Food Security and Nutrition

Nearly 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, or one person in every four, lack adequate food for a healthy and active life, and record food prices and drought are pushing more people into poverty and hunger.1 At the same time, the world’s population has now surpassed 7 billion, and news headlines that in the past have asked “Can we feed the world?” are beginning to ask the equally important question, “How many will there be to feed?”

This report provides a summary analysis of food insecurity in Sudan and by States, area of residence and different functional groups in the country. It presents a suite of food security indicators including the Millennium Development Goal Indicator 1.9 on the prevalence of undernourishment at the national and sub national levels. This information is useful in locating and identifying food insecure population groups in Sudan for better targeted food policies, programmes and interventions.

This report provides information about Malawi's food insecurity situation at the national and subnational levels using FAO methodology based on food consumption statistics derived from data collected in the 2004/05 Integrated Household Survey. 

This paper examines the effects of early childhood nutrition on schooling inputs and outcomes to assess the dynamic nature of human capital production, using panel data from South Africa. Height-for-age Z-score is used as a measure of health and nutritional status in early childhood. Based on a comparison of siblings, this analysis concludes that improving children’s health significantly lowers the age when they start school, increases grade attainment, and decreases grade repetition in the early stage of schooling. However, this positive effect diminishes at later stages.

The analysis presented in this paper suggests that low-, middle-, and high-income countries all respond differently to changes in income and food prices and, furthermore that low-income countries are more responsive than high-income countries to such changes. These conclusions are based on a two-stage, cross-country demand system fit to the 1996 International Comparison Project (ICP) data for nine broad categories and eight food sub-categories of goods across 114 countries.