FAO Rwanda Representative Coumba Sow, speaking at the AGRF2022 Summit

Kigali – Africa already has the solutions to address rising hunger and malnutrition, and it’s now time for accelerated action – that was the key message at the AGRF Summit’s First Ladies special session on nutrition today.

AGRF2022 is being held in the shadow of rising hunger across Africa. More than 278 million people in Africa or one in every five people are affected by hunger. Healthy diets are unaffordable for close to 1 billion Africans. Speaking on a panel as part of the event, FAO Representative in Rwanda Coumba Sow

said Africa has all it takes to turn around its food systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind.

“Even if numbers of people who are food insecure keep rising, African countries have been successful in the past in tackling hunger and have the experience to reverse the trend,” she said.

“Rwanda has shown that solutions are possible and internally available to achieve food security and fight malnutrition. An example is the Homegrown School Feeding Programme, bringing a healthy diet to children from locally-sourced food, with the support of the World Food Programme and partners,” Ms. Sow added.

Panelists at the AGRF 2020 Summit stated that Rwanda is serving as a model for many initiatives that aim at promoting better nutrition, especially for children.

“Rwanda has strived to diversify its approaches to combatting child stunting under nutrition-sensitive development frameworks. Rwanda has installed the one cup of milk per child policy, which compliments the country’s distribution of over 400 thousand cows to families in need,” H.E Jeanette Kagame, First Lady of the Republic of Rwanda said.

To find catalytic solutions that translate commitments into actionable strategies and progress toward ending hunger and poverty require all actors to put their hands on deck and urgently act.

“It’s not only women who are responsible for nutrition, no, leadership should be held accountable, politicians should be held accountable for acting and working on nutrition including increasing investment,” said Gerda Verburg, Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.

Panellists also agreed that nutrition is fundamental to achieving all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With only eight years until the SDGs deadline, panellists urged AGRF participants to return to their countries and take urgent actions towards ending poverty, hunger and all forms of malnutrition.  

FAO is one of the partners of the AGRF Summit, which is known as Africa’s biggest conference on agriculture. This year’s event has focused on the bold actions needed to transform Africa’s food systems. It runs from 5-9 September in Kigali, Rwanda.