In June 2014, at the 23rd ordinary session of the African Union Conference in Malabo, heads of states and governments of member countries, including Senegal, pledged to eliminate hunger in Africa by 2025. Efforts to achieve this objective, as set out in the Malabo Declaration, focus on improving nutritional statuses, reducing child malnutrition, and decreasing stunting of under-5 children to 10 percent and the percentage of underweight children to 5 percent by 2025. In September 2015, the international community met in New York to assess the progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and define a new agenda for sustainable development. Consequently, the international community designated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), among which the SDG2 is dedicated to the elimination of hunger in all its forms by 2030.
Senegal’s vision for economic development as expressed in its policy document Plan Senegal Emergent (PSE) sets food security as one of its top priorities. Likewise, the fight against food and nutrition insecurity represents one of the main components of the Programme d’Accélération de la Cadence de l’Agriculture Sénégalaise (PRACAS), the agricultural component of the PSE. Moreover, within its National Strategy for Food Security and Resilience (Stratégie Nationale de Sécurité Alimentaire et de Résilience or SNSAR), Senegal aims to achieve this goal through the following four strategic objectives: (i) sustaining improvement in the availability of diversified, healthy, and nutritious food; (ii) enhancing the accessibility and affordability of diversified, healthy, and nutritious food to vulnerable populations; (iii) reinforcing governance and information systems for food security and resilience; and (iv) strengthening coordination capacity, prevention, and management of food crises.
These objectives relate to the present analysis conducted by using data from the Ending Rural Hunger (ERH) project. Indeed, to support the international community’s commitment, the Brookings Institution’s Ending Rural Hunger project provides data on the existing needs, policies, and resources of countries as they relate to food security and the realization of SDG2. The objective of this report is to identify the priority needs of Senegal with respect to food and nutrition security, analyze its policies created to fight hunger, examine the resources that support these policies, and finally recommend ways to improve the overall strategy towards hunger eradication in Senegal.
When comparing Senegal to other developing countries based on these data, the results show that the country’s food and nutrition insecurity is highly correlated to the quality of food consumption, although accessibility is also an obstacle. The low dietary diversification, and consequently the high prevalence of child malnutrition, remains a major challenge for Senegal. Furthermore, vulnerability to food security in Senegal varies according to sociodemographic and economic characteristics, place of residence (urban vs rural), and geographic region. Indeed, food and nutrition insecurity is more prevalent among rural populations, smaller rural households (fewer than 10 people), agricultural households, and households headed by women or youth under the age of 40. These trends can be explained mainly by their low access to factors of production or markets for selling their products or obtaining food supplies. Another factor of vulnerability is climate shocks.
Finally, food insecurity is more prevalent in the southern and eastern regions, despite their natural resource endowments and economic potential. Among the reasons for food insecurity in these regions is the instability (due to the rebel uprising for independence) that has particularly affected the southern region, leading to restricted access to forest resources and greater constraints to the cultivation of agricultural land for the majority of the population there. Moreover, the lack of roads and the poor quality of transport infrastructure are constraining factors for market access; hence this situation aggravates the lack of access to specific food products, negatively affecting food security.
Significant efforts, including the definition of strategies to combat food insecurity and malnutrition and substantial financing and infrastructure for agricultural policy implementation, have been made by public authorities to address this situation. However, the expected results are limited by the multiplicity of stakeholders involved, coupled with a lack of clear definition of responsibilities and coherent coordination of actions.
The report is divided into six sections. The next section presents the situation of food security and nutrition needs in Senegal, with a comparison to other developing countries based on ERH data and surveys such as the 2014 Enquête Rurale sur l’Agriculture, la Sécurité alimentaire et la Nutrition (ERASAN), the 2015 Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART), and the 2015 Demographic Health Survey (DHS). The third section presents the national strategy for the fight against hunger. The fourth section addresses policies implemented by the Senegalese government to achieve its strategic objectives. The fifth section focuses on the analysis of resources devoted towards the achievement of these objectives. The final section concludes and proposes recommendations for policymakers and donors regarding Senegal’s food and nutrition security priorities.
