News Overview

Food security in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries hinges on smallholder farms, most of which are currently characterized by low productivity. Increasing the productivity of smallholder systems in SSA is therefore critical to meet the region’s rapidly growing food demand. Africa’s yield gap – the difference between an agricultural system’s potential yield and actual farm yield – is much greater than

BY LAWRENCE HADDAD, TON HAVERKORT AND NAMUKOLO COVIC Over the holiday period the nutrition community—and the world—lost a powerful champion: Dr. Ferew Lemma. Dr. Ferew was the Senior Adviser on Nutrition to the Ethiopian Minister of Health for the past 10 years. The first time we met Dr. Ferew over 10 years ago, he was deeply disappointed over some recently

Joshua Wesana is a senior fellow in Fish and Food Systems Nutritional Outcomes at the Natural Resource Institute, working under the CGIAR Research Program on Fish-Agri Food Systems (FISH) in the small-scale fisheries flagship program. He holds a doctorate in food science and nutrition from Ghent University in Belgium, where he focused on nutrition-sensitive approaches to food systems and adopted

BY DEANNA OLNEY,BESS CASWELL, RENUKA SILVA AND MALIKA FERNANDO Poor quality diets are the leading cause of disease worldwide and a primary cause of all forms of malnutrition. Improving diets could save one in five lives annually. However, the extent and nature of the problem varies across contexts and population groups. More than 100 countries use or are developing food-based dietary guidelines

BY MELISSA HIDROBO, NAUREEN KARACHIWALLA AND SHALINI ROY Mental ill-health is a significant disease burden. It is responsible for 8% of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) globally—one DALY represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health. In low and middle-income countries, adequate care for mental illness is largely inaccessible and the treatment gap (the percentage of individuals who require care but

Why water rights are women’s rights and how better research can deliver both. Agriculture in India is becoming increasingly reliant upon groundwater and irrigation to increase production amid unpredictable rainfall patterns. Given that women are responsible for producing as much as 80 per cent of food, water rights are tantamount to women’s rights. With some 100 million women working in

BY THOMAS FALK, DENNIS SCHÜPF,WEI ZHANG AND ILKHOM SOLIEV India is globally the largest groundwater user and simultaneously among the world’s most water stressed countries (WRI 2016). Almost two thirds of the water requirement for irrigation and 85% of domestic water use depend on groundwater (World Bank 2010). The growing competition over water resources can only be addressed by systemic

A major highlight for IWMI in 2021 was our robust participation in the COP26 climate summit, which took place in Glasgow during the first two weeks of November. The post The year in review: Reflecting on a busy and productive 2021  first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).