My solutions to ending hunger in the Sub - Saharan Africa.

Despite extensive global economic growth in recent decades, including in some of the poorest countries in Africa, millions of people remain locked in a vicious cycle of hunger and poverty, malnutrition and poverty are two sides of a coin that are ravaging the African continent.

Outlined below are my basic solutions to ending hunger in the Sub - Saharan Africa;

Economic growth and wealth is necessary to make progress in reducing poverty and hunger, especially in the face of an expanding population. But governments need to do more than pursue economic growth. The key factor in ensuring food security is inclusive growth – growth that promotes access for everyone to food, assets and resources.

Improving government policy, increasing political will and application of community adapted strategies in tackling this issue is fundamental. It should be recognized, not only as a public health issue, but as a fundamental human right especially for children to eat. Starting life disadvantaged with adverse consequences from malnutrition (ill health, mental retardation, high malnutrition related morbidity and mortality resulting especially from under-five deaths) is a neglected but serious developmental hindrance to Sub - Saharan Africa.

The fight against corruption must cease to be lip service but actually get effective.

The use of modern agricultural techniques to increase food production is very essential. Provision or subsidization of the ministries of Agriculture to provide fertilizers, use genetically modified foods to resist adverse weather conditions and improve yield could be possible solutions to be investigated.

Improvement of the transport system to give access to locals to sell their local produce to raise incomes for their families is important.

Base Line surveys to determine and understand sociocultural peculiarities of each community during implementation of particular programs are vital. Avoidance of vertical programs could be of great help.

The ministry of environments of countries must engage in programs to protect the environment which continues to be degrading. Feasible and sustainable irrigation programs should be scaled up especially in drought affected regions.

The solution to this problem of malnutrition in developing countries entails a multisectorial approach with well defined and achievable goals. The ministries of health, education, agricultural, environment, universities and research organizations and other non-governmental organizations or international donors must work together if any tangible outcomes are expected.

Further research involving the potential acceptability of new agricultural technologies, modern farming methods and genetically modified foods in a Sub Saharan African context should be undertaken. Understanding the socio cultural peculiarities of the milieu is fundamental. It might be difficult and unproductive implementing some health promotion programs, especially when they are very vertical and culturally inadapted. Implication of the community representatives in the programs from the early planning stages could be key determinants of program ownership, acceptability and sustainability.

 Governments need to adopt an integrated approach to effectively reduce hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. They also need to implement a mix of complementary and comprehensive food security and nutrition policies and programmes.

In conclusion, greater urgency in building resilience of households, communities and countries to climate variability and extremes is needed. We need to face myriad of challenges to building institutional capacity in designing, coordinating and scaling up actions for risk monitoring and early warning systems, emergency preparedness and response, vulnerability reduction measures, shock-responsive social protection, and planning and implementing resilience-building measures.

Strategies towards climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction must be aligned as well as coordinated with interventions in nutrition and food systems across sectors.

There should also be political will of all African leaders towards advocating nutrition. When the leaders advocate, it indirectly becomes a directive.

I strongly believe that no one should suffer from a lack of access to quality and nutritious food – but they do. The number of hungry people is reducing. But it’s still 240 million too many in Africa alone. We are at a critical point where we can harness the power of individuals, communities and local governments to end hunger.

We also need to bring together leaders from the private sector, civil society to trigger cooperation that benefits farmers and the general population