September 22, (THEWILL) – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says Nigeria cannot achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2)—zero hunger—by 2030.
UNICEF made this known in its report, “Fed to Fail? The Crisis of Children’s Diets in Early Life”, released on Wednesday, ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit this week.
It warned that rising poverty, inequality, conflict, climate-related disasters, and health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are contributing to an ongoing nutrition crisis among the world’s youngest that has shown little sign of improvement in the last ten years.
Children under the age of two are not getting the food or nutrients they need to thrive and grow well, leading to irreversible developmental harm, the report stated. It added that young children’s diets have shown no improvement in the last decade and could get much worse under COVID-19.
In an analysis of 91 countries, including Nigeria, the report found that half of the children aged six to 23 months globally are not being fed the minimum recommended number of meals a day, adding that two-thirds do not consume the minimum number of food groups they need to thrive.
According to the report, the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey showed that among children aged six to 23 months, only 23 per cent have the minimum necessary dietary diversity, and only 42 per cent have minimum adequate meal frequency.
As COVID-19 continues to disrupt essential services and drive more families into poverty, the report found that the pandemic is affecting how families feed their children.
Refering to a study conducted in Nigeria in 2020, the UNICEF report stated that Nigerians are already largely unable to afford healthy diets due to pre-existing food security challenges, with an estimated 40.1 percent of Nigerians unable to cater for their food expenditure and it is likely that this will only be worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The body warned that Nigeria is on the verge of the highest burden of malnutrition in Africa and the second highest in the world, with 17 million undernourished children in the country—one out of every three, stunted, and one out of 10 wasted. It added that except qucik and drastic steps are taken, there is no way Nigeria can achieve zero hunger by 2030.
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