Food Security II   -African Hunger

A STRATEGY FOR CUTTING HUNGER IN AFRICA -- Part 4

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(70) THE HUNGER PROBLEM

(71) The Dimensions of Hunger in Africa

(72) According to the FAO, there are 186 million hungry people in Africa.⁽¹⁾ Hunger in Africa should be thought of across two dimensions - long-term and short-term. In the long-term, poor populations have limited income and are unable to purchase or produce, on a continual basis, the amount and quality of food needed for good health. This chronic condition is best measured by an indicator called "stunting," defined as a child's height relative to the normal height for the child's age. In SSA, the percentage of children who are stunted ranges from 15% to as much as 45%, even in countries that are not going through conflict or serious drought. This indicates that a large number of children are both physically and mentally underdeveloped over the long term as a result of inadequate diet.

(73) On the other hand, short-term food insecurity, frequently the result of crises or of seasonal food shortages, is measured by an indicator called "wasting," or a child's weight relative to his height. The percentage of children who are wasted and are thus in serious short-term nutritional danger, generally ranges between five percent and ten percent in non-crisis SSA countries. Table II presents data on nutritional measures in eight African countries. As can be seen from the table, progress in reducing malnutrition has been mixed at best, with wasting increasing in almost every country, and stunting decreasing in half and increasing in half. It is hard to know what to make of these figures, although there seems to be some indication that countries that are growing fast and reducing poverty (Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe during this period) experienced a reduction in stunting, at least in rural areas.⁽²⁾ What is clear is that malnutrition, like poverty, is worse in rural areas of all the countries for which there is data.

(74) Of course, the situation is much worse in countries going through crises. The UN estimates that about 1% of Africa's population, six million people, are either refugees or internally displaced. In countries such as Angola, Sudan, Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and the Congo not only are large numbers of people displaced, but capital has been destroyed and sources of livelihood disrupted. In addition, much of Africa is subject to periodic droughts and other weather-related catastrophes such as floods. But central to all the problems resulting from these issues - chronic malnutrition, conflict, drought and famine is one universal factor - poverty.

(75) Poverty and Hunger

(76) In the medium and long term the only solution to the hunger problem in Africa is reducing poverty. While hunger has a number of proximate causes such as poor health, crop failures, lack

(77) TABLE II: NUTRITIONAL MEASURES FOR CHILDREN IN SELECTED AFRICAN COUNTRIES(3)

of nutritional information, conflict, etc., almost all of these proximate causes stem from one core issue - poverty. Poor people are less healthy, less educated and more vulnerable to shocks. The centrality of poverty to the hunger problem, and indeed, to all dimensions of well-being, is clearly brought out in a series of data sets that have been assembled by the World Bank from the Demographic and Health Surveys funded by USAID. Table III, which presents data from Kenya, is relatively typical.

(78) As can be seen, for almost all indicators, the richest quintile has indicators that are from two times to three times or more better than the poorest quintile. This is clearly true for the three nutrition indicators as well as the two health indicators. These are complex relationships and not always linear, but is clear that the relationship between poverty and nutrition, as well as those between poverty and health status and poverty and fertility are robust. Thus, any attack on hunger must be based on an attack on poverty.

(79) TABLE III. POVERTY AND INDICATORS OF WELL-BEING IN KENYA IN 1997

* Body mass index, an index of adult nutritional status.

(80) THE POVERTY PROBLEM

(81) The severity of the poverty problem in Africa is presented in Table IV.

(82) Headcount ratio is defined as the percentage of the population below the poverty line. The poverty gap equals the distance of the mean income of the poor from the poverty line as a percentage of the poverty line. In other words, a poverty gap of 23% means that the average poor person has an income 23% below the poverty line.

(83) The table illustrates the following facts:

(84) Poverty is wide-spread in Africa, with perhaps the majority of the population being poor

(85) Poverty is more prevalent and more severe in the rural areas, but is widespread in urban areas

(86) Even were income better distributed, most people would not be very far above the poverty line

(87) TABLE IV. POVERTY IN 21 AFRICAN COUNTRIES DURING THE 1990s⁽⁴⁾

Indicator	Rural	Urban	Overall
Headcount Ratio (%)	56	43	52
Poverty Gap (%)	23	16	22
Squared Poverty Gap (%)	13	8	12
Mean Expenditure ($ / person / year)	409	959	551
Mean Poverty Line ($/person/year)	325	558

(88) Many of the changes, in particular the political and economic liberalization, that were described in the first section have led to some improvement in the poverty situation. For example, over a five-year period, the poverty headcount ratio fell by 25% in rural Ethiopia, 14% in Ghana, 30% in Mauritania and 21% in Uganda. In each of these countries, renewed growth led to increases in consumption per head of around 11%. In contrast, in three countries (Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe) where consumption per head declined by an average of 6.5%, the poverty headcount ratio increased by 53%, 5% and 26% respectively.

(89) THE POVERTY/HUNGER SOLUTION

(90) A number of scholars have pointed out that the most effective strategy for reducing poverty and promoting economic growth is to ensure that the agricultural sector is itself growing rapidly.⁽⁵⁾

In the first place, the rural sector is the location of the majority of the poor, so rapid growth of the rural economy is likely to have the biggest direct impact on the poor. Second, up to 80% of the expenditures of the poor are on food; a rapidly growing agriculture is based on increased productivity and thus, lower food costs. Reducing food costs raises the real income of all the poor, urban and rural. Third, reduced food costs enables workers to improve their incomes without increasing their money wages, thus enabling the economy to be more competitive in international markets. Finally, a rapidly growing agriculture increases the income of farmers that in turn allows them to purchase goods and services. Studies have shown that incomes generated from agriculture are more likely to be spent on goods and services produced domestically than imported goods and services.⁽⁶⁾ This means that increases in agricultural incomes have larger multiplier effects on non-agricultural output and employment than does non-agricultural growth.

1. FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World.

2. As has been documented by Tefft et al. in a set of nutrition studies in Mali, sampling inconsistencies across years make this sort of longitudinal comparison problematic. (Tefft, James, Christopher Penders, Valerie Kelly, John M. Staatz, Mbaye Yade, and Victoria Wise. "Linkages Between Agricultural Growth and Improved Child Nutrition in Mali." MSU International Development Working Paper no. 79. East Lansing: Michigan State University Departments of Agricultural Economics and Economics: 2000. at: http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/papers/idwp79.pdf

3. Sahn, David E., Paul A. Dorash and Stephen Younger. 1999, "A Reply to De Maio, Stewart and van der Hoeven," World Development 27 (3) 471-75.

4. Can Africa Claim the Twenty-First Century, The World Bank, p.90.

5. See for example:

African Development Bank, Agriculture and Rural Development Sector Report, Niama Nango Dembélé, "Sécurité Alimentaire en Afrique Sub-saharienne: Quelle Stratégie de Réalisation?" mimeo, February, 2001. http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/africanhunger/securitealimentaire.pdf

Timmer, C. Peter. 1998. "The Agricultural Transformation." In Eicher, Carl, and John Staatz (eds.) International Agricultural Development (third edition). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, and

Gem Argwings-Kodhek, T.S. Jayne, and Isaac Minde. 1999. African Perspectives on Progress and Challenges in Agricultural Transformation. http://www.aec.msu.edu/agecon/fs2/polsyn/number47.pdf

6. Cf. Christopher L. Delgado, Jane Hopkins, Valerie Kelly et. al., "Agricultural Growth Linkages In Sub-Saharan Africa," International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report #107, December, 1998.

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