Stunting Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa
Reducing all forms of malnutrition, including stunting, is central to the World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity, as well as building resilience and preventing instability. Maternal and child un...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/126621505397202676/Stunting-reduction-in-Sub-Saharan-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29722 |
| Summary: | Reducing all forms of malnutrition,
including stunting, is central to the World Bank
Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and
promoting shared prosperity, as well as building resilience
and preventing instability. Maternal and child under
nutrition is estimated to be responsible for about 45
percent of child mortality and 11 percent of the global
disease burden. Conversely, reductions in stunting are
estimated to potentially increase overall economic
productivity, as measured by GDP per capita, by 4 to 11
percent in Africa and Asia – making investments in early
nutrition one of the most cost-effective development actions
to yield permanent and inalienable benefits.Since 2000,
progress in stunting reduction has been slower in Africa
than in other regions. While both Asia and Latin America and
Caribbean have managed to reduce stunting rates by over one
third, Africa saw a reduction of only one sixth during the
same period. In 2016, over 40 percent of the 159 million
stunted children globally were in Africa (UNICEF, WHO, and
World Bank, 2016). Accelerating the reduction of stunting in
Africa will be key to maximizing the return on investments
in early childhood development, in education, and more
broadly in policies aimed at fostering and enhancing human
capital accumulation and job creation.This report consists
of seven chapters. The first chapter focuses on the income
elasticity of stunting reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Chapters second through seventh focus on the potential
financing needs and impacts of investing in scaling up
stunting reduction interventions in the Africa region as a
whole, and in five of the high-burden countries in Africa
(Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda). While
the first chapter offers a broad assessment of the empirical
relationship between income and stunting reduction at the
aggregate level across countries, the subsequent chapters
focus on country specific policy recommendations designed to
accelerate progress in stunting reduction. |
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