**6. Food security in sub-Saharan Africa**

If agriculture crop production had met 80% of the continent's food requirements in 2013, whereas animal production was not growing quickly enough to meet the demand [29], the situation has recently deteriorated due to the pandemic in the years 2019–2020. In fact, by 2020, 281.6 million Africans had been malnourished, up 89.1 million from 2014. East Africa accounts for 44.4% of the continent's undernourished


*Source: Computed by the author and retrieved from FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2020. To be representative of sub-Saharan African states in terms of food insecurity prevalence, this table includes a sample of countries from each of sub-Saharan Africa's four sub-regions: the western, eastern, central and southern regions.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Food security index of selected sub-Saharan African countries.*

### *A View of Sub-Saharan Africa from the Perspective of Food Security and Gender DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106392*

people, while West Africa accounts for 26.7%, Central Africa accounts for 20.3%, North Africa accounts for 6.2% and Southern Africa accounts for 2.4%. Along with the 346.4 million Africans who are food insecure severely, another 452 million are food insecure moderately [30]. Global standards for food security are far from being met. Food security scores in sub-Saharan Africa are designed to accurately reflect this situation (**Table 1**).

The tables below illustrate African food security, under-malnourished people (**Table 2**) and the food production stat (**Table 3**).

Food production in sub-Saharan in late 1980 was estimated to be \$876 billion, but in 2010, the estimation was \$196 billion (**Table 3**). Besides this growth, food security is still a challenge. According to [2], it is estimated that 75% of low-income children in Sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished; only 25% are not low-income food deficient. Furthermore, this condition is exacerbated by climate change, civil unrest, armed conflicts [31] and the current widespread pandemics, which make the poorest populations even more vulnerable. Consequently, malnutrition statistics in the continent are among the highest in the world. Additionally, the food insecurity situation in sub-Saharan Africa today could be illustrated by the state of malnutrition and newborns' weight and height. These indicators reflect whether mothers fed themselves


*Source: FAO, retrieved from FAO, CEA, and CUA, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb7496fr. Undernourishment is defined as the condition of an individual whose usual food intake is insufficient to provide, on average, the amount of dietary energy required for a normal, active and healthy life. The relative indicator is called 'prevalence of undernourishment', which is an estimate of the percentage of individuals in the total population who are undernourished. Source: FAOSTAT.*

#### **Table 2.**

*Number of undernourished people (millions).*

