Nutrition and food quality

Most governments in Africa accept their duty to ensure that citizens have access to enough food. However, many ignore the quality of the food produced.

Agricultural productivity is important for ensuring enough food and as an early stage of economic growth. However, poor quality food can have negative impacts on human health and nutritional security.

Food quality refers to whether the food available meets people's micronutrient requirements - iodine, Vitamin A and iron in particular. Many Africans do not consume the relatively small quantities of these nutrients that they need, which contributes to a spiral of malnutrition and deprivation (see diagram).

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The effects throughout Africa are staggering:

• Children born to undernourished mothers will be stunted in height, low in weight and more prone to disease and learning disorders.
• High levels of iron-deficiency anaemia cause serious cognitive and productivity losses, reducing the ability of women to work and care for their children.
• Thousands of children have lower intellectual capacities due to iodine deficiency.
• Insufficient Vitamin A intake in children reduces their ability to resist infection and contributes to the death of over half a million children in Africa annually.

Food and economic growth

Governments in Africa must address the close links between poverty and malnutrition, which stem from inadequate health services, an unhealthy environment, insufficient and improper care and food insecurity. Sustained economic growth is one way to achieve this, but progress is slow. To end hunger by 2050, Africa must reach a 3.5 percent annual average growth rate in per capita GDP. In the past decade, however, only seven sub-Saharan African countries had growth rates above even 2.5 percent. Economic growth alone will not improve nutrition sufficiently to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Direct interventions

However, if economic growth is combined with direct nutrition interventions, the chances of reducing poverty increase. Governments must provide information and make necessary public investments to provide many resources, including:

• Adequate preventive and curative health services, particularly for children under two years of age and pregnant and lactating women. These groups are the most nutritionally vulnerable, for whom the effect of disease and poor nutritional support practices have the greatest long-term cost for society.
• Relatively inexpensive solutions to enhance micronutrient consumption, such as iodizing salt, promoting the consumption of micronutrient-dense foods available locally and the fortification of commonly consumed commercially processed foods.
• Providing women and children with supplemental doses of Vitamin A and iron and teaching care-givers within households about the importance of diverse, balanced diets.
• Clean water for household use and adequate sanitation services for all households. This maintains the environment necessary for individuals to maintain their health and properly utilise the nutrients they consume.

The nutritional challenges facing Africa are immense, but progress has been made in the past 15 years. With dedicated cross-sectoral and coordinated efforts to address both food and nutritional security, Africa can expect significant progress towards poverty reduction, economic growth and achieving the MDGs.

Todd Benson
International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K St. NW, Washington, DC, 2006, USA
T +1 202 862 5667
F +1 202 467 4439
t.benson@cgiar.org
www.ifpri.org

See also

Africa's Food and Nutrition Security Situation, Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?, IFPRI 2020 Discussion Paper 37, by Todd Benson, International Food Policy Research Institute: Washington, DC, August 2004
www.ifpri.org/2020/dp/dp37.htm

Ending Hunger in our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalization, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, by C. Ford Runge, Benjamin Senauer, Philip G. Pardey and Mark W. Rosegrant, 2003

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