Ghana improves in food security – Global Hunger Index
Ghana is the only country south of the Sahara to have improved on its score in the Global Hunger Index (GHI), according to its 2011 report titled “The Challenge Of Hunger: Taming Price Spikes and Excessive Food Price Volatility”.
According to the report jointly authored by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerlife and Concern Worldwide, Ghana and Nicaragua improved from alarming to moderate from the period 1990 to 2011.
It says although from the 1990 GHI to the 2011 GHI, 15 countries were able to reduce their scores by 50 percent or more, “only one country in Sub-Saharan Africa – Ghana – is among the 10 best performers in improving their GHI scores since 1990”.
The 10 best performing countries were listed as; Fiji – 57% reduction, Ghana, Nicaragua and Peru – 59% reduction, Albania and Iran – 60% reduction. The rest are; Mexico – 62%, Malaysia – 64%, Turkey – 67% and Kuwait with the highest of 72%.
Ghana and Nicaragua therefore join 20 other countries in the moderate category, making the total 22. However, there are still 33 countries in the serious category where they migrated from, although 41 countries made the low score category.
22 countries were also stuck in the alarming category, while four (4) countries were classified as being in the extremely alarming category.
A brief on the 2011 GHI says though sub-Saharan Africa made less progress than South Asia after 1990, it has caught up since the turn of the millennium, attributing the progress to the end of large-scale civil wars of the 1990s and 2000s and improvement of political stability in former conflict countries.
It adds that economic growth also resumed on the continent, while advances in the fight against HIV and AIDS contributed to reducing child mortality in the countries most affected by the epidemic.
“Nonetheless, the GHI score for the region is alarming. Although the crisis in the Horn of Africa occurring at the time of writing is not reflected in the 2011 GHI, it shows that achievements in food security remain fragile in parts of Africa and that vulnerability to shocks is still quite high,” the brief on the hunger report stresses.
Touching on South Asia, it says its score was reduced by more than 6 points between 1990 and 1996 – mainly through a large reduction in underweight in children, although this fast progress could not be maintained.
“Since 2001 South Asia has lowered its GHI score by only 1 point despite strong economic growth. The proportion of undernourished has even risen by 2 percentage points since 1995–97. Social inequality and the low nutritional, educational, and social status of women, which are major causes of child under nutrition in this region, have impeded improvements in the GHI score,” the 2011 GHI suggests.
To arrive at these conclusions, the GHI combined three equally weighted indicators in one index number: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the prevalence of underweight in children younger than age five, and the mortality rate of children younger than age five.
Data on these indicators come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), various national demographic and health surveys, and IFPRI estimates.
Further, the 2011 GHI is calculated for 122 countries for which data on the three components are available and reflects data from 2004 to 2009 – the most recent global data available on the three GHI components.
The GHI ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 being the worst, although neither of these extremes is reached in practice. Values less than 5.0 reflect low hunger, values between 5.0 and 9.9 reflect moderate hunger, values between 10.0 and 19.9 indicate a serious level of hunger, values between 20.0 and 29.9 are alarming, whereas values of 30.0 or greater are classified as extremely alarming.
“Hunger” is usually understood to refer to the discomfort associated with lack of food but the FAO defines it specifically as consumption of fewer than about 1,800 kilocalories a day – the minimum that most people require to live a healthy and productive life.
The 2011 GHI brief defines the term “under nutrition” as deficiencies in energy, protein, essential vitamins and minerals, or any or all of these. Under nutrition is the result of inadequate intake of food – in terms of either quantity or quality – or poor utilization of nutrients due to infections or other illnesses, or a combination of these two factors, it says.
“Malnutrition’ refers more broadly to both under nutrition (problems of deficiencies) and overnutrition (consumption of too many calories in relation to requirements, with or without low intake of micronutrient-rich foods). Both conditions contribute to poor health. Here, “hunger” refers to the Global Hunger Index, based on the three indicators described,” it adds.
By Edmund Smith-Asante