Ghana, 5 other African countries achieve MDG One
Ghana has achieved the Millennium Development Goal One (MDG 1) of halving the proportion of people suffering from under-nourishment and halving hunger by the end of this year.
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The country is among six countries in Africa to have achieved the goal meant to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Angola, Djibouti, Cameroon, Gabon, Mali and Sao Tome & Principe are the other African countries to have achieved the target set by the MDG and the World Food Summit (WFS).
This was made known at the launch of the first edition of the Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in Africa (2015) by the FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative in Africa, Mr Bukar Tijani, at a ceremony in Accra last Tuesday.
West Africa in particular made notable strides, reducing its prevalence of under-nourishment by 60 per cent from 24.2 per cent in 1990-1992 to 9.6 per cent during the current 2014-16 assessment period.
“In absolute terms, that’s a reduction of the ranks of the hungry by almost 11 million, a significant progress despite rapid population growth and recurrent droughts in Sahel countries,” Mr Tijani said.
He noted that the past quarter century had been a time of “major structural transformation”, with vast demographic, economic and political changes for the continent.
“The number of underweight children in sub-Saharan Africa has declined over the last two decades, while stunting has stagnated and overweight is on the rise among children below five years,” he said.
Progress towards MDG and WFS targets
One person in four in sub-Saharan Africa suffers from under-nourishment today, down from one in three 25 years ago.
Despite the progress, considerable scope for improvement remains with respect to the WFS target of reducing the number of hungry people by half.
Indeed, that number rose by approximately 44 million people across sub-Saharan Africa as a whole since 1990, rising from 176 million to an estimated 220 million today.
That contrasts with the global reduction in the number of hungry people to 795 million people today from 1.011 billion in 1990.
The number of the hungry rose by around 20 per cent in Eastern Africa and this has been affected by unfavourable climate and drought conditions, and more than doubled in Central Africa, largely due to civil strife.
Key factors driving the progress
The report briefly presents the successful experiences of some African countries to improve food security and nutrition outcomes through programmes, institutional and governance processes and efforts to institute and sustain transformative policies.
“The 2015 Africa report on food insecurity also shows some factors of positive change and progress towards the MDG hunger goal. These multi-faceted and interrelated factors include economic growth, smallholder agricultural productivity, market access, international trade, social protection programming and timely access to information,” Mr Tijani said.
The global report noted that gains in agricultural productivity were critical in reaching the MDG hunger goal on the continent.