Nutrition in Africa’s drylands

Arid Landscape Initiative is a social think tank group with a focus on Biodiversity, Governance, pastoralism, and Land development. Because we are supposed to increase voices on urgent matters we would like to share the UNICEF of Nutrition in Africa’s drylands: a conceptual framework for addressing acute malnutrition in Africa’s drylands. by Feinstein International Center

The study conducted dryland areas in 20 African countries that which include; Benin, BurkinaFaso, Cameroon, CoteD’Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda knowing that the countries above are along the dryland corridors of the Sahel region and East Africa. In the report, it is stated that the focus on drylands is because they are characterized by low-lying arid and semi-arid areas inhabited mainly by pastoralist, agro-pastoralist, and farming communities whose production systems have evolved to adapt to these harsh environments.

In summary as per the author and the institution/ organisation This brief reviews and updates the generally accepted conceptual framework of drivers of acute malnutrition in Africa’s drylands, where emergency levels of global acute malnutrition stubbornly persist. The revised framework preserves the immediate and underlying drivers of acute malnutrition and recognizes the synergism between them. More fundamentally, the updating reconceptualizes the basic more systemic drivers of acute malnutrition to include three interlinked areas: i. environment and seasonality; ii. systems and institutions; and iii. livelihood systems.

The report also indicates and lists the challenges faced by Africas drylands communities.
• Weak informal institutions such as markets, land tenure regimes, and traditional institutions contributing to increasing farmer-herder conflict and insecure access to natural resources, especially for women and youth;
• Rapid demographic change, linked with population growth, migration, and displacement; Increasing livelihood diversification and transformation, which has undermined the former integration between producers and led to increasing competition and farmer-herder conflict;
• Conflict at multiple levels and of increasing complexity;
• Increasing frequency of climate shocks (drought and floods) and increasing temperatures over recent years in the Sahel linked with climate change

For further reading kindly find the copy of the report in the link https://fic.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/FIC-malnafricandrylands_7.22.2020.pdf