With millions suffering from severe food insecurity in the region
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| Bukar Tijani, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa. |
23 February 2017, Freetown
- The second edition of the Regional Overview of Food Insecurity in
sub-Saharan Africa (2016) reveals that some 153 million people,
representing about 26 percent of the population above 15 years of age in
sub-Saharan Africa, suffered from severe food insecurity
in 2014/15.
“What
it means is that, around one out of four individuals above 15 years of
age in sub-Saharan Africa was hungry but did not eat or went without
eating for a whole day for lack of money or other
resources for food”, remarked Bukar Tijani, FAO Assistant
Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa.
“This
assessment underlines the significance of the challenge facing the
region in meeting SDGs’ target 2.1 and the relevance of sustainable and
substantial support to food security and nutrition
policies and programmes in the region”, he added.
On the
aggregate level, sub-Saharan Africa achieved adequate food availability
over the 2014–2016 period, with a Dietary Energy Supply (DES) of 110.
However, several countries in the region remain
highly dependent on food imports to ensure adequate food supplies, with
some sub-regions depending on imports for up to a third of their cereal
needs.
