Food system policy priorities and programmatic actions for healthy diets in the context of COVID-19

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.

Contact persons: Patrizia Fracassi, Senior Nutrition and Food System Officer and Ahmed Raza, Nutrition and Food System Officer

Africa’s youth in agrifood systems: Innovation in the context of COVID-19

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 existing challenges that the youth are facing in engaging in agrifood systems.

For example, several formal and informal micro, small and medium-sized agribusinesses that employ many young people, have been forced to close or downscale significantly as a result of lockdowns and movement restrictions at national and local levels.

FAO, together with other members of the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development (IANYD), has called for effective and safe partnerships with young people during and after the COVID-19 crisis to ensure that government and development partners’ response measures are inclusive of youth’s needs.

Contact person: Melisa Aytekin, FAO Policy Officer for Africa

Impact of COVID-19 on agriculture, food systems and rural livelihoods in Eastern Africa

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 invasion in 25 years. In addition, conflict- and climate-induced displacements are prominent in the subregion, with more than 7 million displaced people in camps or settlement situations in only four countries (1.78 million in Ethiopia, 1.67 million in South Sudan, 2.65 million in Somalia and 1.43 million in Uganda). The cumulative effect of these shocks has eroded the resilience of large segments of the population and strained governments and humanitarian agencies (UNHCR, 2020).

Contact person: Nomathemba Mhlanga, SFE Agribuisness Officer

Preserving African food value chains in the midst of the coronavirus crisis

In light of the uncertainties surrounding the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, policy makers must ensure that national responses to the virus do not trigger a food crisis. The Covid-19 outbreak can shift the balance between food demand and supply, especially considering many countries having declared lockdowns and their borders closed. Countries at the highest risk of suffering from a potential food crisis sparked off from the pandemic, are those in Africa. The following note elucidates how the current Covid-19 pandemic is affecting food security in Africa and some key African value chains (i.e. rice, maize, cashew etc.). This note also offers solutions for short run and long run food security issues that may unfold as a consequence of the pandemic, to support informed policy decision making.

Contact person: Louis Bockel, FAO Policy Support Economist for Africa

COVID-19 and indigenous peoples

There are 476 million indigenous peoples around the world, constituting 6.2 percent of the global population and, according to different sources, representing more than 19 percent of the extreme poor. Indigenous peoples are not a homogenous group. They live in over 90 countries, in rural and urban areas, in forests, savannahs, mountains, and along the coasts, in low, middle- and high-income countries. However, they all share a history of discrimination and marginalization that in the context of COVID-19 – once again – challenges their existence. This document provides a series of recommendations to governments on how to face COVID-19 impacts on indigenous peoples.

Contact person: Yon Fernández de Larrinoa, Head of the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit (PSUI)