[This article highlights the World Bank and R4D’s Africa-specific nutrition investment framework, which was featured on the agenda at the African Development Bank’s Annual Meetings in Lusaka, Zambia.]
Increasing investment to meet World Health Assembly targets for malnutrition could yield US$83 billion in additional GDP growth in 15 African countries, according to new analysis released by the Global Panel on Agricultural and Food Systems for Nutrition at the African Development Bank’s Annual Meetings in Lusaka, Zambia.
Today’s session on achieving nutritional security also provided the backdrop for the release of an Africa-specific investment framework developed by the World Bank and Results for Development. The framework suggests that the human and economic benefits of achieving these targets as they relate to stunting, wasting, anaemia, and breastfeeding, could be unlocked by increasing investment by just US$2.7 billion annually over the ten-year period leading up to 2025.
“Poor nutrition has cast a long shadow over entire generations, denying children, communities, and nations from reaching their full potential,” said Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General and Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation. “One of the most critical steps we can collectively take to achieve nutrition security is to transform the continent’s agricultural sector. If African agriculture is to be truly transformed, investments must flow through the smallholder farmers, particularly women farmers and their families.”
