African countries are at the vanguard of a vital transformation of food systems to simultaneously address food security, nutrition, social and environmental protection \u2013\u00a0all while boosting resilience \u2013\u00a0said the UN chief on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Ant\u00f3nio Guterres was addressing\u00a0the start of a high-level policy dialogue at UN Headquarters in New York, part of the\u00a0Africa Dialogue Series 2022, convened to strengthen resilience in food supplies across the continent, at a time when \u201cdecades of progress on hunger are being reversed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said for too long, nutrition, food security, conflicts, climate change, ecosystems and health have been treated as separate concerns, \u201cbut these global challenges are deeply interconnected. Conflict creates hunger. The climate crisis amplifies conflict\u201d, and systemic problems are just getting worse.<\/p>\n
He noted that after more than a decade of improvements, one in five Africans were undernourished in 2020, while 61 million African children are affected by stunting. Women and girls bear the brunt, and when food is scarce, \u201cthey are often the last to eat; and the first to be taken out of school and forced into work or marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Guterres said that UN humanitarians and partners were doing their utmost to meet Africa\u2019s needs amidst crisis, but aid \u201ccannot compete with the systemic drivers of hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other \u201cexternal shocks\u201d were exacerbating the situation, such as an uneven recovery from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, with African countries among the most heavily impacted by grain shortages and rising debt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":1,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177],"tags":[824,1919],"region":[26],"source":[1538],"country":[1920],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95050,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/95049\/revisions\/95050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=95049"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=95049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}