What's New

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed both the vulnerability and the resilience of food supply chains. Supply chains from farm to retail have been disrupted, primarily by government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions affecting labor supply, input provisioning, logistics, wholesale, retailing, and food service. Supply chains have also shown a good deal of resilience and innovative capacity to adapt to the major supply and demand shocks they encountered.

East Africa facing acute food insecurity as drought continues, alerts FEWS and FAO

The world has made tremendous progress in improving food security and nutrition. The proportion of people experiencing hunger fell from 14.7% to 10.6% between 2000 and 2015. And we’ve made progress on undernutrition, with the prevalence of child stunting dropped from 40% to 23% between 1990 and 2015. Food systems – the technical, economic, social and environmental processes and actors through which we feed the world’s population – have played a huge role in this progress.

Food crisis and famines continue to plague many developing countries. Armed conflict and prolonged drought have left around 20 million people at a risk of starvation and death in Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen, and Nigeria, while several other African nations also currently face with food insecurity, largely as a result of climate-driven weather events. An estimated $4.4 billion in aid is needed to address these crises.

Ownership and control of assets have become increasingly recognized for their role in reducing poverty and improving individuals’ and households’ long-term well-being. In addition, research has shown that women’s ownership and control of assets can have important development outcomes both for women themselves and for their families.