Centre for World Food Studies, VU University, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Int J Health Geogr. 2009 Jun 27;8:37. doi: 10.1186/1476-072X-8-37.
As poverty and hunger are basic yardsticks of underdevelopment and destitution, the need for reliable statistics in this domain is self-evident. While the measurement of poverty through surveys is relatively well documented in the literature, for hunger, information is much scarcer, particularly for adults, and very different methodologies are applied for children and adults. Our paper seeks to improve on this practice in two ways. One is that we estimate the prevalence of undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for both children and adults based on anthropometric data available at province or district level, and secondly, we estimate the mean calorie intake and implied calorie gap for SSA, also using anthropometric data on the same geographical aggregation level.
Our main results are, first, that we find a much lower prevalence of hunger than presented in the Millennium Development reports (17.3% against 27.8% for the continent as a whole). Secondly, we find that there is much less spread in mean calorie intake across the continent than reported by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in the State of Food and Agriculture, 2007, the only estimate that covers the whole of Africa. While FAO estimates for calorie availability vary from a low of 1760 Kcal/capita/day for Central Africa to a high of 2825 Kcal/capita/day for Southern Africa, our estimates lay in a range of 2245 Kcal/capita/day (Eastern Africa) to 2618 Kcal/capita/day for Southern Africa. Thirdly, we validate the main data sources used (the Demographic and Health Surveys) by comparing them over time and with other available data sources for various countries.
We conclude that the picture of Africa that emerges from anthropometric data is much less negative than that usually presented. Especially for Eastern and Central Africa, the nutritional status is less critical than commonly assumed and also mean calorie intake is higher, which implies that agricultural production and hence income must also have been growing at a pace at least high enough to keep up with population growth. In terms of methodology, our estimates form a base line for 2005 for the whole continent that can be easily updated with far less information for individual countries, as we show in an example for Ethiopia.
贫困和饥饿是发展不足和贫困的基本衡量标准，因此对这一领域可靠统计数据的需求是不言而喻的。虽然通过调查衡量贫困的方法在文献中已有详细记载，但在饥饿方面，信息要稀缺得多，尤其是针对成年人，而且儿童和成年人采用的方法非常不同。我们的论文旨在从两个方面改进这一做法。一是根据省级或县级的人体测量数据，估算撒哈拉以南非洲（SSA）儿童和成年人的营养不良患病率；其次，我们还使用相同地理聚合水平的人体测量数据来估算 SSA 的平均卡路里摄入量和隐含的卡路里差距。
我们的主要结果是，首先，我们发现饥饿的流行程度远低于千年发展目标报告（整个非洲大陆为 17.3%，而不是 27.8%）。其次，我们发现整个非洲大陆的平均卡路里摄入量分布差异比联合国粮食及农业组织（粮农组织）在《2007 年世界粮食和农业状况》中报告的要小得多，这是唯一涵盖整个非洲的估计数。虽然粮农组织对卡路里供应的估计从中非的 1760 卡路里/人/天的低值到南非的 2825 卡路里/人/天的高值不等，但我们的估计值在东非的 2245 卡路里/人/天（东非）到南非的 2618 卡路里/人/天之间。第三，我们通过比较不同国家随时间推移的主要数据来源以及与其他可用数据源，验证了所使用的主要数据源（人口与健康调查）。
我们的结论是，人体测量数据描绘的非洲图景比通常呈现的要积极得多。特别是在东非和中非，营养状况并不像人们普遍认为的那么严重，平均卡路里摄入量也更高，这意味着农业生产，因此收入也必须以至少足以跟上人口增长的速度增长。就方法而言，我们的估计值为整个非洲大陆 2005 年提供了基准线，对于个别国家，只需用更少的信息就可以轻松更新，我们以埃塞俄比亚为例进行了说明。
