Washington | Wednesday
RESEARCHERS who said on Tuesday that most regions of the world would likely reduce child malnutrition by 2020 cited one glaring exception sub-Saharan Africa.
“If current trends continue, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where child malnutrition will rise the next 20 years,” the International Food Policy Research Institute said in releasing their report Tuesday.
Some 39 million African children under age five will be malnourished in 2020, the institute said – 18% more than in 1997, the last year for which data was available.
During the same period, researchers saw Latin America all but eliminating child malnutrition, and China cutting it in half.
Researchers at the Washington-based think tank used a computer model to make projections based on a scenario in which governments make no major policy changes and populations grow at rates forecast by the United Nations.
Even more troubling, the baseline projection “rests on assumptions that may prove optimistic,” researchers said.
One such assumption is that crop production will increase at healthy rates over the next two decades requiring substantial investments in fertilisers, irrigation, roads, clean water, health and education, the researchers said.
But many other factors stand in the way, such as political turmoil, Aids and lack of political will.
If crop production falters, researchers saw Africa’s net food import bill jumping to $11-billion and the number of malnourished children increasing to 49 million.
But investments of $183-billion over 20 years could cut child malnutrition by one third, to 22 million, the institute said. “The costs of not making the necessary investments in sub-Saharan Africa will be tremendous not only to the region but also to the rest of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the last two bastions of hunger and malnutrition,” the study said.
The other is South Asia, where child malnourishment was expected to drop one third by 2020 to a still-whopping 44 million.
Ten percent of African children five and under suffer from moderate to severe wasting; 31% are underweight and 37% suffer from moderate to severe stunting, according to Unicef statistics.
The total population of sub-Saharan Africa’s 45 countries is forecast to grow 71% to 958,6-million in 2020. – AFP