The African Union Commission commemorates “Africa Day” on May 25th each year to acknowledge its successes and to encourage the progress that Africa has made under a specific theme while reflecting upon the common challenges that the continent faces in a global environment.
The AU theme of the Year 2022 is “Strengthening Resilience in Nutrition and Food Security on the African Continent: Strengthening Agro-Food Systems, Health and Social Protection Systems for the Acceleration of Human, Social and Economic Capital Development”.
Africa can feed the World
In the Framework of the long-term vision encapsulated in Agenda 2063, aspiration one underlines the importance of nutrition for the “Africa We Want” with goal on “African people have a high standard of living, quality of life, sound health and wellbeing” and goal 3 on “citizens are healthy and well nourished, and enjoying a life expectancy of above 75 years.” Article 14 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child also calls for adequate nutrition, care to combat malnutrition and improved knowledge of nutrition, including breastfeeding and human capital development.
In a move to address the challenge of hunger and malnutrition, the 2014 Malabo Declaration 6 committed to ending hunger and reduce child stunting to 10 percent and the underweight to 5 percent 2025, endorsed Cost of Hunger (COHA) in Africa Study as a key advocacy tool and further endorsed the AU Nutrition Champion. In addition to the AU Nutrition champion, in the effort to rally high-level political engagement to advance nutrition in Africa, the African Union Heads of State and Government in 2018 endorsed the African Leaders for Nutrition (ALN) Initiative by the Africa Development Bank and the African Union Commission. The role of ALN is to rally high-level political engagement to advance nutrition in Africa.
This post will expire on Friday June 24th, 2022 10:35pm
