News Overview

By Aditi Chugh and Danielle Resnick November 21, 2025 Each October, the global community focuses on the challenges facing rapidly growing cities and towns, starting with World Habitat Day early in the month and ending with World Cities Day. This year, the themes of “Urban October” were the subject of a side event at the 53rd Plenary Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) on October 23 in

By Bjorn Van Campenhout, Gashaw Abate, Liesbeth Colen, and Berber Kramer November 20, 2025 Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face growing pressure to produce more on less land while contending with worsening impacts of climate change. The need for sustainable intensification has rekindled calls for a “Green Revolution” in the region, centered on the widespread adoption of modern inputs such as hybrid seeds and

By Marilia Magalhaes, Niyati Singaraju, and Jawoo Koo November 14, 2025 AI-powered chatbots are emerging as a promising tool to deliver agricultural advice. Such AI-based advisory services can reach large numbers of farmers more cost-effectively than traditional extension services. They can almost instantly provide advice across more remote areas, translate technical terms into plain language, quickly adapt to local needs through

By Khalid Siddig and Steven Were Omamo November 13, 2025 Sudan’s humanitarian emergency is worsening amid the country’s ongoing internal conflict, with devastating impacts on food security. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis (November 3, 2025) shows that nearly half the population continues to confront high levels of acute food insecurity. Famine (IPC Phase 5) has been confirmed in the cities

By Leila M. Larson, Edward A. Frongillo, Rebecca Brander, Marie Ruel, and Jef L. Leroy November 13, 2025 Third in a series of posts on IFPRI’s work on growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) supported by the Gates Foundation. Read the first post here, and the second here. Growth monitoring and promotion (GMP) programs are widely used to screen for nutritional and health problems among children, yet they face many challenges

By Bedru Balana, Augustine Iraoya, Abba Aminu, Musa T. Yakasai, and Claudia Ringler November 11, 2025 In Nigeria, rainfed agriculture supports over 90% of agricultural production. Yet—as in the rest of Africa— farmers using this approach face increasingly erratic rainfall, prolonged dry spells, and extreme weather events. Small-scale irrigation (SSI) has emerged as one of the most promising and potentially transformative solutions

By Maria DiGiovanni November 7, 2025 Conflict is a primary driver of recent food crises, while extreme poverty in fragile settings is only anticipated to rise in the years ahead—an increasingly dangerous dynamic that threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. The central role of food security in ensuring global stability was the theme of an October 21 panel discussion at the 2025 Norman E.

By Hala Abushama, Kibrom Abay, Katrina Kosec, and Khalid Siddig November 7, 2025 The ongoing war in Sudan—sparked in April 2023 by violent clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—has produced one of the world’s most complex, protracted, and under-addressed humanitarian emergencies. The country faces widespread displacement, severe and acute food insecurity, institutional fragmentation, and the collapse of essential