Podcasts

Back

Food insecurity: a major challenge to overcome 

04
February 2021
Fatima Ezzahra Mengoub, Isabelle Tsakok

Ensuring food security for a growing population is one of the major challenges of the coming decades. The scarcity of natural resources, the negative impact of climate change on agricultural production, and the rapid urbanization are all among many other factors that threaten food security worldwide. Given that several million people in the world already suffer from undernourishment and malnutrition, it is necessary today to adopt adequate policies to meet food demand in each country. In light of these observations, Isabelle Tsakok, Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, explains in depth the concept of food security and outlines major factors that undermine food security.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Download PDF
    Food Security and Agri-Food Policies in the New South
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    July 31, 2024
    Millions are severely malnourished in a world where there is enough for all. Hunger and malnutrition stalk more than 3.1 billion people. Yet, widespread hunger in all its forms is a problem which has been largely solved at the macro level in today’s high-income, industrialized countries. Their “escape from hunger and premature death” is a fairly recent phenomenon. It began around 300 years ago, continued for most of the 20th century and is still ongoing today. The problems faced by ...
  • Download PDF
    Opportunities and Challenges for Food Security Innovations in the Arab World
    Authors
    Rabi Mohtar
    April 5, 2024
    National and regional visions for the future of water and food security have been at the forefront of sustainability talks. Nevertheless, the role of soil in water and food security and carbon management needs to be highlighted and integrated into these discussions and visions. The dynamic characterization of soil as a medium that accounts for the long-term impact of the agro-environmental conditions is of utmost importance to sustainability of these resources and to sustainable dev ...
  • Download PDF
    The Challenge of Achieving Food Security During Turbulent Times The Case of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    September 12, 2023
    Nigeria has the potential to be an economic powerhouse, but food insecurity stalks a large share of its population. Over the last fifteen years, undernutrition has increased from over 7% (2004-06) to nearly 13% of the population (2017-2019). The COVID-19 pandemic of course exacerbated health and nutrition problems. With the current high inflation, an additional 4 million people have been pushed into poverty, from 90 million (Dec. 2022) to 94 million (April 2023) (WBG, June 2023). S ...
  • Download PDF
    The Challenge of Achieving Food Security During Turbulent Times: The Case of the Republic of Ghana
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    July 11, 2023
    Ghana achieved lower middle-income country status by 2011. However, its growth path in the previous decades did not lay the foundations for the economic transformation of Ghanaian agriculture and therefore its overall economy. It relied primarily on extractive and non-renewable resources (gold and oil) and cocoa exports, and it did not diversify. While much progress was made in poverty reduction, pervasive low productivity and job informality continue to condemn millions to poverty, ...
  • Download PDF
    Policy Pathways for Inclusive and Sustainable Tropical Agriculture: Experiences from Brazil and Africa
    Authors
    Ahmed Ouhnini
    Larissa Wachholz
    Bruno Brasil
    June 20, 2023
    This policy brief was originally published on T20 India website   Supportive policies for tropical agriculture have helped millions of small-scale farmers in Brazil step out of poverty by improving government capacity to design legal frameworks to strengthen agricultural production and family farming. Scientific and technological developments have enabled small-scale Brazilian farmers to produce food while considering local tropical conditions. In contrast, tropical agriculture s ...
  • Linking Food and National Security in Africa: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine Conflict
    Authors
    Seleman Yusuph Kitenge
    February 28, 2023
    Seleman Yusuph Kitenge an alumnus of Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program. Learn more about him here. Introduction Food security refers to the availability of sufficient, safe, nutritious food for all people to maintain a healthy and active life (FAO, 2021; Suleri, 2022). It affects people at global, regional, national, sub-national, and household levels, and presents itself in different forms, including chronic, acute, and transient. Food insecurity exacerbates social tensi ...
  • Download PDF
    Implications of Food Systems for Food Security During a Time of Multiple Crises: The Republic of Mauritius
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    February 24, 2023
    Mauritius was on the brink of disintegration in the 1980s, but by 2019 had managed a peaceful transformation from a low income, monocrop, inward-oriented economy to a diversified, outward-oriented, upper middle-income country. Mauritius is now again at a crossroads, having to adapt to accelerating climate change and the impacts of multiple crises. The government of Mauritius has a vision of transforming the country into a knowledge-intensive and inclusive economy of the Fourth Indu ...
  • Download PDF
    Systems approach to water management
    Authors
    Rabi Mohtar
    February 13, 2023
    The fundamental role that water resources play in human development has been highlighted in multiple ways; the United Nations SDGs underline 17 different goals and over a hundred targets to be achieved by 2030. Out of 169 SDG targets, 59 were found to have direct links and synergies with the water goal SDG6 (UN Water, 2016). Careful policy making and interventions need to be implemented to avoid conflict among sectors and tradeoffs must be well established. The Integrated Water Reso ...
  • Download PDF
    Chaînes globales de valeur tourmentées : Risques et opportunités pour l’agriculture et l’alimentation
    Authors
    Abdelmonim Amcharaa
    Hassnae Maad
    February 1, 2023
    La double crise actuelle de l’énergie et du conflit militaire en Ukraine freine énormément les processus qui se développaient dans l’ère post-Covid 19. Dans ce contexte fragile et tourmenté, la vulnérabilité touche également les chaînes globales de valeur et les systèmes agroalimentaires. La vulnérabilité de la Chaîne Globale de Valeur (GVC) est une fonction de la capacité d’adaptation (CA) face aux chocs et aux impacts potentiels que présentent la fragmentation du ...
  • Download PDF
    Short of Water and Under Increasing Pressure to Deliver Food Security: Key Policy Considerations The Case of the Arab Republic of Egypt
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    January 2, 2023
    Climate change threatens to reduce the water flow in the Nile and increase the frequency and severity of droughts and floods in Egypt, which already suffers from water scarcity. This threat is a looming crisis as it seriously undermines the Government of Egypt’s long standing food self-sufficiency approach to food security, an approach which is wasteful of increasingly precious arable land and water resources, while achieving neither more food self-sufficiency nor meaningful food se ...