were the countries with the most significant weather impacts. Instead, the major causes of food crisis were linked to conflict and civil insecurity.
“Persistent civil insecurity, disruption of intra-regional trade, and insufficient financial resources to respond to food crises continue to aggravate food and nutrition crises in the region,” the report claimed, quoting the outcome of meeting of the Food Crisis Prevention Network.
Due to its population, Nigeria contributes more than 64% to the region’s people facing what the World Bank terms as Phase 3 food insecurity—food consumption gaps that are reflected by high or above-usual acute malnutrition or marginally being able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets or through crisis-coping strategies.
Food inflation, caused by other economic factors worsen the case as Nigeria currently ranks among the world’s top ten countries facing the highest real food inflation rates on a year-on-year basis in June 2024. South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Liberia take the top three spots with Argentina in fourth place.
However, only 980,300 people in Nigeria are said to be experiencing large food consumption gaps which are reflected in very high acute malnutrition and excess mortality or are only able to mitigate large food consumption gaps but only by employing emergency livelihood strategies and asset liquidation. This figure represents just 0.45% of the country’s populace and it fares better than Chad (3%), Burkina Faso (2%), Mali (0.54%), and Niger (0.48).
Mali also has about 2,600 people have an extreme lack of food and/or other basic needs even after full employment of coping strategies. Starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident.
The importance of report such as this is that they inform policy decisions and even humanitarian efforts to benefit people the most by focusing on the real causes of food insecurity.
