Alors qu’il ne reste plus qu’une année avant la date d’échéance de la réalisation des Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement, l’Indice de la faim dans le monde 2014 (GHI) offre une analyse multidimensionnelle de la faim et présente de nouvelles données permettant d’alimenter le débat mondial sur la question de savoir où concentrer les efforts dans la lutte contre la faim et la malnutrition. Selon le GHI 2014, les niveaux de faim dans les pays en développement pris dans leur ensemble se sont améliorés depuis 1990, diminuant de 39%.

With one more year before the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the 2014 Global Hunger Index report offers a multifaceted overview of global hunger that brings new insights to the global debate on where to focus efforts in the fight against hunger and malnutrition. The state of hunger in developing countries as a group has improved since 1990, falling by 39 percent, according to the 2014 GHI.

Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing eight of the countries that make up southern Africa — Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. Southern Africa’s population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth.

Zambia, like much of Africa, is reliant on maize production for its food security. However, maize yields average only about 1 tonne per hectare (ha), so even a moderate decline in harvests can be devastating for food security. Climate change is a critical concern, with declining or more erratic rainfall likely to result in lower production and less predictable harvests.

This paper, by drawing from the lessons learnt from research and development activities for about two decades in Malawi and Zambia, presents the case study of agroforestry-based land use practices (fertilizer tree/shrubs) to identify and highlight opportunities as well as policy/institutional challenges for assisting smallholder farmers to enhance climate change adaptation and mitigation in southern Africa region.

According to this article, conservation agriculture is claimed to be a panacea for the problems of poor agricultural productivity and soil degradation in sub-Saharan Africa. Conservation agriculture offers the means that can prevent further destruction of precious soils, increase rainwater use efficiency and labour productivity, thereby ensuring higher and more stable yields.

Thousands of small reservoirs dot the rural landscape of sub-Saharan Africa. This report, however, calls for a different approach based on a renewed understanding of small reservoirs. Drawing information from a cross-country comparative analysis conducted in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ethiopia and Zambia, this report argues that high costs are not inherent to the technology but are caused by major shortcomings in the planning and implementation processes.

According to this article, food aid, both for short-term emergency relief and as program food aid that helps address medium-term food deficits, is often a major component of food security strategies in developing countries. This article reviews the experience with food aid of four major recipients of food aid (India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zambia) regarding food production, trade, markets, consumption and safety nets, as well as the policy responses to food emergencies.

This report highlights agricultural water technologies and practices that have helped or have shown potential to impact positively towards alleviating poverty, especially among the rural poor. Some of these technologies transcend from indigenous knowledge to being modernized through modifications and have led to some of the state-of-the-art modern water management technologies in use countrywide or in the Southern Africa region.