**3. Conclusions**

The current state of food security and widespread malnutrition in Africa is not as ideal as Africans would like it to be. That is to say, as of today, a good number of African countries are food deficit and insecure. This has been so because food insecurity and widespread malnutrition as stated in this chapter are a multidimensional problem. Challenges that are directly tied to healthcare, misdirected policies and politics, trade and economic interests, weak institutions, failed leadership, and many other variables make it hard and difficult for many African countries to achieve food security. In addition to the internal causes previously discussed as of why a good number of sub-Saharan African countries are not food secure, the chapter also highlighted that there are also external reasons as for why sub-Saharan African countries have been struggling to secure foods for their respective populations and meet their nutrition needs and targets. The chief among those external reasons as discussed and analyzed were economic policy prescriptions that the World Bank and the IMF prescribed for Africa in the 1970s, 1980s, and the latter part of the 1990s. The said policies were devised to help Africa align its economic development policies and strategies with the market-based liberal

#### *Understanding Africa's Food Security Challenges DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91773*

principles and practices. And as previously explained, the economic conditions of those countries later showed that those policy prescriptions did not provide the intended and expected economic results. Instead, they worsened the food insecurity in Africa. That's because by advising and encouraging African governments to cut their aid, subsidies, and assistance to their farmers in the name of the market-based principles, food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa worsened dramatically. Moreover, the chapter also acknowledged that, save the commodities and natural resources exporting African countries, the economic growth of the majority of African countries has not performed as expected either. That is, the GDP growth rates of many sub-Saharan African countries have not kept pace with their rapid respective population growths, especially the rapid urban population growth that many African countries have experienced in recent years. In addition to the mentioned economic policy challenges, new challenges such as climate change and its effects and the internal displacements and migrations pushed many sub-Saharan African countries to depend more on food imports and foreign aid. Consequently, in actuality, many of them are unable to feed their populations today, and food insecurity and malnutrition have become the daily staple of millions of their citizens. Last but not least, the food price hikes of 2008 and their direct political consequences thereof, namely, riots and protests in many African cities, also exposed in plain view the economic policy failures of the African countries to the whole world to see. The rioting and protests showed how inept and incompetent many African leaders had for years been in failing to provide food security to their low-income and respective vulnerable citizens. Also, one of the visible consequences of the failure of African leaders in food security management has thus far been the continuous rise of import food bills in Africa year after year [26–34], while agriculture dependence has remained high. In sum, the combined reasons as analyzed above are the real reasons why sub-Saharan African countries have for years seemed unable to eradicate hunger, achieve food security, and meet nutrition targets and needs for their people(s). In essence, this is fundamentally why African countries struggled to meet the MDGs targets (2000–2015) despite the assistance and resources granted to them by the international community. With that in mind, if recent history is any indication, sub-Saharan African countries are going to struggle again in order to meet a few targets of the SDGs (2015–2030). In summary, hopefully African leaders will prove their skeptics and all of us wrong this time around.
