African Leaders Call for Action to End Malnutrition by 2025

ENA February 10/2020 African countries have made progress toward eradicating malnutrition and stunting but need to do more to hit United Nations malnutrition targets by 2025.

African Leaders for Nutrition (ALN) meeting which was held in Addis Ababa offered an opportunity to take stock of achievements ahead of the Nutrition for Growth Summit to be held in Tokyo in December. 

Speakers at the meeting included the Heads of State of Madagascar, Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, national ministers of health as well as African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina.

Leaders acknowledged the scope of the challenge but sounded a note of optimism.

 “We can conquer hunger in Africa,” said President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, one of the five African Leaders for Nutrition champions.

“I call on all our partners to continue to work with us to address hunger and malnutrition,” he said.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara on his part said leaders should take it a step further.

“I have proposed for the AU to focus on tackling malnutrition as a theme for 2021,” he noted.

Stunting has declined by 8 percent across Africa since 2000, an advance on one of the UN’s 2025 targets.

African countries have also shown strong progress toward achieving the target of 50 percent of the world’s children being exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life.

Other targets are halting the epidemic of obesity, reducing anemia in women of reproductive age, reducing low birth weight and reducing wasting.

The ALN, a partnership of the AU and AfDB, brings together Heads of State, Finance Ministers and other leaders to raise awareness and accountability and reinforce investment by African governments to end malnutrition among children.