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En Tunisie, le taux de chômage des jeunes de 15 à 35 ans est très élevé, se situant autour de 35 pour cent, chez les diplômés du supérieur des régions de l’intérieur et en milieu rural, ce qui pousse un nombre important à l’exode et à l’émigration souvent au péril de leur vie. Par ailleurs, les régions de l’intérieur à dominante agricole et rurale accusent le plus grand retard de développement. Caractérisé par un vieillissement de la population des chefs d’exploitation et un faible niveau d’innovations techniques et organisationnelles, le secteur agricole peine à faire face aux défis de la [...]

More than 820 million people in the world were hungry in 2018 (FAO, 2019). In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), there were 239 million undernourished people, with a prevalence of 22.8 percent as measured by the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU), a Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2) indicator. The target is to bring this prevalence to zero by 2030 (Ritchie et al., 2018). According to the latest Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), 9.2 percent of the world’s population (or more than 700 million people) were exposed to severe levels of food insecurity in 2018, with Africa having the highest level of 27 [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound negative effect on the global economy and is occurring in the context of a rapidly changing climate. This year is expected to be the second hottest in recorded history. Weather forecasts for 2020 indicate a high probability that extreme weather will adversely affect food production in many countries. This brief draws on historical evidence and demonstrates that reductions in national food availability caused by severe weather events tend to be considerably larger in magnitude when they occur during global economic downturns. The risks posed by this dual threat are particularly high for poorer countries [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all parts of society and livelihoods around the globe. It is though worth recognizing that disadvantaged segments of populations like rural young women and men will be impacted harder, nevertheless, when proactively engaged, they have demonstrated to be innovators in their own sectors to surmount the pandemic impact. As governments and development partners take steps to address the economic and social effects of COVID-19, they should not allow a reversal of the rural youth progress achieved in recent years in terms of inclusion in food systems, access to education, vocational education and training, and access to [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic is a major economic shock, throwing into question the resilience of the agrifood sector at this stage, particularly in developing countries where self-employed, wage and informal workers are threatened by food supply chain disruptions, limitations on movement and trade restrictions. Even before the crisis, small and medium agribusinesses were often considered to be credit-constrained and extremely vulnerable to shocks. Reaching out to this underserved segment has been one of the objectives driving the development of blended finance funds and facilities in the agrifood sector. While many operators will be focusing on managing their portfolio through these turbulent [...]

The FAO Subregional Office for Eastern Africa is a technical hub which supports nine countries in Eastern Africa: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda. It has a core team of professionals with multidisciplinary expertise. It is responsible for developing, promoting, overseeing and implementing agreed strategies for addressing subregional food security, nutrition, agriculture and rural development priorities.COVID-19 hit the Eastern Africa subregion at a particularly critical time when the economies of a number of countries in the subregion were recovering from the impacts of recent droughts and severe flooding and dealing with the worst desert locust [...]

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, young entrepreneurs in agrifood systems in sub-Saharan Africa were already facing a number of challenges. The main challenges include limited access to natural resources, finance, technology, knowledge and information, and insufficient participation in policy dialogues and other decision-making processes.The COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions to agricultural value chains are presenting additional hurdles for these agripreneurs. Without focused and appropriately designed response interventions addressing their specific constraints and contexts, it is increasingly observed that some of the policy responses and measures put in place by governments to halt the spread of the virus are exacerbating the [...]

The COVID-19 pandemic has created supply and demand shocks in the food systems, disproportionately affecting the poor and nutritionally vulnerable groups. A possible economic slowdown further compounds challenges faced by governments in tackling malnutrition in all its forms.This brief presents policy and programmatic actions adopted by countries and development partners to ensure that food and agriculture responses promote healthy diets and improve nutrition. Furthermore, this brief explains supply and demand measures, taken from recent worldwide good practices. See the full list of policy briefs related to COVID-19

This situation report is a consolidation of information on food system disruptions in Africa due to COVID-19 for the period of 1–15 July 2020. As a collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the University of Minnesota – Strategic Partnerships and Research Collaborative, the information in this report is collected by scanning and analyzing public, open-source information. See the full list of policy briefs related to COVID-19

Key findings of this report show that much progress has been made towards the goal of ending hunger. Yet, many countries continue to face moderate to high degrees of undernourishment, especially where economies made least progress in transitioning towards high-productivity, modern agriculture and non-farm economic development and where policy stances have been weak in promoting agricultural development, reducing gender inequalities, and improving infrastructure and basic social services. The decline in undernourishment has come with a rise in the prevalence in overweight and obesity. The spread of this form of malnutrition has come with dietary shifts towards the consumption of more animal-sourced [...]