mapping needs, policies, and resources in africa

MAPPING NEEDS, POLICIES, AND RESOURCES IN AFRICA

ENDING RURAL HUNGER

Homi Kharas, Geoffrey Gertz, Lorenz Noe, Sinead Mowlds

www.endingruralhunger.org

October 2016

Acknowledgement: The authors would like to thank Isatou Jallow, senior food security and nutrition advisor & head of

food security and nutrition program, at New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Author’s Note: The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy

solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to

provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and

recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the

views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars.

Brookings gratefully acknowledges the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s support of the Ending Rural

Hunger project.

Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality,

independence, and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment.

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Contents

List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................... 1

List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... 2

Definition of concepts .............................................................................................................................. 4

Acronyms /Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................ 6

Preface .................................................................................................................................................... 7

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................ 8

Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 11

Section I: Hunger trends and progress in Africa: Where is progress fastest, and where are needs

highest? ................................................................................................................................................. 14

Access to Food ................................................................................................................................. 15

Malnutrition ........................................................................................................................................ 16

Agricultural Productivity Gaps ........................................................................................................... 17

Vulnerability ....................................................................................................................................... 18

Box: The special case of small states ............................................................................................... 21

Section II: Mapping country policies and commitment .......................................................................... 23

Agricultural Economic Policy ............................................................................................................. 25

Political Prioritization ......................................................................................................................... 26

Policy Highlights: ............................................................................................................................... 30

Country commitment to agricultural research ............................................................................... 30

Country commitment to women’s enabling environment .............................................................. 31

Section III: Mapping resources and investment gaps ........................................................................... 34

Domestic Public Investment .............................................................................................................. 35

External Public Investment for FNS .................................................................................................. 38

Africa’s Main External Partners ..................................................................................................... 38

Main African Recipients ................................................................................................................ 44

How well do DAC Members and Multilateral Institutions target their FNS investments? ................. 46

Box: A closer look at targeting to Africa’s investment “sweet spots” ............................................ 49

Policy Highlights: ............................................................................................................................... 51

Does political will by donor countries regarding FNS Assistance translate into action on

agricultural research? .................................................................................................................... 51

Does political will by donor countries regarding improved nutrition translate into action to improve

women’s nutrition? ........................................................................................................................ 53

Section IV: Data gaps ........................................................................................................................... 54

Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................................. 57

Key Recommendations: ........................................................................................................................ 57

What can African countries do? ........................................................................................................ 57

What can donors to Africa do? .......................................................................................................... 58

Appendix A: Malabo declaration & ERH frameworks ........................................................................... 59

Appendix B: Country by country numbers - Snapshot overview........................................................... 62

List of Tables Table 1: Malabo Declaration, SDG 2, and ERH Indicator Alignment ......................................... 12

Table 2: Patterns of progress - Needs ............................................................................................. 14

Table 3: Small African States: Public and Private Resources for FNS ........................................ 22

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Table 4: Patterns of progress - Policies ........................................................................................... 23

Table 5: Patterns of Progress – Overall Resources ........................................................................ 34

Table 6: Patterns of Progress - Public Investment ........................................................................ 34

Table 7: Africa's Top DAC donors (2002 - 2009 and 2010 - 2014 averages) ............................ 39

Table 8: FNS ODA+OOF disbursements to Africa by multilateral institutions, 2010-2014

average ................................................................................................................................................. 42

Table 9: External Investment to Africa: top 10 recipients (ODA and OOF) .............................. 44

Table 10: Top African Recipients of FNS ODA and OOF, Per Rural Capita and Total Volume

.............................................................................................................................................................. 45

Table 11: Public External investment to Africa’s sweet spot countries, 2010-2014 averages .. 50

Table 12: Are donors targeting their ODA within African “Sweet Spot” countries? ................. 50

Table 13: Number of mentions of key issues in DAC ODA project descriptions, 2013 ............ 53

Table 14: Which FNS data need the greatest investment, globally? ........................................... 54

Table 15: Which countries have least and most data gaps, within Africa? ................................. 55

List of Figures Figure 1: 10 Countries in Africa with Highest FNS Needs ............................................................ 15

Figure 2: Prevalence of undernourishement in Africa: Historical trends and projections ...... 16

Figure 3: Ending Malnutrition in Africa - Prevalence of (Population-Weighted) stunting in

Africa .................................................................................................................................................... 17

Figure 4: Transforming agricultural productivity in low-yield African countries .................... 18

Figure 5: Africa suffers more from consumption shocks than any other region ....................... 19

Figure 6: African countries with lowest overall vulnerabilities ................................................... 20

Figure 7: Small African States: FNS Needs and Policies .............................................................. 21

Figure 8 : Higher needs, weaker policies for FNS in Africa ......................................................... 24

Figure 9: Relative rate of assistance to agriculture in developing countries (percent of GDP)

.............................................................................................................................................................. 25

Figure 10: Countries with the strongest and weakest agricultural economic policy ................ 26

Figure 11: Stronger political prioritization of FNS is associated with lower Malnutrition ...... 27

Figure 12: Nutrition and rural social assistance: Primarily African based challenges ............. 28

Figure 13: African countries with strongest and weakest political prioritization of FNS ...... 28

Figure 14: Comparison of FNS Nutrition policies - Madagascar and Mozambique ................. 29

Figure 15: Comparison of country investment in Research, Skills, and Extension: Tanzania vs

South Africa......................................................................................................................................... 31

Figure 16: Comparison of political commitment to nutrition - Kenya and Ghana ................... 32

Figure 17: Overall Investment in FNS by Region, $ per rural capita .......................................... 35

Figure 18: 10 African countries with most and least domestic public investment for FNS

(USD) ................................................................................................................................................... 36

Figure 19: Lower Domestic Public Investment is associated with Higher Needs ..................... 36

Figure 20: Low domestic public investment is (especially) associated with higher

malnutrition ........................................................................................................................................ 37

Figure 21: Share of all DAC African ODA to FNS .......................................................................... 38

Figure 22: Which DAC donors prioritize FNS in Africa? 2002-2009; 2010-2014 averages ... 40

Figure 23: Which FNS sectors do DAC countries prioritize? ...................................................... 41

Figure 24: Share of all multilateral investments to FNS in Africa .............................................. 42

Figure 25: Which FNS sectors do multilateral agencies prioritize? ............................................ 43

Figure 26: Chinese investment to Africa: 94 percent of BRICS investment to Africa .............. 43

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Figure 27: Which DAC donors rank highest when it comes to targeting their ODA to FNS for

Africa? .................................................................................................................................................. 46

Figure 28: Multilateral institutions target their FNS Investments better than DAC members

.............................................................................................................................................................. 47

Figure 29: Multilateral targeting in Africa: investments are focused on countries with higher

needs (ODA + OOF) ........................................................................................................................... 47

Figure 30: Which multilateral agencies are most effective in targeting their FNS investments

(ODA+OOF) in Africa? ...................................................................................................................... 48

Figure 31: Africa's 'sweet spots' for investment: Benin, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Madagascar,

Malawi, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda ........................................................................................... 49

Figure 32: Sector distribution of DAC ODA to agricultural research in Africa, 2002-2009 and

2010-2014 averages ........................................................................................................................... 52

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Definition of concepts

ERH Framework

The ERH Framework comprises three aspects of food and nutrition security (FNS) in developing countries: Needs, Policies, and Resources. The framework combines 80 indicators across a variety of FNS-related themes, which are rescaled (normalized to 0-100) and then averaged to create indices surrounding Needs, which assesses the state of food and nutrition security in a country; Policies, which assesses the political framework surrounding action on food and nutrition security; and Resources, which measures the amount of capital that is available for a country to invest in food and nutrition security. Since the indicators underlying Needs and Policies are rescaled and averaged, all categories and sub-categories related to these two sections will be scores from 0-100 as well. The nine resources indicators are presented on a rural per capita basis and added together. All three categories are interconnected: An analysis between the overall categories and subcategories has revealed consistent correlations between all three. Countries with a high need for improvement on FNS tend to have weaker policy environments and less resources available to improve outcomes. Donors can use this framework to analyze their targeting effort surrounding FNS official development assistance, though they need to be wary that because of the relationship between the three categories as illustrated above, there might be tradeoffs between focusing on Needs versus Policies versus Resources.

Needs

Needs tell us how far each country lies from the defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets and which of the underlying challenges are most pressing.1 Since countries are scored from 0-100 on Needs, we will use “High Needs” to refer to countries with scores over 70, meaning the country has the most room to improve its state of FNS. Similarly, “Low Needs” will refer to Needs scores below 30.

Policies

Policies matter because we know sound government actions are essential to success on issues ranging from the rural investment climate to support for women to provision of rural safety nets.2 Since countries are scored from 0-100 on Policies, we will use “Strong Policies” to refer to countries with scores over 70, as well as “Weak Policies” to refer to countries with scores below 30.

Resources

Resources are essential to financing the necessary actions to end hunger. Public investments funded by governments’ domestic revenue, foreign aid, and international borrowing from multilateral agencies and other sources, as well as private investments by domestic and foreign business, will drive rural structural transformation.3 “Low Resources” are defined throughout this report as generally the range of values that are less than the 30th percentile, or the median if otherwise stated.

Definition of Food and Nutrition Security-related terms

The Sustainable Development Goal 2 pledges to end hunger and end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. The Malabo Declaration commits to end hunger through improving nutritional status, particularly regarding children. Given the wide application of terms such as hunger and malnutrition, this report will define these terms as follows, using the agreed-upon terminology of Committee on World Food Security 39 in 2012:4

Food and Nutrition Security: “Food and nutrition security exists when all people at all times have physical, social, and economic access to food, which is safe and consumed in sufficient quantity and quality to meet their dietary needs and food preferences, and is supported by an environment of adequate sanitation, health services and care, allowing for a healthy and active life.” Hunger: “When people do not have access to the amount of dietary energy needed for their normal level of activity, they feel hungry. If the situation persists over a longer time, it leads to

1 Ending Rural Hunger: Mapping Needs And Actions For Food And Nutrition Security. The Brookings Institution. Washington, DC. 2015. www.endingruralhunger.org 2 ibid 3 ibid 4 Committee on World Food Security, Thirty-ninth Session. “Item V.a., Coming To Terms With Terminology”. Rome, Italy: October 2012.

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undernutrition. Chronic energy deficiency can lead to a reduction in physical activity, weight loss or both. In severe forms, chronic energy deficiency can lead to wasting and eventually death. Hunger is not synonymous with malnutrition or undernutrition, but there are overlaps between these two.” Nutrition: “Nutrition is the consequence of the intake of food and the utilization of nutrients by the body. Good nutrition produces a healthy physical and physiological condition. It is secured when food intake, absorption, and utilization provide all essential nutrients in required amounts. Poor nutrition produces an unhealthy physiological condition and is caused by lack of physical, economic, social, or physiological access to the right amounts of dietary energy and nutrients.” Malnutrition: “Malnutrition is defined as nutritional disorder in all its forms and includes both undernutrition and overnutrition. 5 It relates to imbalances in energy, and specific macro and micronutrients as well as in dietary patterns. Conventionally, the emphasis has been in relation to inadequacy, but it also applies to both excess and imbalanced intakes. Malnutrition occurs when the intake of essential macro- and micronutrients does not meet or exceeds the metabolic demands for those nutrients.” Balanced Diet: “A balanced diet is a diet that provides energy and all essential nutrients for growth and a healthy and active life. Since few foods contain all the nutrients required to permit the normal growth, maintenance and functioning of the human body, a variety of food is needed to cover a person’s macro and micronutrient needs. Any combination of foods that provides the correct amount of dietary energy and all essential nutrients in optimal amounts and proportions is a balanced diet.”

Agricultural Research The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines supporting Research and Extension as “enhancing national agriculture research institutions and agricultural and rural extension services through policy advice, technical support, projects/programs, studies and workshops.”6 In the context of the ERH discussion of agricultural research support by African countries, this will be adopted as the working definition, while also incorporating the link between national and regional research institutions. In order to assess donor performance in supporting agricultural research, the specific Creditor Reporting System (CRS) code of 31182 will serve as the main indicator of agricultural research. However, for a broader discussion surrounding Agricultural Research for Development, the report will add several other CRS codes to the narrow definition of agricultural research, including agricultural education and training, extension, and services, among others. See the policy highlight on donor political will on agricultural research on Page 51 for a detailed explanation of these definitions.

5 Note: The ERH framework only focuses on data related to undernutrition. 6 http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/en/

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Acronyms /Abbreviations AfDB – Africa Development Bank

AFSI – Aquila Food Security Initiative

AUC – African Union Commission

BADEA – Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa

CAADP – Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme

CBFF – Congo Basin Forest Fund

CSO – Civil Society Organizations

DAC – Development Assistance Committee

DRC – Democratic Republic of the Congo

ERH – Ending Rural Hunger

FAO – Food and Agriculture Organisation

FNS – Food and Nutrition Security

GEF – Global Environment Facility

GNR – Global Nutrition Report

IFAD – International Fund for Agricultural Development

MDG – Millennium Development Goal

NEPAD – New Partnership for Africa’s Development

ODA – Official Development Assistance

OFID – OPEC Fund for International Development

OOF – Other Official Aid

SDG – Sustainable Development Goal

U.N. – United Nations

WHO – World Health Organization

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Preface This report is part of the Ending Rural Hunger (ERH) project undertaken by the Brookings Institution. A

global report and website were presented at the Committee on World Food Security 42 in Rome, Italy

on October 13, 2015 (www.endingruralhunger.org). This report represents an ongoing effort to utilize

the ERH framework in a regional and local context in order to aid policymakers and high-level advocates

in their work to improve the state of food and nutrition security throughout the world.

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Executive Summary

Today an estimated 230 million people in Africa are undernourished, 58 million children are stunted,

and 164 million children and women are anemic. Meanwhile nearly two-thirds of Africans live in rural

areas—a far higher proportion than any other region—most of whom live and work on small-scale farms.

As such statistics point out, fighting hunger and improving agricultural productivity is an urgent challenge

in many African countries. Indeed, African countries have enshrined agriculture as a domestic priority

through the Malabo Declaration and the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program

(CAADP), two regional initiatives that call on African countries to increase their efforts in promoting

sustainable transformations in agriculture. Moreover, given the scale of the challenge, Africa will

inevitably play a central role in the global effort to end hunger, as codified in the Sustainable

Development Goals (SDGs). Thus domestically, regionally, and globally, African agriculture and food

and nutrition security (FNS) are increasingly recognized as vital priorities.

This report presents an analytic overview of the current state of rural hunger across the African

continent, identifying where the challenges are greatest and what policy changes and investments are

likely to provide the greatest payoffs. It builds off the framework of the Ending Rural Hunger project,7

which aggregates multiple data sources to quantify FNS needs, policies, and resources in individual

countries. Such an approach allows for the identification of priorities both within and across countries,

which then permits both domestic and international actors to better target their efforts to maximize

impact.

Needs On average FNS needs in Africa are greater than they are for any other region, and all of the 10

countries in the world with the greatest needs are in Africa.8 In recent years the share of the African

population that is undernourished has fallen by an average of 0.4 percentage points a year; extending

this trend into the future suggests that 14 percent of the African population in 2030 will still be

undernourished. Achieving the goal of ending undernourishment would require approximately trebling

the current rate of progress, so that undernourishment falls by 1.3 percentage points a year. Similarly,

stunting has been falling in the region by an average of 0.5 percentage points per year, while achieving

the goal of ending stunting by 2030 would require a quadrupling of the current rate of progress, to 2

percentage points a year.

While the relative importance of different FNS needs varies country to country, many African countries

face particular challenges in raising agricultural productivity, especially with regards to cereal yields, but

also in terms of farmer income. Specifically, many small family farms lack access to crucial inputs such

as fertilizer and irrigation, which inherently limits their productivity. Greater investments in infrastructure,

research, and training programs are urgently needed to help close these gaps.

Policies There are two dimensions of domestic policies that influence countries’ FNS outcomes—agricultural

economic policies, including issues such as the rural investment climate and pricing and trade

distortions in domestic agricultural markets; and the political prioritization of FNS, such as the

establishment of nutrition targets and guidelines and investments in agricultural science and public

research. In general, African countries tend to have some of the weakest policy environments for FNS,

which is at least partially due to the fact that policy environments tend to be correlated with income

level, as strong policies can be expensive to implement and require well-functioning government

bureaucracies. Yet at any given income level there is still always scope to improve policies, and African

governments have significant opportunities to create better functioning agricultural markets and invest

in social protection systems.

7 A project undertaken by The Brookings Institution, which was presented at the Committee on World Food Security 42 in Rome in October 2015. Further information regarding our methodology and to view and download all the project data, please visit www.endingruralhunger.org 8 Eritrea, Niger, Mozambique, Madagascar, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Liberia, and Sierra Leone

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Three specific policy areas where many African governments could make significant improvements are

(1) increasing investments in research, skills, and extension for agricultural development, (2)

strengthening women’s enabling environments, and (3) improving support for nutrition. Through both

the Malabo Declaration and CAADP, African governments agreed to make investments in agricultural

research and human capital a priority, but at present only six African governments spend at least 1

percent of their agricultural GDP on research and development. Similarly, enhancing women’s access

to social services, employment opportunities, and financial resources in rural areas is likely to produce

real dividends, especially in maternal and child nutrition. Nutrition deserves particular attention, as it

underpins many positive social and economic outcomes and requires a paradigm shift from international

and domestic actions aimed at only closing calorie gaps to ensuring that additionally, a high-quality,

diverse diet is accessible to all. Ultimately each country—and the donors and international actors who

partner with them—needs to assess its own particular policy challenges and tackle the constraints that

are limiting progress.

Resources Funding for FNS comes from many different sources: domestic government spending, foreign aid and

other official flows from international actors, private foreign investment and spending by private

philanthropies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Even after considering the contributions

of all of these sources, the majority of African countries face significant resource gaps for funding

agriculture and FNS.

On average, African governments spend slightly below $33 per rural person on FNS. This average

figure masks significant variation at the country level, however; there are five African countries that

spend over $100 per rural person (Botswana, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Namibia), while eight

countries spend less than $3 per rural person (Sierra Leone, Ghana, DRC, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe,

Mali, Burundi, and Somalia). Many African countries also receive substantial foreign public funding for

FNS, either directly from bilateral donors or channeled through multilateral institutions; indeed, for 12

countries in sub-Saharan Africa, official development assistance (ODA) accounts for at least half of the

total resources available for FNS. Yet there is little evidence that donors responded significantly to the

food price spike and recent calls for substantially more investment in FNS: ODA for FNS in Africa has

only increased modestly in recent years, and remains steady at 10 percent of total ODA for the

continent. Notably, only a very small share of these funds are targeted specifically to nutrition or

research, two areas of FNS where further investments are greatly needed.

Conclusion and Recommendations Food and nutrition security is a foundational goal for Africa, one that has been endorsed by both national

leaders and the international community. Advancing agricultural productivity and enhancing food

security can contribute to many other development objectives, including the eradication of extreme

poverty, reduced conflict, better education, better health, gender equality, more jobs, reduced

inequality, and a cleaner environment.

Yet, based on current trajectories, most African countries are not on track to meet the ambitious FNS

goals included in the Malabo Declaration and the SDGs. Given what is at stake, there is an urgent need

for governments, donors, firms, NGOs, and civil society to redouble their efforts for promoting

sustainable agricultural transformations. For government and donor specific recommendations, see the

Key Recommendations Section at the end of this report. Priorities for all actors include:

Develop quantifiable metrics and track progress over time: Achieving the goals of the Malabo

Declaration and SDGs will require long term strategies, and, crucially, observable metrics to

track what countries are on track for what targets. Such metrics make it much easier to hold

actors to account for their commitments and to correct course and find new strategies if present

approaches are not working.

Define national priorities: Each country needs to assess its own particular FNS needs to identify

priority challenges and to build realistic and financeable strategies to address these needs.

While the details will vary from country to country, in many African countries more focus could

be given to nutrition, agricultural research, smallholder productivity, women farmers, and

climate smart agriculture.

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Strengthen policy frameworks for FNS: Governments have a responsibility to match the political

rhetoric of prioritizing FNS with meaningful policy reforms to promote well-functioning

agricultural markets, rural investment climates, rural social assistance programs, nutrition, and

investments in research and science.

Allocate resources where they will have the greatest impact: African governments should seek

to meet their commitment to spend at least 10 percent of their national public expenditure on

agriculture, and should allocate FNS spending to the specific priority areas most in need of

more finance, particularly surrounding agricultural research and women’s enabling

environment. Similarly, development partners should increase overall aid for FNS to Africa and

should allocate this spending toward countries with the greatest needs, strongest policies, and

lowest resources. Within countries development partners should also allocate their funding to

local priorities and align their spending with national strategies.

Invest more in data: Finally, reliable and timely data are invaluable for creating national FNS

strategies and tracking progress toward agreed targets. Yet many African countries lack high

quality data on numerous crucial FNS indicators, including those related to food loss and waste,

international trade, and smallholder productivity. Both governments and international actors

should invest more in FNS data collection and dissemination. The High Level Political Forum in New York in 2017 will focus on ending poverty and hunger and

promoting prosperity in a changing world. African governments will have an opportunity to lay out their

plans and strategies for ending hunger. The comparative data in this report and the accompanying

endingruralhunger.org website can be useful tools for measuring where the challenges lie and where

strategies could be focused to achieve maximum impact.

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Introduction Achieving zero hunger in Africa by 2030 will require significant individual and collective efforts at country, regional, and global levels. Although there has been a decrease in prevalence of undernourishment from 28 percent to 20 percent during the Millennium Development Goals period, 230 million remain hungry in Africa today. Other important measures of hunger confirm the urgency of the hunger situation in Africa: 58 million children are stunted and 163.6 million children and women are anemic.9 Although hunger exists in rural villages and large cities alike, the extent of the problem differs across locations and interventions needed to address such deprivations differ greatly. In sub-Saharan Africa, 62 percent of the population lives in rural areas, most of whom live and work on small-scale farms. Additionally, projections towards 2050 suggest unique population growth challenges for Africa, where a quarter of the world’s population will reside (U.N., 2015). Although parts of Africa are rapidly urbanizing, roughly 864 million people10 will still live in rural areas by 2030, so policy efforts and investments must be sufficiently comprehensive and well-funded to match the scale of this challenge. This report focuses on what can be done to achieve food and nutrition security for the 700 million people currently living in rural areas in Africa.11 In June 2014, 54 African Union member heads of state and governments signed the Malabo Declaration,12 committing to end hunger on the continent by 2025. A little over a year later, 193 countries agreed to SDG 2 “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” by 2030. The Malabo and SDG targets are aligned in principle and practice, on different levels—from the focus on increasing access to food and rural social assistance to the importance awarded to inclusive, resilient agricultural growth. They share the vision that agricultural productivity growth is a key pathway towards ending hunger, and highlight the importance of nutrition and rural social assistance, of smallholders, women, and science and research. Both frameworks are committed to understanding and reviewing the outcomes (needs), policies, and resources as a comprehensive way of identifying key priorities for action and investment. Further alignment between the frameworks above and existing institutions in Africa can be found in the principles under which the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program operates—Africa’s policy framework for agricultural transformation and food and nutrition security—namely accountability and transparency, inclusiveness, and evidence-based policy and decisionmaking. The Ending Rural Hunger (ERH) project was designed to map onto the SDG process and therefore also

maps on to the Malabo declaration (Table 1 below reviews alignment between all three frameworks). It

provides a starting point to review and follow up on efforts to end hunger by providing benchmark data

for all countries. The online global database of ERH provides access to 106 indicators for 145 countries

(including time series), including 46 countries in Africa. 13 The indicators, from 29 sources, have been

carefully vetted and curated into two actionable, interlinked frameworks: (i) assessing the relative FNS

needs, policies, and resources for improving food systems in developing countries; and (ii) assessing

the relative contribution of OECD Development Assistance Committee countries to promoting FNS

through their domestic agriculture and trade policies and their aid to FNS. The two parts are connected

through assessments on developed countries’ targeting of FNS aid.14

9 Africa Nutrition Scorecard 2015 10 United Nations World Urbanization Prospects 2014 Revision. This includes countries in North Africa. The World Bank estimates that nearly 750 million of this rural population would live in Sub-Saharan Africa. 11 The ERH database analysis is based off 45 of the AU’s members. Seven small States were removed in the initial assessment used throughout this report to maintain the comparability of the data (see section ‘The Special Case of Small States’ for more information). There is no data for the remaining two countries, Western Sahara and South Sudan, but South Sudan is featured in the latest iteration of ERH , to be released in Fall 2016.. 12 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and improved Livelihoods 13 The ERH project has been carried out by scholars at the Brookings Institution. It was launched at the Committee on World Food Security in Rome, October 13, 2015 14 For more information please see the methodology page or explore the maps, rankings or correlation data tools online.

https://endingruralhunger.org/methodology/

https://endingruralhunger.org/data/map/

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TABLE 1: MALABO DECLARATION, SDG 2, AND ERH INDICATOR ALIGNMENT

Malabo Declaration Relevant SDG 2 target ERH indicators (not exhaustive)

1. Recommitment to the principles and values of the CAADP process.

2.1 By 2030 end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations including infants, to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food all year round. 2.2 By 2030 end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving by 2025 the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and older persons.

Undernourishment, dietary energy, supply adequacy, lack of enough money to buy food, rural multidimensional poverty headcount. Under 5 stunting, under 5 wasting, anemia in children, percent of calories from staples.

2. Recommitment to enhance investment finance in agriculture.

2.a. Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development, and plant and livestock gene banks to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular in least developed countries. 2.3 By 2030 double the agricultural productivity and the incomes of small-scale food producers, particularly women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets, and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.

FNS, ODA, FNS, OOF, Government Spending on Agriculture, FDI, Philanthropy, NGOs.

3. Commitment to ending hunger by 2025.

2.1 End hunger. 2.2 End all forms of malnutrition. 2.4 By 2030 ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters, and that progressively improve land and soil quality.

Undernourishment, dietary energy supply adequacy. Food consumption score, average protein supply. Food production variability, emergency food aid dependence, household exposure to food price shocks.

4. Commitment to halving poverty, by 2025, through inclusive agricultural growth and transformation.

2.1 End hunger. 2.3 Doubling agricultural productivity.

Lack of enough money to buy food, rural poverty rate. Cereal yield, agriculture value added per worker, account at a formal financial institution, rural, access to financing for farmers, access to agricultural input markets, percent of area devoted to modern varieties.

5. Commitment to boosting intra-African trade in agricultural commodities & services.

2.b. Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including by the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round. 2.c. Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives, and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility.

Road density, distance to fertilizer index, MFN tariffs on agricultural products, share of peak tariffs in agricultural tariffs, non-tariff barriers, logistics performance indicator (transport), time to export, access to agricultural input markets.

6. Commitment to enhancing resilience in livelihoods and production systems to climate variability and other shocks.

2.4 Ensuring sustainable food production. 2.5 By 2020 maintain genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants, farmed, and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at national, regional, and international levels, and ensure access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge as internationally agreed.

Total renewable water resources per capita, projected change in water runoff due to climate change, land degradation risk. Not as a separate target, but ERH includes the following indicators: Agricultural R&D as a percent of agricultural GDP, Share of agricultural researchers with Ph.Ds.

7. Commitment to mutual accountability to actions and results.

SDG 17: Revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development target on Data, monitoring and accountability.

The ERH database updates all indicators automatically, in real time and provides time series data. The ERH database includes data on donors’ FNS aid and policies. The ERH database also identifies data gaps by country (e.g., cold storage). Time-bound nutrition targets, accountability in rural areas, Dialogue with rural organizations, and National dietary guidelines.

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Because of the coherence of principles among Malabo and SDG 2, the ERH framework can be used as a monitoring and accountability tool for countries seeking to end hunger domestically and for donors seeking to invest in interventions best target countries’ food and nutrition needs. The next sections discuss the outcome gaps (needs), FNS policy and commitment levels, and available

resources across and within Africa, based on the cross-country database provided by the ERH project.

14

Section I: Hunger trends and progress in Africa: Where is progress fastest, and where are needs highest? Achieving the end of hunger in Africa is an ambitious goal and significant changes are required in order to achieve the necessary rates of progress. African countries tend to have very high needs, weak policies, and low resources compared to most of the world. This could be due to specific challenges of geography, technology, or global and national market access. Whatever the cause, it requires a prioritization of needs and agricultural policy reforms, and for informed allocation of resources from both domestic and external sources. The ERH “Needs” scores are comprised of four sub-index scores, which align with the first four SDG targets: Access to Food; Malnutrition; Agricultural Productivity Gaps; and Vulnerability. Although these needs can be averaged into an overall indicator, it is important to recognize that achieving food and nutrition security is a complex problem that cannot be easily captured by any single indicator and that countries will have significant differences along different dimensions of FNS. Table 2 explores these needs in the African context, highlighting countries with the longest or furthest distances to travel to reach the end of rural hunger.15

TABLE 2: PATTERNS OF PROGRESS - NEEDS

Countries with highest FNS needs (ERH Score >70)

Needs (overall score) (10) Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Eritrea, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Zambia

Access to Food (Scores>70)

(17) Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia.

Calorie Gap (17) Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Namibia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Rural Poverty (24) Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia.

Malnutrition (Scores>70) (16) Angola, Benin, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, Zambia.

Lack of Dietary Diversity

(18) Angola, Benin, Chad, Congo, DRC, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Child Malnutrition (11) Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia.

Agricultural Productivity Gap (Scores>70)

(22) Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe.

Output Gap (36) Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Technology Gap (12) Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote D’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, Uganda.

Infrastructure Gap (28) Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia.

Vulnerability (Scores>70) (3) Eritrea, Malawi, Rwanda.

Environmental Shocks

(4) Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Eritrea.

Production Shocks (5) Eritrea, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Zambia.

Consumption Shocks

(12) Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Togo, Uganda, Zambia.

Source: endingruralhunger.org

15 ERH scores represent a “distance to frontier” approach, with 100 implying highest needs worldwide and 0 implying lowest needs. The scores cover data for the period 2009-2013

15

The 10 countries in Africa with the highest estimated needs—and thus the furthest distance to travel to

reach zero hunger—are listed in Figure 1 below, with Eritrea, Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique topping

the list. Bar Zambia and Mozambique, all countries on this list are OECD-classified “Fragile States.”

FIGURE 1: 10 COUNTRIES IN AFRICA WITH HIGHEST FNS NEEDS


Note: Eritrea’s score on access to food is extrapolated due to missing data

Access to Food One significant challenge for Africa is that of ensuring adequate access to food, especially when it comes to rural poverty with 17 countries in a state of high need, and 12 countries simultaneously suffering from both serious calorie and rural poverty gaps. At its heart, ending rural hunger is about ensuring that everyone living in rural areas—most of whom earn their incomes directly or indirectly through agricultural production—can afford enough quality food to eat. Access to food is thus closely linked with rural poverty and to household inequities that can prevent women and girls from getting enough to eat. Access to food is closely linked to high rural poverty in 24 countries, with the highest rates found in Somalia, Liberia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sierra Leone, states that also have experienced significant conflict in the past, which remains one of the biggest barriers for stable, equitable food systems. Another common measure of access to food is the prevalence of undernourishment, defined as the share of the population with food consumption below minimum energy requirements (Figure 2).

0 20 40 60 80 100

Eritrea

Zambia

Malawi

Mozambique

Madagascar

Burundi

Chad

Niger

Burkina Faso

Sierra Leone

Access to Food Malnutrition Agricultural Productivity Gap Vulnerability

16

FIGURE 2: PREVALENCE OF UNDERNOURISHEMENT IN AFRICA: HISTORICAL TRENDS AND

PROJECTIONS

Source: FAOSTAT, SOFI 2015, own calculations

Achieving the end of hunger in Africa will require tripling current rates of progress.16 Africa as a whole has seen a decrease in the prevalence of undernourishment from nearly 28 percent to 20 percent, but roughly 230 million remain hungry today—an increase of nearly 49 million people compared to the 1900-1992 period17 due to population growth. If current trends persist, by 2030 Africa will still be dealing with 14.5 percent undernourishment which, based on current trends, would in fact mean an increase in the number of hungry to over 240 million.

Malnutrition Even when individuals meet suggested minimum caloric intakes, lack of diverse, healthy diets and conditions that allow for the utilization of sufficient nutrients, will prevent them from leading productive, active lifestyles and achieving their full potential. Undernutrition leads to risky pregnancies and diminished ability to perform physical work or to achieve full cognitive potential. It also transmits poverty across generations. Identifying countries where the focus must also include this vital aspect of FNS reveals that 16 countries in Africa have high rates of malnutrition, five of which experience very low dietary diversity and high child malnutrition simultaneously: Chad, the Congo, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone.

16 Although tripling the rate of progress may sound high, many countries successfully tripled the rate of reduction of U-5 child mortality during the MDG period. 17 SOFI, 2015

17

FIGURE 3: ENDING MALNUTRITION IN AFRICA - PREVALENCE OF (POPULATION-WEIGHTED)

STUNTING IN AFRICA

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators 2015, own calculations

The prevalence of stunting among children under 5 years old, one of the most common indicators of malnutrition along with wasting, decreased in sub-Saharan Africa from 48 percent in the 1990s to 32 percent today (Figure 3). The Malabo declaration aims to reduce this to 10 percent by 2025, and in the spirit of zero hunger, ERH offers projections that show that Africa would need to increase the rate of decline in stunting by four times—2 percentage points per year compared to the current trend of 0.5 percentage points—to achieve zero stunting by 2030.

Of the 16 countries demonstrating especially high levels of malnutrition, Madagascar, Eritrea, Chad, Zambia, and Sierra Leone demonstrate the highest needs. More specifically, when it comes to the 18 countries with a significant lack of dietary diversity, Madagascar remains the country in a state of highest need, followed by Zambia, Togo, Liberia, and the Congo.

Agricultural Productivity Gaps Agricultural productivity gaps are the most significant in Africa, with 22 countries classified as having high needs, especially when it comes to output and infrastructure gaps. Seven countries carry the triple burden of significant output, technological, and infrastructure gaps: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, and Liberia. Low agricultural productivity leads to less availability of food for families, communities, and countries. The issue is particularly important for family farmers, who are the backbone of agricultural systems, especially in Africa. The Malabo Declaration explicitly recognizes this in its call for ending hunger by 2025: “Sustainable and reliable production and access to quality and affordable inputs, ‘smart’ protection to smallholder holder agriculture” (Commitment 3.a). Agricultural productivity growth is a powerful engine of ending hunger as it helps to raise incomes of farmers directly, boost off-farm rural wages, and lower local food prices. It can indeed be a primary driver of structural transformation by helping workers move from low return labor in farming to higher return labor in other sectors. The declaration also prioritizes creating employment: “Create job opportunities for at least 30 percent of the youth in agricultural value chains” (Commitment 4.c). In order to support improved FNS outcomes, the Malabo Declaration aims for a doubling of agricultural productivity by 2025, while CAADP calls for 6 percent agricultural growth. McArthur and McCord (2014)

0

10

20

30

40

50

Required Current Trend

Annual Percentage Point ChangeCurrent 2030: -0.5%Required: -2.0%

2025: 28.8% 2030: 26.2%

18

suggest one basic measure of successful food and agricultural systems would be achieving cereal yields of at least 2 metric tons per hectare. This has been found to be a key threshold for sustained agricultural productivity growth and, more broadly, for economy-wide development. Early successes in Asia’s Green Revolution were associated with jumps in yields from about 1t/ha up to 2 to 3 t/ha (or higher).

FIGURE 4: TRANSFORMING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY IN LOW-YIELD AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, own calculations

Although cereal yields are only one partial measure of productivity, achieving yields of 2 t/ha is consistent with sufficient agricultural productivity to allow farmers enough income to start to save and invest for the future, and for society to encourage labor to shift away from agriculture into manufacturing and services while ensuring there will be enough food to eat. Excluding major mineral exporters and closed economies, no developing country with yields of at least 2 t/ha has experienced sustained negative per capita economic growth since 1965. But average cereal yields in low yield countries in Africa (representing 80 percent of all African countries) are a far way from 2 metric tons per hectare and Figure 4 suggests that by 2030 these countries on average will only be producing 1.3 MT per hectare. By doubling agricultural productivity growth by 2025, some African governments might reach the minimum growth of 3.6 percent to achieve the 2 MT target. But this varies significantly depending on the country. To achieve FNS in Africa, CAADP aims to “sustain annual sector growth in Agricultural GDP [of] at least 6 percent” for all members, by 2025. Looking at this through the lens of growth in agricultural GDP, however, there are just three countries (Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Algeria) which managed 6 percent agricultural growth on average over the last 10 years, but which has not translated into the necessary yields to reduce high needs for Eritrea, whose cereal yields remain under 600kg/ha over the same period. On the other hand, over the same time period, a country like Central African Republic in fact averaged negative agricultural growth rates yet increased its cereal yields.

Vulnerability Food and agricultural systems can be vulnerable to production, consumption, and environmental

shocks. This lack of stability strains agricultural systems and makes it difficult for farmers and families

to plan for the future. Some families are chronically vulnerable; others are vulnerable to shocks.

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

Cere

al Y

ield

per

hecta

re,

Metr

ic T

ons

2 MT

2030:1.3 MT

Annual Percent GrowthCurrent: 0.7%Required: 3.6%

2025:1.2 MT

19

Improving the sustainability and resilience of agricultural production is crucial for ensuring that gains in

reducing hunger and malnutrition are not later reversed. Agricultural practices will need to be

substantially transformed to prevent a catastrophic warming of the planet. The 54 signatories of the

Malabo Declaration therefore committed to “Enhancing Resilience in livelihoods & production systems

to climate variability and other related risks” (Commitment 6).

African countries’ vulnerabilities relate mostly to consumption shocks (food price volatility) with over two

times as many countries highly susceptible to consumption shocks than either environmental or

production shocks.

FIGURE 5: AFRICA SUFFERS MORE FROM CONSUMPTION SHOCKS THAN ANY OTHER REGION


However, looking at overall needs at a country level shows considerable variation between countries in

terms of what type of vulnerabilities are experienced, and thus what type of investment is needed.

Figure 6 below shows the African countries least vulnerable to shocks, overall. It includes large middle-

income countries like Nigeria and Egypt, as well as small, poor countries like Madagascar and Guinea-

Bissau and Liberia.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Environmental Shocks Production Shocks Consumption Shocks

Latin American and the Caribbean Eastern Europe and Central Asia Africa Asia

20

FIGURE 6: AFRICAN COUNTRIES WITH LOWEST OVERALL VULNERABILITIES


Note: On the other end of the scale, Eritrea, Malawi, and Rwanda are among the most vulnerable countries. All three are highly

vulnerable to all three types of shocks.

FIGURE 7: AFRICAN COUNTRIES WITH HIGHEST OVERALL VULNERABILITIES


0 20 40 60 80 100

Tunisia

Guinea-Bissau

Egypt

Chad

Congo

Nigeria

C. African Rep.

Gabon

Liberia

Congo, DR


0 20 40 60 80 100

Eritrea

Malawi

Rwanda

Algeria

Mali

Zambia

Morocco

Burkina Faso

Benin

Niger


21

Box: The special case of small states The preceding analysis on African countries’ food and nutrition needs excluded small states with less

1.5 million inhabitants. This section therefore reviews the status of hunger in the seven African small

states in light of new data which will be updated on the Ending Rural Hunger website in Fall 2016.

The economies and geographic location of small states can vary greatly, but they share some common

development challenges, including vulnerability to economic and climate-related shocks.18 African small

states are no exception, with nearly all countries experiencing high levels of vulnerability.

The below rankings (Figure 7) use the same distance to frontier methodology across small African

States, as well as all other developing countries, comparing needs and policies.19

FIGURE 7: SMALL AFRICAN STATES: FNS NEEDS AND POLICIES

Source: endingruralhunger.org Fall 2016 Update

Several small states are highly dependent on ODA and other forms of external support. Among

countries listed in the table below, only Cabo Verde, Mauritius, and Equatorial Guinea have more than

50 percent of spending sourced from domestic resources.

18 http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/smallstates/overview 19 For a more in-depth discussion on Policies and Resources, please see the corresponding sections below

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Mauritius

Seychelles

Equatorial Guinea

Sao Tome and Principe

Comoros

Cabo Verde

Djibouti

Needs

Access to Food Malnutrition Agricultural Productivity Gaps Vulnerability

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Comoros

Sao Tome and Principe

Equatorial Guinea

Djibouti

Cabo Verde

Seychelles

Mauritius

Policies

Agricultural Economic Policy Ag Prioritization

22

TABLE 3: SMALL AFRICAN STATES: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE RESOURCES FOR FNS

Total Resources

Total Public Investment

Domestic Public Spending per capita (2013 USD)

ODA per rural capita (2013 USD)

OOF per rural capita (2013 USD)

Private External Investment

Seychelles 797 223 159 52 12 574

Cabo Verde 212 212 109 74 29 N/D

Sao Tome and Principe 301 301 30 112 159

N/D

Mauritius 125 125 123 2 N/D N/D

Equatorial Guinea 123 123 123

N/D N/D N/D

Djibouti 47 47 N/D 47 N/D N/D

Comoros 10 10 N/D 10 N/D N/D


Due to the shared experiences of many of these small countries, particularly those with shared

geography in the Indian Ocean, regional cooperation can offer ways to leverage collective action for

improved policy and nutritional outcomes. One such example is the recently agreed to Regional Food

Security and Nutrition Strategy (PRESAN) by the Indian Ocean Island Commission and with support

from FAO, which is designed to “develop independent nutrition policies with multi-sectoral

implementation frameworks.”20

20 http://www.fao.org/africa/news/detail-news/en/c/416975/

23

Section II: Mapping country policies and commitment To reach zero hunger, actions have to be implemented alongside policies favorable to agricultural

development, ideally disaggregated at subnational level by crop and market. Strengthening domestic

policies is a key pathway toward ending hunger. While we know that the relationship between FNS

needs and policies is partly driven by countries’ level of development, crucially, even after accounting

for differences in per capita income, FNS policies have an important effect in determining the magnitude

of FNS needs.

The overall ERH FNS Policies score is an average of scores on two sub-indexes: 1) Agricultural

economic policy, including measurements of the rural investment climate, pricing and trade distortions

that affect national agricultural markets, and the level of expertise in science, technology, and extension

services; and 2) political prioritization, which includes measurements of the government’s prioritization

of agriculture, nutrition, rural social assistance, and an enabling environment for women in rural areas.

The countries in the table below have been identified as having the most room to improve on policies.

However, inclusion on certain sections of this table need not mean that countries perform poorly on all

policies, but rather that they have at least one specific dimension of FNS policy to improve on. What

the data nevertheless shows is that the policy area deserving the most work in Africa surrounds

women’s enabling environment.

TABLE 4: PATTERNS OF PROGRESS - POLICIES21

Countries with weak FNS policy environments (ERH Score <30)

Policies (overall score) (7) Algeria, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Guinea, Somalia, Togo.

Agricultural Economic Policy (<30)

(5) Central African Republic, DRC, Eritrea, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau.

Rural Investment Climate

(2) Libya, Zimbabwe.

Agricultural Pricing and Trade Distortions

(4) Central African Republic, Congo, Eritrea, Somalia.

Research, Skills and Extension

(21) Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Cote D’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Political Prioritization (<30)

(9) Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo.

Agriculture (7) DRC, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Libya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe.

Nutrition (11) Algeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, Somalia, Zimbabwe.

Rural Social Assistance

(18) Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Chad, Guinea, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda. Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo.

Women’s Enabling Environment

(34) Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia.


21 Scores above cover the period 2009-2013

24

African countries still face the highest FNS needs (countries towards the top of Figure 8) but also

register some of the weakest policy environments (countries to the left of Figure 8), which combined

increase the hurdles that countries face when promoting a sustainable FNS system.

FIGURE 8 : HIGHER NEEDS, WEAKER POLICIES FOR FNS IN AFRICA

Source: www.endinguralhunger.org

*Highlighted countries: Low and middle income countries in SSA and MENA regions

Note: (Size of bubble = percent of population, rural; Yellow: Sub-Saharan Africa; Purple: Middle East and North Africa)

Although African countries need to strengthen their policies, the good news is that Africa has been

moving away from distortions to agricultural markets over the last four decades, especially since the

mid-70s, as shown in Figure 9. Today, there is nearly no bias, in relative terms (e.g., overvalued

exchange rates favoring non-tradeables), against agricultural production and trade.

http://www.endinguralhunger.org/

25

FIGURE 9: RELATIVE RATE OF ASSISTANCE TO AGRICULTURE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (PERCENT

OF GDP)

Source: Anderson (2013)

As African countries remove distortions to their agricultural markets, there is potential to build more

efficient, integrated global markets to optimize agricultural production. Moreover, new technologies and

institutions are helping further integrate global markets. It must be stressed, however, that such

improvements will only help small scale farmers if these farmers can connect with markets. Thus

investments to increase the linkages between small scale farmers and local, national and global

markets—as discussed in the context of new business models for small scale farms above—are a

necessary complement to strengthening global markets.

Agricultural Economic Policy The ERH measurement of a robust agricultural economic policy includes indicators on the rural investment climate, pricing and trade distortions that affect national agricultural markets; and the level of expertise in science, technology, and extension services. Countries are scored based on their commitment to inclusive, open, and enabling domestic and international trade conditions. Figure 10 ranks African countries based on strongest and weakest agricultural economic policy environments. As Figure 9 above shows, African countries have improved their policies related to favoring sectors within agriculture. However, the absolute level of policy is still too low in many countries, and individual countries still struggle to improve agricultural policies including burdensome pricing and trade distortions, especially when it comes to tariffs on agricultural products, and lengthy and inefficient trading environments. These point to a need for improved structural efficiency.

-70%

-60%

-50%

-40%

-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

1955-60 1960-65 1965-70 1970-75 1975-80 1980-85 1985-90 1990-95 1995-00 2000-05 2005-10

Pe

rce

nt

Africa Asia Eastern Europe Latin America All Developing Countries

26

FIGURE 10: COUNTRIES WITH THE STRONGEST AND WEAKEST AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIC POLICY


Political Prioritization ERH attempts to measure action along with needs, by looking at the policy environment and levels of commitment of each developing country. While all of the countries with the strongest policy environments are middle- to higher-income countries, many of the countries with the weakest policy environments are among the poorest in the world. This is not surprising, because some indicators included in the ERH analysis of policy environments are institutional in nature and are therefore correlated with per capita income. And since strong policy environments can be expensive and difficult to implement, poor countries with weak institutions are unlikely to receive high scores on the index, even when their governments are committed to ending hunger. Sub-Saharan African countries, for example, generally face greater hunger challenges than other regions, even after controlling for their own policies and incomes. This is partly because FNS is not prioritized by governments. Unlike institutional policies, many political commitments can be made at any level of income. Our indicators measure the extent to which strategies, rural safety nets, women’s empowerment and other features of strong political commitment are present. Figure 11 shows that higher political prioritization is associated with lower malnutrition, for example.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Tanzania

Kenya

Namibia

Swaziland

Cameroon

Egypt

Tunisia

South Africa

Botswana

Benin

Rural Investment Climate Agricultural Pricing and Trade Distortions


0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

C. African Republic

Eritrea

Guinea-Bissau

Guinea

Congo (DRC)

Chad

Zimbabwe

Burundi

Somalia

Cote d'Ivoire

Rural Investment Climate Agricultural Pricing and Trade Distortions


27

FIGURE 11: STRONGER POLITICAL PRIORITIZATION OF FNS IS ASSOCIATED WITH LOWER

MALNUTRITION


Note: (Size of bubble = percent of population, rural; Yellow = SSA; Purple = MENA)

On political prioritization, African countries especially need to work harder toward inclusive and resilient rural FNS systems. Nearly all countries need to strengthen nutrition, rural social assistance, and equal access opportunities for women within their national policy and strategies, as the below maps help highlight (Figure 12).22

Regarding nutrition in particular, there is widespread consensus that nutrition in Africa deserves more attention, including by country governments. It is estimated that countries in Africa lose 11 percent of gross national product due to poor nutrition every year.23 This is backed up by analysis by the Cost of Hunger in Africa study led by the African Union Commission and NEPAD. Ghana, for example, is estimated to have lost 6.4 percent of GDP ($2.26 billion) in 2012 as a result of child undernutrition. As the Global Nutrition Report 2014 notes, 30-40 percent of government budgets are allocated to sectors that have a high degree of relevance for nutrition. Unlocking the potential of budgets that are so closely aligned with nutrition together with innovative financing options offers countries the potential to prioritize nutrition and thereby achieve many of the outcomes required to guarantee food and nutrition security in Africa. In order to ensure the proper tracking of policy interventions by both country governments and donors, the GNR 2015 also points out the need for better nutrition data among African countries, particularly for the diets of 6- to 23-month-olds.24

22 Snapshot images from interactive tool on www.endingruralhunger.org 23 Horton, S., and R. H. Steckel. 2011. Malnutrition: Global Economic Losses Attributable to Malnutrition 1900–2000 and Projections to 2050. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Consensus on Human Challenges. In Global Nutrition Report 2014. 24 GNR 2015, Message 5, xxvi.

http://www.endingruralhunger.org/

28

FIGURE 12: NUTRITION AND RURAL SOCIAL ASSISTANCE: PRIMARILY AFRICAN BASED CHALLENGES

Source: endingruralhunger.org/data/map

Figure 13, below, shows which African countries have the strongest and weakest commitments to FNS as evidenced by the articulation of (and budgetary commitment to) specific plans and programs, as well as the variation in gaps between countries. Commitment is measured by looking at data on agricultural spending, government nutrition and food safety strategy, presence and implementation of rural social safety nets, and equal land and financial services access for women.

FIGURE 13: AFRICAN COUNTRIES WITH STRONGEST AND WEAKEST POLITICAL PRIORITIZATION OF

FNS25


25 Somalia, Eritrea and the Central African Republic’s score on rural social assistance have been extrapolated due to missing data.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Botswana

Eritrea

Egypt

Mozambique

Madagascar

Congo

Malawi

Tunisia

Lesotho

South Africa

Agriculture Nutrition Rural Social Assistance Women's Enabling Environment

29


Note: Missing bar indicates a score of 0 (very weak policy environment).

Digging deeper into the ERH framework allows for a better understanding of which areas need most attention. Madagascar and Mozambique for example, two countries with similar scores both overall and specifically on nutrition, display different strengths and weaknesses at the more granular level: Madagascar’s commitment to nutrition seems to be more expansive than Mozambique’s, including governmental promotion of specific feeding practices for children. On the other hand, Mozambique has a more stable food safety environment than Madagascar. However, both countries have high stunting rates (Madagascar 49.2 percent in 2009 and Mozambique 43.1 in 2011), suggesting a broad policy approach to ending malnutrition is needed.

FIGURE 14: COMPARISON OF FNS NUTRITION POLICIES - MADAGASCAR AND MOZAMBIQUE


Note: Neither countries have time-bound nutrition targets, therefore both receive a score of 0.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Somalia

Congo (DRC)

Algeria

Cameroon

Togo

C. African Republic

Chad

Sierra Leone

Guinea

Cote d'Ivoire

Agriculture Nutrition Rural Social Assistance Women's Enabling Environment

0 20 40 60 80 100

Mozambique

Madagascar

National Dietary Guidelines

Time-Bound Nutrition Targets

Governments Promote Complementary Feeding

Food Safety Score

30

Policy Highlights: Country commitment to agricultural research The Malabo Declaration commits its signatories to doubling productivity by 2025, and places special

focus on the “supply of appropriate knowledge, information, and skills to users.” More specifically, it

resolves to strengthen national and regional institutions for knowledge and data generation and

management that support evidence based planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. The

CAADP framework also reflects this principle, defining the objective of its fourth pillar (agricultural

research) as “improving agricultural research and systems in order to disseminate appropriate

technologies.”26

ERH assesses agricultural research gaps and policies in two sections of its developing country

framework: First, in its assessment of agricultural productivity gaps, and second in its assessment of

African countries’ investment in the research, skills, and extension environment.

Do African countries invest in and commit to these principles?

Agricultural productivity gaps are greatest in Africa, yet both domestic and external investment in agricultural research remain low. More specifically, low agricultural spending and insufficient numbers of qualified and female agricultural researchers is a challenge in most African countries. Nearly 20 African governments show strong commitment to improving extension services for rural

populations, defined as encouraging “the development of a complementary pluralistic research and

extension service.”27 Yet, the most common challenge across Africa is that of weak environment for

research, skills, and extension services, driven by gaps in spending on research and human capital.

Only six African countries spend 1 percent or more of their agricultural GDP on agricultural research

and development, and the number of highly qualified or trained agricultural researchers, and quasi non-

existence of female researchers across the continent, represent clear gaps.

Burkina Faso demonstrates a clear example of the importance of agricultural extension services, finance, and innovation: Its recent successes at transforming degraded land into productive use and increasing food crop production are partially attributed to adaptive and innovative techniques to conserve soil and water and to appropriate dissemination and outreach. 28 Yet, Burkina Faso’s investment in agriculture is highly dependent on external investment, having experienced a six-fold increase of ODA investments during the 2000s. Although high level political will for agricultural transformation and increased FNS is demonstrated,29 public investment for FNS in Burkina Faso represents a little over $18 per rural capita and only 0.4 percent of its agricultural GDP is invested in agricultural research. Even countries with the strongest policy environments like South Africa and Tanzania (Figure 15), need to invest more in their human capital as improved agricultural research can improve the food and nutrition security across all elements of society. The importance of improved food systems is underscored by findings in the 2009 Global Hunger Index, which shows that high rates of hunger are strongly linked to gender inequalities. The publication suggests that higher levels of hunger are associated with lower literacy rates and access to education for women as well as the health and survival inequalities between women and men.30

26 NEPAD.org 27 Endingruralhunger.org – data missing for 24 African countries 28 ODI, 2016 29 ODI, 2016 30 (2009 Global Hunger Index. The Challenge of Hunger: focus on Financial Crisis and Gender Inequality. IFPRI Issue Brief 62. November 2009)

31

FIGURE 15: COMPARISON OF COUNTRY INVESTMENT IN RESEARCH, SKILLS, AND EXTENSION:

TANZANIA VS SOUTH AFRICA


The example of Tanzania and South Africa further shed light on the need for a more robust agricultural

research environment in Africa, even among its larger economies. Tanzania and South Africa have

virtually no Ph.D. qualified and/or female agricultural researchers as a share of their rural populations.31

South Africa’s low score extension services is due to an agricultural extension services system that “is

weak and does not address the needs of poor farmers.”32 On the other hand, the Tanzanian government

has had a “complementary pluralistic research and extension” system in place for the past three years

of data.

As the Malabo Declaration shows, investing in agricultural research is a priority. Here too, there is

overlap with existing investment and policy institutions. The Consultative Group for International

Agricultural Research (CGIAR) for example stresses the need to bolster agricultural research capacity

as a way to achieve international development outcomes. At the Global Conference on Agricultural

Research for Development in 2012, stakeholders of CGIAR argued that agricultural research “will lead

to the enhanced availability and access to food at community, household, and individual levels” and

that it is “essential” for achieving FNS.

Country commitment to women’s enabling environment It is estimated that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 percent, raise agricultural output in the developing world by 2.5-4 percent, and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12-17 percent.33 Recognizing the importance of gender within all aspects of FNS is paramount, and, as shown by the ERH index, improvements need to take place across the board. Cognizant of this need, at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 2012-2013, ministers ratified two sets of global agreements: The first, relevant to this report, pertains to maternal and child nutrition,34 the second relates to obesity and diabetes.35 The Malabo Declaration itself calls for all African countries to reduce levels of stunting to 10 percent, and underweight children

31 Both yield results of greater than 0 percent share of female researchers or researchers with PHD, as a share of their rural population. 32 HANCI index 33 (The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in Agriculture , closing the gender gap for development, FAO, Rome 2011) 34 The 6 targets are: 40 percent reduction in the number of children under-5 who are stunted; 50 percent reduction of anemia in women of reproductive age; 30 percent reduction in low birth weight; no increase in childhood overweight; increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first 6 months up to at least 50 percent; reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5 percent . 35 Although overnutrition problems are growing, even in rural areas of developing countries, we have focused our attention in this report on undernutrition

0 20 40 60 80 100

South Africa

Tanzania

Agricultural R&D as % of Agricultural GDP Access to Agricultural Extension Services

Share of Researchers with PHD Share of Female Researchers

32

to 5 percent by 2025. Furthermore, African governments have endorsed the Second International Conference on Nutrition, whose outcomes and framework for action call for increased focus on women in nutrition, as well as the contributions of women farmers. In other global frameworks, such as the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, emphasis is also placed on the importance of women, through other key WHA targets such as promoting breastfeeding and reducing anemia in women. Estimates attribute the 55 percent global reduction in child malnutrition between 1970 and 1995 to improvements in women’s status, 43 percent of which is explained by progress in women’s education.36 The GNR, meanwhile, highlights the importance of breastfeeding for child nutrition, and subsequently that of women’s access to work and basic services, and secure social safety systems for sustained nutrition security. As several reports have underlined, including the regional Millennium Development Goals Report 2015,37 the large rural populations of Africa suffer disproportionally from lack of access to health services, education, water, sanitation, and social safety nets, as well as nutrition. Rural women and girls especially are affected by this lack of access; however, data gaps in existing monitoring and evaluation frameworks hinder efforts to accurately target policies and investment. Plugging these data gaps will be key to a greater understanding of the challenge facing rural women and girls in particular. According to the GNR 2015, Kenya, the only country worldwide on track to meet all five WHA targets, is considered a success story. Yet on prioritizing nutrition at the policy level, Kenya ranks quite low because they have no time-bound nutrition targets, nor national dietary guidelines. Progresses made in combatting malnutrition are largely attributed to an increase of exclusive breastfeeding for children under 6 months old from 13 percent in 2003 to 61 percent in 2015.38 Although the government hopes to reach 80 percent exclusive breastfeeding by 2017, conditions for women remain difficult. Obstacles to breastfeeding for many rural women include employment conditions (distance from children), social safety nets (including maternity leave), and access to work or other basic needs, such as water.39 Kenya ranks 27th among its African peers when it comes to promoting breastfeeding for babies beyond the 0- to 6-month age bracket, which might point to a short-term approach by the government. More broadly speaking, Kenya ranks quite low when it comes to commitment to nutrition. Similar rankings apply for prioritizing women’s access to land and financial services. Kenya’s DAC partners, on the other hand, tend to focus on women when it comes to nutrition investments: 83 percent of projects are marked as being gender sensitive.

FIGURE 16: COMPARISON OF POLITICAL COMMITMENT TO NUTRITION - KENYA AND GHANA


36 Bread for the World, 2015/IFPRI, 2000 37 http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/mdg/mdg-reports/africa-collection.html 38 GNR, 2015 39 GNR, 2015

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Ghana

Kenya

National Dietary Guidelines Time-Bound Nutrition Targets Governments Promote Complementary Feeding Food Safety Score

33

Ghana, on the other hand, amongst the four countries40 on track to meeting four WHA targets, ranks 6th amongst its African peers when it comes to political prioritization of nutrition. Progress at policy level in Ghana is attributed to CSO influence over the government, in particular the Ghana Coalition of Civil Society Organizations. This CSO was engaged as part of the SUN movement41 process, which the government joined in March 2011 with a letter of commitment from the minister of health.

40 The other countries are Colombia, Vanuatu, and Vietnam. 41 GNR, 2014

34

Section III: Mapping resources and investment gaps Assessing how much money is available for promoting agriculture and FNS in developing countries is

difficult to do accurately given the lack of comparable data across different sources of funding. Whilst

the ERH methodology brings together data on both public and external private resources flows for FNS,

domestic private-sector data are particularly lacking for Africa, therefore this report focuses on public

investments. This includes measures of domestic public investment, official development assistance for

FNS, and other official flows (OOF) for FNS, including non-concessional loans from international

institutions. Levels of spending on FNS are made comparable between large and small countries by

expressing them in terms of dollars spent per rural person per year.

TABLE 5: PATTERNS OF PROGRESS – OVERALL RESOURCES

Countries with low FNS resources

Resources (<$32* per rural capita)

(20) Benin, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe.

Source: endingruralhunger.org Note: Dollar amount = lowest (30th) percentile

In the Malabo Declaration, African Union members recommitted their pledge of spending 10 percent

of their national public expenditure on agriculture. In line with this, the below table dedicates one row

to outlining which countries spend 10 percent or more of public expenditure, those who spend above

5 percent and those who spend less than 5 percent.

TABLE 6: PATTERNS OF PROGRESS - PUBLIC INVESTMENT

Countries with low FNS resources

Public Investment (<$42.3 per rural capita)**

(32) Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe.

Percentage of agriculture expenditure in total expenditure42

Countries spending 10 percent or more43 (4) Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali, Malawi

Countries spending between 5 percent and 10 percent (11) Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Zambia

Countries spending less than 5 percent (16) Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritius44, Mozambique, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa, Uganda

Official Development Assistance (<$2.1 per rural capita)*

(6) Algeria, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, South Africa

Other Official Flows (<$1.4 per rural capita)*

(8) Algeria, Central African Republic, DRC, Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Namibia, South Africa.

Source: endingruralhunger.org Note: Dollar amount = lowest (30th) percentile. **$42.3 = median across all developing countries

Resources are low across Africa, but public investment (from both external and domestic sources) is

particularly low in Africa, with 32 countries spending less than $42.3 per rural person—the median

investment across all developing countries.

42 Statistics on public expenditures for economic development (SPEED) – IFPRI. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/statistics-public-expenditures-economic-development-speed. 43 To most accurately align with the Malabo Declaration: "allocate at least 10 percent of public expenditure to agriculture, and to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness", we use an indicator looking at national expenditure, rather than agricultural GDP. Several countries are missing data for this indicator. 44 Mauritius is a special situation where agriculture is not one of the main sources of income for the population.

35

Figure 17 shows the scale of the problem in sub-Saharan Africa compared to other regions. It also

shows these countries’ dependency on ODA: For 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, ODA makes up

at least half of the total resources available for FNS.

FIGURE 17: OVERALL INVESTMENT IN FNS BY REGION, $ PER RURAL CAPITA


The below sections explore, in more detail, domestic and external public resources available for FNS

investments across Africa.

Domestic Public Investment On average, African countries spend a little less than $33 per rural person.45 While the top 10 public

domestic investors spend between $218 and $41 per rural capita, all other countries spend less than

$29.

45 Due to data availability issues for domestic spending on agriculture in more recent years, all figures on domestic public investment are yearly averages for the period 2009-2013.

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

Latin America & Caribbean

Europe & Central Asia

Middle East & North Africa

East Asia & Pacific

Sub-Saharan Africa

South Asia

Domestic Public Investment Official Development Assistance Other Official Flows

FDI NGOs and Philanthropy

36

FIGURE 18: 10 AFRICAN COUNTRIES WITH MOST AND LEAST DOMESTIC PUBLIC INVESTMENT FOR

FNS (USD)


Comparing the above and below figures helps highlight the signficance of the relationship between high

domestic public investment in FNS and stronger rural FNS systems, as shown in Figure 19. Countries

with high rural populations tend to be poorer and therefore have less government spending, which in

turn means that government spending per rural person is smaller. Countries to the top left corner of the

graph have the highest needs and invest the least domestic public resources.

FIGURE 19: LOWER DOMESTIC PUBLIC INVESTMENT IS ASSOCIATED WITH HIGHER NEEDS

Source: endingruralhunger.org, size of bubble = percent of population, rural.

218

186175

168

113

81

6148 45 41

US

D

3.3

3.0

2.2

1.7 1.71.6

0.7

0.2 0.20.0

US

D

37

Diving one level deeper to assess the relationship between domestic public investment and each of the

four FNS needs, the below correlation shows the significance of this type of investment holds especially

true for malnutrition.

FIGURE 20: LOW DOMESTIC PUBLIC INVESTMENT IS (ESPECIALLY) ASSOCIATED WITH HIGHER

MALNUTRITION

Source: endingruralhunger.org; (Size of the bubble = percent of population, rural)

38

External Public Investment for FNS The Malabo Declaration calls upon its development partners to “rally and align their technical and financial support in a harmonized and coordinated manner to support the implementation of the provisions of this Declaration.” FNS ODA plays a significant role in Africa, amounting to around $5.3 billion in 2014 (from DAC and multilaterals), close to its average of $5 billion per year over the last five years, compared to $11.6 billion in domestic public spending. OOF from DAC contributes approximately an additional $54 million per year. But for some countries on the continent, external sources account for more than half of total public spending for FNS. Multilaterals spend $1.2 billion in OOF and $1.4 billion in ODA for FNS in Africa. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), meanwhile, account for $540 million in cooperation, driven overwhelmingly by large investments by China in Angola and Mozambique.46

Africa’s Main External Partners

DAC Members As a share of all ODA to Africa, FNS investments are rising but the share remains low at only 10 percent,

as shown in Figure 21 below. The two spikes in total ODA to Africa in 2006 and 2011 are explained by

over $17.5 billion and $6 billion disbursed to action relating to debt. The trend shows little evidence that

DAC members47 were responsive to the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 food price crises 48 in Africa.

Similarly, during the AFSI food security commitment (2009-2012), Africa did not see a significant

increase in their share of ODA for FNS.

Despite Africa exhibiting the highest needs in many FNS sectors, and the lowest available resources,

increased DAC political attention to FNS does not appear to translate into significantly increased

investments for Africa.

FIGURE 21: SHARE OF ALL DAC AFRICAN ODA TO FNS

Source: OECD CRS

The top three DAC donors to Africa over 2010-2014, the U.S., EU institutions, and Japan, disbursed

around 50 percent of all bilateral FNS ODA to Africa from DAC donors, representing roughly $1.8 billion

46 Over the period 2009-2013. 47 Including the European Union 48 This excludes emergency food aid.

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

US

D,

20

13

bill

ion

s

Total DAC ODA to Africa Share of FNS in ODA to Africa

39

(Table 7). Most donors have increased their FNS aid in line with increases in total ODA to Africa from

the pre-2010 period. Canada, however, has made a specific new commitment with investments in

agriculture, nutrition, and agricultural research. On the other hand, French aid flows for FNS have fallen

as a result of a decrease in aid to agricultural research, following a one-time large $307 million

disbursement in 2007. Three-quarters of this amount went to 10 different projects in the following

countries: Madagascar ($55 million), Cameroon ($37 million), Senegal ($24 million), Mali ($22 million),

Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Gabon, Mayotte, and Zimbabwe (all receiving

$18 million or less).

TABLE 7: AFRICA'S TOP DAC DONORS (2002 - 2009 AND 2010 - 2014 AVERAGES)

2002-2009 2010-2014

Share of bilateral FNS ODA to Africa

Volume, $ Millions

Share of bilateral FNS ODA to Africa

Volume, $ Millions

United States 22% 483 24% 914

EC 16% 353 16% 605

Japan 12% 257 9% 344

Canada 5% 102 9% 334

Germany 7% 164 8% 301

United Kingdom 5% 114 6% 232

France 9% 188 4% 166

Netherlands 3% 61 3% 125

Belgium 3% 69 3% 111

Norway 2% 54 3% 104

Denmark 2% 46 2% 91

Ireland 2% 48 2% 73

Spain 4% 83 2% 66 Source: OECD, QWIDS, Disbursements, Constant 2013 $ (*ranked by donors investing highest DAC share over 2010-2014).

Most donors have increased their FNS focus in Africa but the level of the FNS aid share remains quite

low, considering that the bulk of the population (and of people living in poverty) remains in rural areas.

Only a few donors, including Canada and Japan among large FNS donors, allocate significantly more

than 10 percent of their aid toward FNS issues.

40

FIGURE 22: WHICH DAC DONORS PRIORITIZE FNS IN AFRICA? 2002-2009; 2010-2014

AVERAGES

Source: OECD, QWIDS, Disbursements, Constant 2013 USD

The nature of DAC country support has also changed over time. Developmental food aid, aid for rural development, and aid for research have fallen, while direct support for agriculture and basic nutrition have risen. The greater focus on nutrition is welcome, but its share, at 10 percent of total DAC FNS aid, is still very low considering the depth of nutritional needs in many African countries. Additionally, much of the increase is driven by Canada’s increased attention to maternal and child nutrition. At high-level meetings such as the G-8 L’Aquila Summit in Italy in 2009, countries that are also among the largest DAC countries in terms of FNS disbursement in Africa stated that “government-led, cash based social protection systems and targeted nutrition interventions are needed to support the poorest and excluded populations.” They further called on “all nations to support these aims by providing sufficient, more predictable, and flexible resources.”49 Yet as the data shows, investments in nutrition still require further improvements before the goals set at L’Aquila can be achieved. Efforts such as improved tracking of “nutrition-sensitive” projects by the SUN Donor Network50 may go some way to ensuring that nutrition remains part of the conversation at each stage of measurement of FNS investments.

49 G8 “L’Aquila” Joint Statement on Global Food Security L’Aquila Food Security Initiative (AFSI). 2009 50 SUN DONOR NETWORK: Methodology and Guidance Note to Track Global Investments in Nutrition

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Average Share of FNS ODA in Total ODA to Africa 2002-2009

Average Share of FNS ODA in Total ODA to Africa 2010-2014

41

FIGURE 23: WHICH FNS SECTORS DO DAC COUNTRIES PRIORITIZE?


The share of investments to agricultural research51 in FNS ODA fell to 3 percent over the second period, amounting to just $88 million. In 2014, DAC donors invested just over $70 million in agricultural research. The top recipient of these flows, Ethiopia, received just $5 million, followed by Tanzania and Mozambique at roughly $3.6 million and Kenya, receiving $3.3 million for agricultural research. Considering the severity of agricultural productivity gaps, and the high levels of vulnerability to environmental shocks across Africa, these are remarkably low figures. However, at the same time, donor countries, through CGIAR, for example, invested roughly $460 million in research programs in sub-Saharan Africa in 2014.52 Agricultural Research is therefore handled, in large part through multilateral institutions, as opposed to bilateral ODA. No matter the source of funding, however, investing in agricultural research is crucial for increasing agricultural productivity.53

Multilateral Institutions While most FNS development funding goes directly from bilateral donors to partner countries, an

important share is also channeled through multilateral institutions. Over the last 5 years, multilateral

institutions invested roughly $3 billion in ODA and OOF for FNS across Africa, $1 billion of which

represents OOF flows.

51 This is the narrowest definition of agricultural research. Broader definitions include investments to areas like cooperatives, post-harvest pest control, and financial services. See Policy Highlight on donor assistance to agricultural research 52 CGIAR 2014 Annual Report, Financial Highlights 53 ASTI, 2012

39%35%

3%

13%

5% 4%1% 0.2%

54%

22%

10% 8%3% 3% 1% 0.1%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

2002-2009 2010-2014

42

FIGURE 24: SHARE OF ALL MULTILATERAL INVESTMENTS TO FNS IN AFRICA


Multilateral agencies’ have maintained their FNS investments in their support to Africa between 2003

and 2014. At around 10 percent on average, they give about the same share of support to FNS as is

the case for bilateral DAC donors. As with DAC ODA to Africa, the spike in 2006 is due to a significant

debt forgiveness plan.

There are three large multilateral investors to FNS in Africa: the World Bank Group through IDA, AfDB,

and IFAD ($1.4 billion, $507 million, and $423 million respectively).

TABLE 8: FNS ODA+OOF DISBURSEMENTS TO AFRICA BY MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS, 2010-2014 AVERAGE

Total (millions) FNS ODA (millions) FNS OOF (millions)

World Bank Group 1433 863 570

AfDB 507 301 206

IFAD 423 330 93

Arab Fund 218 103 115

OFID 59 35 24

BADEA 31 12 19

UN Agencies 29 29 -

GEF 26 5 21

FAO 15 15 -

Adaptation Fund 3 3 -

WHO 2.1 2.1 - Source: endingruralhunger.org

Regarding sector allocation, the multilateral institutions have moved in a somewhat similar direction as

DAC donors (Figure 25). However, they support rural development projects in their FNS aid with a

slightly higher share in the period 2010-2014 than in 2002-2009. Similar to DAC donors, multilateral

institutions invest heavily in the broad “agriculture” sector. Like bilaterals, multilaterals have low shares

of their FNS investments going to nutrition and to research.

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

US

D,

20

13

bill

ion

s

Total Multilateral ODA to Africa Share of FNS in ODA to Africa

43

FIGURE 25: WHICH FNS SECTORS DO MULTILATERAL AGENCIES PRIORITIZE?

Source: OECD, QWIDS, Disbursements, constant 2013 USD

BRICs Although BRIC countries appear to invest a significant amount in Africa, China’s flows represent 94

percent of these investments.54 And, of China's total investment over the 2009-201355 period ($42.1

billion) most is reflected in one-off project investments to Angola ($1.28 billion) and Mozambique ($747

million) in 2009. Other countries received a far smaller cumulative amount of $70 million from China

over the same period.

FIGURE 26: CHINESE INVESTMENT TO AFRICA: 94 PERCENT OF BRICS INVESTMENT TO AFRICA


The second largest BRIC partner is India. Of India’s total $50 million investments, two-thirds were

directed to Cote D’Ivoire and nearly one-third to Mali. Otherwise, India invested very small amounts in

Benin ($300,000) and Liberia ($60,000). Brazil invested $12 million in the African FNS sector, one-third

of which went to Mozambique. The next largest recipient, Senegal, received $3 million, with Sao Tome

54 The data refers to OOF flows for China, India and Brazil (only available data). 55 Latest available period for BRICS information

59%

17%

12%

4% 3% 3% 1% 0.3%

57%

18%

10%5% 5%

3% 2% 0.1%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

2002-2009 2010-2014

62%

1%

36%

1%

Angola Cote d'Ivoire Lesotho Liberia

Madagascar Malawi Mozambique Somalia

Uganda Zimbabwe

44

and Principe receiving $1 million and Ghana $600,000. But Brazil also invested smaller amounts

($500,000 or less) in 17 other countries across Africa.

Main African Recipients Ethiopia and Mali received most of the total external public resources (ODA plus OOF), but given

Ethiopia’s large population this translates into a modest $10.1 per rural capita. Although Ethiopia

demonstrates considerable commitment to poverty reduction (and significant successes),56 it remains

short of revenues in absolute terms. Other countries receive more on a per rural capita basis, with

Gabon and Liberia, as well as small states standing out.

TABLE 9: EXTERNAL INVESTMENT TO AFRICA: TOP 10 RECIPIENTS (ODA AND OOF)

Ranked by volume received

Volume, millions($)

Per rural capita ($)

Ranked by amount received per rural capita


Volume, millions($)

1. Ethiopia 759 10.1 1. Sao Tome & Principe 144.1 10

2. Mali 306 30.4 2. Cabo Verde 80.2 15

3. Uganda 241 8.0 3. Seychelles 54.0 2

4. Ghana 232 18.9 4. Djibouti 47.3 9

5. Kenya 230 7.1 5. Gabon 34.1 8

6. Tanzania 227 6.6 6. Mali 30.4 306

7. Mozambique 227 12.9 7. Gambia 30.4 23

8. Burkina Faso 218 18.1 8. Liberia 30.3 65

9. Nigeria 195 2.1 9. Mauritania 28.9 46

10. Malawi 195 14.8 10. Senegal 22.3 176 Source: endingruralhunger.org (*All ODA and OOF from DAC, multilateral institutions, and BRICS)

Burkina Faso, with high overall FNS needs, especially agricultural productivity gaps, experienced a

significant increase of ODA investments during the 2000s, placing it amongst the top recipients of

investments for FNS (Table 9). Recent successes such as transforming degraded land into productive

use and increasing food crop production are attributed to this increased investment, along with

innovative techniques to conserve soil and water and appropriate dissemination and outreach. 57

Government support was also necessary for agricultural transformation to happen, although public

investment for FNS in Burkina Faso represents little more than $18 per rural capita in FNS.

56 ODI, 2016 57 ODI, 2016

45

TABLE 10: TOP AFRICAN RECIPIENTS OF FNS ODA AND OOF, PER RURAL CAPITA AND TOTAL

VOLUME

Ranked by ODA per rural capita


Volume, millions ($)

Ranked by OOF per rural capita


Volume, millions ($)

1. Sao Tome & Principe 112.3 7

1. Sao Tome & Principe 159.2 10

2. Cabo Verde 74.3 14 2. Cabo Verde 29.2 5

3. Seychelles 51.5 2 3. Mali 21.3 214

4. Djibouti 47.3 9 4. Seychelles 12.1 0.5

5. Gabon 34 7 5. Tunisia 9.0 33

6. Liberia 29.1 63 6. Gambia 8.2 6

7. Mauritania 28.9 46 7. Burundi 5.3 47

8. Gambia 27.1 21 8. Lesotho 4.3 7

9. Mali 26.2 263 9. Swaziland 3.8 4

10. Senegal 21.6 171 10. Zambia 3.8 34

11. Rwanda 18.6 149 11. DRC 3.3 136

12. Ghana 18.5 226 12. Kenya 3.1 100

13. Guinea-Bissau 18.2 17 13. Liberia 3.0 6

14. Burkina Faso 17.7 214 14. Benin 2.8 16

15. Namibia 16.6 22 15. Somalia 2.7 17 Source: endingruralhunger.org (*All ODA and OOF from DAC, multilateral institutions, and BRICS)

Breaking down the total support into ODA and OOF (Table 10) shows some low income countries like

Mali and Ghana receive considerable amounts of ODA, and some upper middle income countries like

Mali and DRC are significant recipients of OOF. Although there is variation in recipients of these

different flows, Liberia and other small states are favored by both types of investors in terms of rural

capita.

46

How well do DAC Members and Multilateral Institutions target their FNS investments? As part of the assessment of DAC Development Partners, the ERH framework assesses their targeting

of FNS ODA. Countries are scored based on the premise that aid should be concentrated in places

where needs are highest, where policies and commitment are strongest, and where financial resources

are scarcest.

Evaluating DAC donors on this basis yields the results in Figure 27. Countries with small, yet focused

ODA programs, such as Iceland and Norway do best when it comes to targeting FNS ODA for Africa.

Major donors like the United States, European Institutions, Japan, and the United Kingdom do not make

it into the top 10, highlighting the difficulty of targeting aid while maintaining high volumes across sectors

and countries.

FIGURE 27: WHICH DAC DONORS RANK HIGHEST WHEN IT COMES TO TARGETING THEIR ODA TO

FNS FOR AFRICA?


Overall, multilateral Institutions do a better job of targeting their FNS investments to countries with

highest needs and lowest resources than DAC donors. For both set of donors, there are trade-offs in

the targeting of their investments, having chosen to focus on the countries with the highest needs and

lowest resources, which often means operating where policies are weaker, including in fragile states.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Denmark

Netherlands

Slovenia

Ireland

Sweden

Poland

Finland

Austria

Norway

Iceland

Needs Targeting Policies Targeting Resources Targeting

47

FIGURE 28: MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS TARGET THEIR FNS INVESTMENTS BETTER THAN DAC

MEMBERS


Multilateral investments also appear to be targeted appropriately based on the type of flow, with ODA

being focused more to countries with high needs, and OOF flows focused more on countries with

stronger policies. The higher OOF investment to countries with stronger policies is mostly explained by

significant investments to two main countries: Egypt and Tunisia.

FIGURE 29: MULTILATERAL TARGETING IN AFRICA: INVESTMENTS ARE FOCUSED ON COUNTRIES

WITH HIGHER NEEDS (ODA + OOF)

Source: Endingruralhunger.org

Note: Size = Multilateral FNS ODA + OOF to Africa

On an individual agency level, funds going through the Nordic Development Fund, Climate Investment

Funds (CIF), the WFP, the FAO, and the African Development Bank tend to target African countries

where FNS needs and gaps are highest and where political environments are strongest. Many of the

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Bilateral DAC Average ODA

Multilateral ODA + OOF


0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Low needs High Needs Weak Policies Strong Policies

ODA OOF

co

nsta

nt 2

01

3 m

illio

ns U

SD

48

most effective multilateral institutions invest in countries with low resources rather than strong policies.

But the CIF stands out for collaborations in low resource, high needs countries with relatively strong

political commitment to ending rural hunger.

FIGURE 30: WHICH MULTILATERAL AGENCIES ARE MOST EFFECTIVE IN TARGETING THEIR FNS

INVESTMENTS (ODA+OOF) IN AFRICA?


0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

WHO

FAO

OFID

BADEA

IFAD

United Nations

AFDB Group

World Bank

WFP

AsDB Special Funds

Climate Investment Funds

Nordic Dev. Fund


49

Box: A closer look at targeting to Africa’s investment “sweet spots” Examining in more detail the investments to Africa’s “sweet spot” countries, where needs are highest,

policies strongest and resources lowest, shows mixed stories. Some countries receive a proportionate

amount of investment for their areas of highest need, while other countries receive very low amounts.

Benin, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Tanzania, and Uganda could be considered

“low hanging fruit’ for FNS investments, with some of the highest needs (globally) and some of the

strongest policies (in Africa), along with the largest shares of rural populations (as identified by larger

bubble sizes in Figure 31 below).

FIGURE 31: AFRICA'S 'SWEET SPOTS' FOR INVESTMENT: BENIN, BURKINA FASO, LESOTHO,

MADAGASCAR, MALAWI, NIGER, TANZANIA, AND UGANDA


All eight “sweet spot” countries have high agricultural productivity gaps, although Benin also has

substantial needs in addressing malnutrition, and Malawi is highly vulnerable to environmental,

production, and consumption shocks.

Lesotho, for example, receives just over $15 per rural capita and generally remains a low priority for

external partners, with just 5 percent of investments to the country dedicated to FNS. And while its

greatest challenge is that of improving agricultural productivity, Lesotho only receives 7 percent of its

ODA for this purpose.

On the other hand, Madagascar’s external FNS investments represent nearly 16 percent of all

investments to Madagascar, and while external FNS investments only translates into $6 per rural

person, partners appear to be targeting the areas of highest need, with 61 percent of investments aimed

at improving access to food and addressing malnutrition.

50

TABLE 11: PUBLIC EXTERNAL INVESTMENT TO AFRICA’S SWEET SPOT COUNTRIES, 2010-2014

AVERAGES

Country

Total External FNS Investment (millions )

Country share of Total African FNS Investment

External FNS Investment per rural capita

External FNS Investment to Africa per rural capita average

Share of FNS in total investment

Share of FNS in Total Investment Africa Average

Benin $79.1 1.5% $13.7 $8.1 10.6% 8.9%

Burkina Faso $218.1 4.1% $18.1 $8.1 17.8% 8.9%

Lesotho $15.5 0.2% $10.2 $8.1 5.0% 8.9%

Madagascar $90.0 1.7% $6.0 $8.1 15.8% 8.9%

Malawi $195.3 3.7% $14.8 $8.1 16.7% 8.9%

Niger $151.2 2.8% $10.4 $8.1 18.0% 8.9%

Tanzania $227.2 4.2% $6.6 $8.1 6.5% 8.9%

Uganda $240.9 4.5% $8.0 $8.1 11.62% 8.9% Source: endingruralhunger.org

Malawi receives nearly $15 per rural person, well above the African average and FNS is a high priority

for partners, at 17 percent of all investments. More specifically, donors tend to prioritize resilience

building, aligning with Malawi’s highest needs, investing 10 percent of all FNS ODA to environmental,

production, and consumption shocks.

TABLE 12: ARE DONORS TARGETING THEIR ODA WITHIN AFRICAN “SWEET SPOT” COUNTRIES?

Country Highest Need(s)58 Share of total FNS ODA

Benin Malnutrition (dietary diversity) & Agricultural Productivity 21%

Burkina Faso Agricultural productivity (outputs) 11%

Lesotho Agricultural Productivity (outputs) 7%

Madagascar Access to Food & Malnutrition 61%

Malawi Resilience (Vulnerability) 10%

Niger Malnutrition (dietary diversity) & Agricultural Productivity 20%

Tanzania Agricultural productivity (outputs) 17%

Uganda Agricultural productivity (outputs) 21% Source: endingruralhunger.org. OECD CRS

58 To define these sectors using the OECD CRS coding system, the following purpose codes were used: Malnutrition & Agricultural Productivity: 12240, 31182, 31166, 31181, 31191, 31193, 31194, 31195, 31192, 31381, 31382, 31391 Agricultural Productivity: 31182, 31166, 31181, 31191, 31193, 31194, 31195, 31192, 31381, 31382, 31391 Access to Food & Malnutrition: 31120, 31130, 31140, 31150, 31161, 52010, 12240 Resilience (Vulnerability): 31130, 31140, 31191, 32161, 31193

51

Policy Highlights:

Does political will by donor countries regarding FNS Assistance translate into action on agricultural research? Several international commitments and DAC members, particularly the U.S. in its role as G-8 chair and

lead of the Aquila Food Security Initiative group of donors, express the need to “strengthen” investment

in agricultural research. The initiative’s report in 2012 highlights the importance of financial and

extension services, as well as the need for improved clarity and reporting on these issues. This

commitment—similar to those in the Malabo Declaration and CAADP framework— also recognizes the

complexity of research, including technology, education, and science as part of the definition of

agricultural research. With a systems approach in mind, this section will consider DAC ODA to

agricultural research using its “broader” definition59 to include some of the key Malabo, SDG, and DAC

priorities such as financial services and education and training.

Through this lens, DAC donors invested roughly $362 million to agricultural research in Africa, over the

2010-2014 period (roughly four times than the amount reported to “agricultural research” only),

representing 7 percent of all DAC FNS ODA over the same period (versus 2 percent to agricultural

research only).

Overall, DAC countries appear to be aligning their investments to Africa’s FNS sector priorities, as per

the Malabo Declaration and CAADP framework, having increased their focus on agricultural, financial

and extension services, and education. But considering the challenges involved in dealing with food

loss and waste, the decreasing focus on post-harvest protection is of concern. The most drastic drop in

disbursements was for the code agricultural research itself, dropping from $109 disbursed in the first

period to $88 million over the second period. (However, this could be explained by different reporting

by DAC donors in line with efforts to improve and clarify data on agricultural research.60 Donors might

be using a broader array of codes to report their investments to agricultural research, such as

agricultural financial services, which they may not have been using previously.)

59 In addition to agricultural research (CRS 31182), this broader group includes activities such as agricultural extension (31166), education/training (31181), agriculture, livestock and financial services (31191, 31193, 31194, 31195) and plant and post harvest protection and pest control (31192), along with fisheries research (31382) and fisheries services (31391). 60 In 2012, AFSI and the EIARD expressed interest in having the OECD purpose codes reevaluated to facilitate more standardized reporting of agricultural research.

52

FIGURE 32: SECTOR DISTRIBUTION OF DAC ODA TO AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA, 2002-2009 AND 2010-2014 AVERAGES


Total volumes to agricultural financial services nearly quadrupled over both periods, from $12 million to

$45 million. In 2013, $115 million was disbursed across 54 financial service projects, more than 75

percent of which came from Germany ($61 million) and the Netherlands ($28 million), to regional

projects. Germany’s regional investment was dedicated to drought insurance, funding the Africa Risk

Capacity Insurance Company (ARC).61 This company is part of the overarching ARC initiative, a

specialized agency of the AU, with the following African members: Kenya, Mauritania, Mozambique,

Niger, and Senegal. At the Paris climate talks in December 2015, Germany, France, Canada, and the

U.K. pledged another $150 million to the ARC. The Netherland’s investment related to the private sector

and Global Agriculture and Food Security Program.62 The next largest amount disbursed amounted to

$6.7 million from France to a project in Mali, described as “credit from the [National Bank for Agricultural

Development] for the agricultural and other sectors.”

Donors nearly doubled their investments to extension services—from $24 million per year over 2002-

2009 to 47 million over the second period. In 2014, $46 million was disbursed to extension services

across 100 different projects. Two projects received roughly two-fifths of these funds: Sweden disbursed

close to $11 million to Kenya for a 5-year program aiming to “transform Kenya's agric. sector into an

innovative, commercially oriented, competitive and modem industry […] in rural and urban Kenya”; And

Norway disbursed roughly $8 million to Zambia for the second phase of its Conservation Farming Unit

(CFU) program.

Before dropping again in 2014, $73.5 million was invested by DAC donors in African agricultural

services in 2013, 25 percent of which was disbursed from the U.K. to Egypt.63 Norway disbursed the

next largest amount ($6 million) in an attempt to “to improve [fertilizer] offloading, bagging, and

warehousing capacity in order to cost-effectively meet the increasing market demand.” And improve the

61 The African Risk Capacity Insurance Company Limited is a financial affiliate of the African Risk Capacity (ARC), a specialized agency of the African Union (AU), an initiative designed to improve current responses to climate-related food security emergencies. http://www.africanriskcapacity.com/ 62 The reported project description is in dutch. 63 The reported project description reads: “Egypt, Arab Republic sector 31191 flow type 10 finance type 511”

40%

9% 9%

6%

9%6% 7%

5% 4% 3% 3%

28%

17%

12% 11%10% 9%

5% 5%2%

1% 1%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

2002-2009 average 2010-2014 average

http://www.africanriskcapacity.org/

http://au.int/

http://www.africanriskcapacity.com/

53

current “inefficient” imports structure. Other projects reported under this code related to various sectors,

including financial services, yield growth, environmental degradation.

Does political will by donor countries regarding improved nutrition translate into action to improve women’s nutrition? Global agreements and country commitments also bring DAC donors to account for increased and improved investment in nutrition, with a special focus on women. DAC Donors invested roughly $309 million to nutrition in Africa over 2010-2014. One way of measuring whether these donors’ commitments translate into action is by tracking the “gender-sensitivity” of ODA for nutrition. Roughly 24 percent, or just und $15 million of the 60 million of nutritional ODA in Africa screened for gender-sensitivity was defined as “significant” or “principal” for gender components. This value for 2010-2014 has decreased from 44 percent over the previous period, however, the low degree of coverage for both periods prevents a systematic analysis of donor behaviour. For 30 African countries in 2014, half of their FNS ODA has gender equality components. But for 19 countries, less than 10 percent of their nutrition ODA focused on women or gender equality, highlighting the need for better targeting of nutritional aid for women in Africa. Countries like Australia, Japan and Italy stand out among DAC countries that have the highest share of FNS ODA marked as gender-sensitive.

Within the nutrition projects themselves, the most common words64 related to children (293 mentions),

followed by words relating to women, and training and community

TABLE 13: NUMBER OF MENTIONS OF KEY ISSUES IN DAC ODA PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS, 2013

Child Children Women Maternal/Maternity Pregnant/Pregnancy Breastfeeding Training/education Community

164 129 84 54 24 18 95 67 Source: OECD CRS (microdata)

The nature of the investments differs between donors. In 2014, seven projects (out of 439) accounted for 25 percent of DAC ODA to nutrition that year ($387 million). The top project was from the U.S., aiming to “[provide] for the donation of agricultural commodities and the provision of financial and technical assistance to improve the education, food security, and health of school-age children, especially girls, in developing countries.” Canada, the second-largest donor to nutrition that year, invested more in health, seeking to “increase the survival and health of women of childbearing age, newborns, and children under five in developing countries by supporting the Micronutrient Initiative.” Nutrition ODA offers many countries a chance to mobilize the resources necessary to make a lasting

impact on their rates of undernourishment and malnutrition. A wider coverage of nutrition investments,

as well as a greater emphasis on gender components of nutritional aid can ensure that ODA reaches

the greatest amount of beneficiaries and helps to build sustainable food systems.

64 Excluding ‘the’ ‘and’ etc, and project, health, and nutrition.

54

Section IV: Data gaps Quality data are the necessary foundation for strategic decisionmaking amongst governments, donors,

and private-sector investors alike. Yet the extent and quality of data for FNS require significant

improvement. The three crucial issues are that data are often not available and timely, reliable, and/or

are difficult to measure and quantify. All three issues limit the potential cross-country analysis of FNS.

The issue of availability is particularly stark when it comes to the lack of comparable, cross-country

data—specifically on the productivity of small-scale farms. There is also little country-specific data

available on how much food is lost or wasted in developing countries. Systematic data on domestic

private investment in agriculture are not available either. Gender disaggregated data relating to

agriculture are extremely scarce. Of the 80 indicators used in the developing country database, 15 are

available for fewer than half of developing countries.

Second, even when data are available, reliability is an issue in terms of quality and comparability. These

issues often relate to different reporting approaches by agencies or governments. Third, a number of

issues and priorities are important for FNS but are inherently difficult to measure and quantify. For

example, strong leadership—among politicians, government bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs in the

private sector—is a crucial ingredient in designing and implementing a successful national strategy for

ending hunger, but good metrics for capturing leadership are hard to find. And when it comes to trying

to estimate the effects of climate change on agricultural productivity, so many factors and assumptions

must be built into agro-climatic models that ultimately we must accept that there will always be high

levels of uncertainty in such metrics.

TABLE 14: WHICH FNS DATA NEED THE GREATEST INVESTMENT, GLOBALLY?

World: Indicator missing for percent of countries

Cold Storage 78%

Food Consumption Score 73%

Percent of Area Devoted to Modern Varieties 72%

Relative Rate of Assistance 65%

Trade Bias Index 62%

Access to Agricultural Extension Services 61%

Time-Bound Nutrition Targets 61%

Governments Promote Complementary Feeding 61%

Nominal Rate of Assistance 60%

Family Farm Prevalence 59%

Consumer Tax Equivalent of Farmer Support 59%

Welfare Reduction Index 59%

Trade Reduction Index 59%

Share of Female Researchers 54%

Agricultural R&D as Percent of Agricultural GDP 53%

Share of Researchers with PHD 53%

Africa: Indicator missing for percent of countries

Cold Storage 93%

Family Farm Prevalence 74%

Relative Rate of Assistance 63%

Social Safety Net Adequacy 59%

Trade Bias Index 57%

Non-Tariff Barriers, Agriculture 54%

55

Nominal Rate of Assistance 52%

Consumer Tax Equivalent of Farmer Support 52%

Welfare Reduction Index 52%

Trade Reduction Index 52%

Food Consumption Score 48%

Household Exposure to Food Price Shocks 37%

Social Safety Net Coverage 37%

Social Safety Net Benefit Incidence 37%

Access to Agricultural Extension Services 35%

Time-Bound Nutrition Targets 35%

Governments Promote Complementary Feeding 35%


While its number of missing indicators is lower than the global average, African countries lack

information on crucial indicators that require monitoring in order to build successful FNS systems.

Availability is especially scarce when it comes to measuring food loss and waste—which has proxy data

for three countries only (Ethiopia, Morocco, and Tanzania)—trade, and family farm indicators. On the

other hand, Africa has the best coverage when it comes to measuring detailed agricultural research

data thanks to Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators.

TABLE 15: WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE LEAST AND MOST DATA GAPS, WITHIN AFRICA?


Country level variation also exists when it comes to data gaps. The country with the most data (96

percent coverage), Ghana, is missing data on family farms and cold storage, whereas Tanzania with

similar levels of coverage has near perfect coverage. In third place, with 94 percent coverage,

Madagascar has data for the same indicators as Ghana and Tanzania. Although most low-ranking

countries are among the poorest, the lack of available data in countries like Tunisia and Algeria is more

questionable. Additionally, it’s interesting to note that countries with the least data do not necessarily

receive less investment. The Gambia, for example, ranks in the top 10 recipients of ODA and OOF

during 2010-2014, despite lacking crucial data for evidence-based decisionmaking.

There are also other considerations when using the data, such as the underlying distribution of several

indicators and categories. In particular, strictly categorical categories or purely binary indicators will

56

often lead to highly skewed distributions of scores for a particular category score. For example,

Women’s Enabling Environment is made up of two indicators, both of which feature only three

categories. As a result, rather than displaying the continuous distribution of many other index

categories, Women’s Enabling Environment tends to be discontinuous and more fragmented.

57

Concluding Remarks Food and nutrition security is a foundational goal for Africa. It can contribute to the eradication of

extreme poverty, to reduced conflict, to better education, better health, gender equality, jobs, reduced

inequality, better climate, peace, and global partnerships. In short, FNS is vital for many of the other

SDGs.

FNS is multi-dimensional, involving poverty reduction, nutrition, agricultural productivity, and resilient

agricultural systems. Different strategies may be required for each dimension of FNS.

Given the state of FNS in Africa today, there has to be a substantial acceleration in the rate of progress

in ending rural hunger. This suggests a departure from business-as-usual. A new approach could: (i)

focus on quantitative metrics of progress in each dimension of FNS; (ii) pay more attention to the policy

framework for and political prioritization of FNS; (iii) advocate for an alignment of development partner

assistance with gaps in the current FNS system.

While the details will vary from country to country, in many African countries more focus could be given

to nutrition, agricultural research, smallholder productivity, women farmers, and climate smart

agriculture.

Meeting the needs of smallholders and women may require institutional innovation in ministries, better

rural infrastructure, improved seeds, cheaper, and more accessible fertilizer, more rural credit and

insurance, and extension and research oriented to smallholder crops, along with improvements in the

general rural investment climate, as well as organization and voice for smallholder farmers.

Leadership on FNS has not yet translated into true political prioritization of these issues. This will

happen when budget allocations, plans and strategies, rural safety nets, women’s empowerment, and

other institutional improvements take place.

There is significant underinvestment in FNS in most African countries compared to the rest of the world.

Encouraging development partners to devote a greater proportion of assistance to FNS could result in

an overall improvement in development results.

The ERH provides a tool for review and follow-up for both partner countries and development partners.

It is primarily based on available quantitative metrics and should be supplemented by qualitative and

nuanced dialogue of priorities, strategies, and implementation efforts. At the same time, it reveals

weaknesses in the data available for policymakers. A systematic effort to improve data availability,

reliability, and relevance would be useful to make the evidence base strong enough to support

implementation of the Malabo declaration. Domestic private investment, food loss and waste,

smallholder productivity, and gender-disaggregated data are often simply not available, while other data

may be outdated, or not accurate. Development partner data can also be improved; significant

miscoding is apparent in some instances.

Key Recommendations:

What can African countries do? Improve the gender component of existing FNS policy: As shown in the Section II of this

report, many African countries have existing policies that seek to improve the state of FNS in a

variety of aspects. However, too often, the focus is too general and fails to include the crucial

role played by women in improved FNS outcomes.

Improve policy framework in a targeted way: African countries’ outcomes and policy

environments are as diverse as the continent itself; therefore, policymakers are encouraged to

target specific needs in their countries with matching policy frameworks.

Dedicate resources towards meeting Malabo Declaration commitments: The Malabo

Declaration has set out a vision for African countries that seeks to improve FNS across the

entire continent. Funding to accomplish this vision will come from a variety of sources, including

58

external public, as well as private financing, however, African governments should take the lead

in pledging towards the funding requirements set out by the Malabo Declaration.

Invest in agricultural science and research: At both a national and regional level, a higher

standard for agricultural science and research will help to improve critical aspects surrounding

SDG2, such as Malnutrition. Agricultural Productivity and Resilience.

Invest in nutrition: In combination with a greater emphasis on gender in FNS, focusing on

nutrition will address the most immediate threats posed by hunger in many of the most affected

countries. Nutrition is an underlying aspect to a variety of other development outcomes and

must therefore be appropriately targeted and prioritized.

Collaborate with domestic and international bodies to improve statistical capacity and

reporting: In order to adequately measure continued progress towards the goals of the Malabo

Declaration and the Sustainable Development Goals agenda, greater availability, quality and

relevancy will be required.

What can donors to Africa do? Direct greater focus towards FNS in ODA to Africa: A departure from business as usual,

with a goal of meeting the challenges posed by FNS in Africa will require focus on FNS in

funding as well.

Further integrate climate change and gender components into FNS ODA: Both

components improve the sustainability of ODA in FNS and other related sectors.

Prioritize nutrition: A greater commitment by local governments on nutrition must be matched

by a concurrent effort to improve this bedrock of FNS throughout the continent.

Promote scientific and technical cooperation: Aside from supporting country-specific

investments in agricultural research and development, donors can act as bridges to improve

regional knowledge systems.

Increase multilateral agency efforts on FNS: Because of the regional aspects of many of the

Needs within FNS, multilateral agencies are uniquely suited to respond to direct funds and

develop inter-country programs, thereby improving the efficiency of ODA.

Develop local and regional capacities to improve statistical capacity: Donors should

support both established data gathering techniques, as well as support the development of

innovative data gathering techniques surrounding mobile and geospatial information.

59

Appendix A: Malabo declaration & ERH frameworks Malabo Relevant ending rural hunger

aspect/indicator (Full list of indicators here)

1. Recommitment to the principles and values of the CAADP process

a) Agriculture-led growth as a main strategy to achieve targets on FNS and share prosperity.

Focus on agricultural yields.

b) Exploitation of regional complementarities and cooperation to boost growth.

Focus on trade and transport policies.

c) Evidence based planning, policy efficiency, dialogue, review, and accountability.

Focus on comparative data.

d) Partnerships and alliances including farmers, agribusiness, and civil society.

Partial indicator on new global partnerships.

e) Implementation at country levels, and regional coordination and harmonization .

Use of countries as unit of analysis.

2. Recommitment to enhance investment finance in agriculture

a) Uphold 10 percent public spending target. Three indicators: Government spending on agriculture; Agricultural spending intensity; agricultural R&D as percent of agricultural GDP.

b) Create and enhance necessary appropriate policy and institutional conditions and support systems for facilitation of private investment in agriculture, agribusiness, and agro-industries, by giving priority to local investors.

Framework section “Agricultural Economic Policy” includes components such as Rural investment climate, with eleven indicators (e.g., policy framework for rural organizations and enabling conditions for rural financial services).

c) Operationalization of Africa Investment Bank n/a

3. Commitment to ending hunger by 2025

a) At least double productivity (focusing on Inputs, irrigation, mechanization).

Indicators on agricultural yield: Cereal yield (kg per hectare).

Sustainable and reliable production and access to quality and affordable inputs, “smart” protection to smallholder holder agriculture.

Four indicators: Percent of area devoted to modern varieties; distance to fertilizer index; access to agricultural input markets; access to financing for farmers.

Supply of appropriate knowledge, information and skills to users.

Three indicators: Access to agricultural extension services; share of researchers with Ph.Ds; share of female researchers.

Efficient and effective water management systems, notable through irrigation.

Two indicators: Access to water for agriculture; arable land equipped for irrigation.

Suitable, reliable and affordable mechanization and energy supplies, amongst others.

n/a

b) Reduce PHL at least by half. One indicator: Cold storage (*Key data gap! Data on Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Morocco only).

c) Integrate measures for increased agricultural productivity with social protection initiatives focusing on vulnerable social groups through committing targeted budget lines within our national budgets for:

Framework section “rural social assistance” integrated into ERH framework (under “political prioritization”).

Strengthening strategic food and cash reserves to respond to food shortages occasioned by periodic prolonged droughts or other disasters/emergencies.

n/a

Strengthening EWS to facilitate advanced proactive responses to disasters and emergencies with food and nutrition security implications.

n/a

https://endingruralhunger.org/assets/files/downloads/ERH%20Appendix%203a%20-%20List%20of%20Indicators,%20Developing%20Countries.pdf

60

Malabo Relevant ending rural hunger aspect/indicator (Full list of indicators here)

Targeting priority geographic areas and community groups for interventions.

n/a

Encouraging and facilitating increased consumption of locally produced food items, including the promotion of innovative school feeding programs that use food items sourced from the local farming community.

n/a

d) Nutrition: reduce stunting to 10 percent (and underweight to 5 percent).

Framework Section “child malnutrition” includes indicators “under 5 stunting” and “under 5 wasting.”

4. Commitment to halving poverty, by 2025, through inclusive agricultural growth and transformation

Framework section “rural poverty” includes indicators on rural poverty rates and rural multidimensional poverty head counts.

a) Establish and/or strengthen inclusive public-private partnerships for at least five priority agricultural commodity value chains with strong linkage to smallholder agriculture.

Framework section “Rural Investment Climate” and “FDI.”

b) Sustain Annual sector growth in Agricultural GDP at least 6 percent

Indicator: Agricultural TFP Growth.

c) Create job opportunities for at least 30 percent of the youth in agricultural value chains

n/a

d) Preferential entry & participation by women and youth in gainful attractive agribusiness

Three indicators: Secure access to land; access to financial services; share of female researchers.

5. Commitment to boosting intra-African trade in agricultural commodities & services

a) Triple intra-Africa trade in agricultural commodities

n/a

b) Create and enhance policies and institutional conditions and support systems

Fast track continental free trade area & transition to a continental Common External tariff scheme.

Ten indicators on trade: Nominal rate of assistance; relative rate of assistance; consumer tax equivalent of farmer support; welfare reduction index; non-tariff barriers (agriculture); average applied MFN tariff (agriculture); trade bias index; trade reduction index; time to export; logistics performance index (transport); peak tariffs.

Simplify and formalize the current trade practices.

See above

Increase and facilitate investment in markets and trade infrastructure.

Two indicators: Time to export and Logistics performances index (transport).

Promote and strengthen platforms for multi-actors interactions.

ERH frameworks and database includes information on all agricultural trade distortions, including for developed countries.

Strengthen and streamline the coordination mechanism that will facilitate the promotion of the African common position on agriculture-related international trade negotiations and partnership agreements.

See above.

6. Commitment to enhancing resilience in livelihoods & production systems to climate variability and other shocks

a) By 2025 at least 30 percent of farm, pastoral and fisher households are resilient to climate and weather related risks.

Three Framework sections: “Environmental Shocks” (includes indicators such as land degradation risk and projected change in


61

Malabo Relevant ending rural hunger aspect/indicator (Full list of indicators here)

runoff), “production shocks” (including volatility of agricultural production and variation in cereal crop yields), and “consumption shocks’ (including household exposure to food price shocks and country in receipt of emergency food aid for 8-10 years).

b) Enhance investments for resilience building initiatives, including social security for rural workers and other vulnerable social groups, as well as for vulnerable ecosystems.

Framework section ‘rural social assistance’ (under “political prioritization”).

c) Mainstream resilience and risk management in our policies, strategies, and investment plans.

n/a

7. Commitment to mutual accountability to actions and results

a) Conduct biennial agricultural review process that involves tracking, monitoring, and reporting on progress.

The ERH database updates all indicators automatically, for timely analysis.

b) Foster alignment, harmonization, and coordination among multi-sectorial efforts and multi-institutional platforms for peer review, mutual learning, and mutual accountability.

The database includes data on donors’ FNS aid and policies.

c) Strengthen national and regional institutional capacities for knowledge and data generation and management that support evidence based planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

The ERH database allows for the identification of data gaps by country (e.g., cold storage).


https://endingruralhunger.org/data/map/

62

Appendix B: Country by country numbers - Snapshot overview

Country Percent of domestic spending on agriculture

Spending per rural capita

Percent of aid in FNS

Investment climate for Rural Businesses

Algeria 4% 174.8 5% 70.0

Angola 1% 48.1 12% 43.3

Benin 7% 11.4 10% 61.9

Botswana 3% 217.6 1% 71.2

Burkina Faso

11% 19.5 16% 62.0

Burundi 0.2 9% 48.3

Cameroon 14.9 7% 42.5

Cape Verde 3% 5%

Central African Republic

2% 3.0 4% 53.3

Chad 4.0 10% 30.8

Congo, Rep. 26.1 2% 34.6

DRC 1.7 3% 44.8

Cote d'Ivoire 3% 10.0 2% 34.2

Egypt 27.8 3% 79.1

Equatorial Guinea

1% 3%

Eritrea 3.3 10% 20.0

Ethiopia 11% 10.9 21% 64.15

Gabon 45.2 5% 20.0

Gambia 4.2 16% 61.7

Ghana 1.7 13% 66.7

Guinea 3.7 5% 42.5

Guinea-Bissau

7% 1.6 9% 46.6

Kenya 5% 11.0 7% 75

Lesotho 3% 27.5 3% 63.3

Liberia 3% 5.1 7% 47

Libya 186.2 0%

Madagascar 7.1 16% 56.7

Malawi 20% 23.6 17% 46.6

Mali 11% 0.2 21% 57.5

Mauritania 29.4 11% 44.6

Mauritius 4% 1%

Mozambique 3% 7.7 9% 60

Namibia 6% 112.8 6% 53.4

Niger 8% 11.4 18% 50.1

Nigeria 4% 10.9 6% 53.1

Rwanda 7% 11.4 11% 68.3

Senegal 8% 60.6 13% 73.4

Seychelles 1% 2.2 8% 62.3

Sierra Leone 0.0 11% 70

South Africa 1% 26.7 2% 73.4

South Sudan

4%

Sudan 20.4 8% 51.6

Swaziland 6% 81.2 14% 53.4

Tanzania 6% 16.5 6% 61.7

63

Source: endingruralhunger.org & OECD QWIDS

Togo 7% 10.6 4% 37.3

Tunisia 5% 168.0 2% 80

Uganda 4% 4.1 11% 63.3

Zambia 9% 29.0 7% 60

Zimbabwe 0.7 13% 13.4

mapping needs, policies, and resources in africa

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