Food systems in Africa are under pressure from climate change, conflicts, health pandemics such as COVID-19 and rising food prices. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted weaknesses in global food systems and indeed Africa’s was not spared. Although COVID-19 mortality and morbidity in Africa were relatively low in comparison to other regions, the containment measures employed by countries amplified a rather dire situation. Disruptions were seen in livelihoods, food value chains, increases in food prices and loss of income. These changes affected access to nutritious foods. A resilient food system that can withstand and recover from disruption and shocks will be important for ensuring access to healthy diets for all. This review paper assesses the state of food insecurity and malnutrition situation pre-COVID-19 and the impact of COVID-19 on Africa’s food systems and access to healthy diet. To put Africa on a path to accelerated recovery, a resilient and sustainable food system will be crucial. The following recommendations are made: (i) increasing agriculture productivity, with special attention to the foods that contribute to healthy diets – fruits and vegetables, and animal source foods (ii) promoting the production and consumption of nutritious African traditional and indigenous foods (iii) transforming Africa’s food systems to be gender-sensitive (iv) investing in well-targeted social protection programmes (v) supporting food environments that protect healthy diets and (vi) employing data and information to monitor food systems transformation.

The longer-term trend towards decreasing foreign assistance has aroused great interest in tracking domestic funding given that more than half of the anticipated additional funding for nutrition is expected from domestic sources. Given the limited trend analysis of nutrition budgets across developing countries, this review aimed to examine trends in nutrition financing as a proxy of national commitment to nutrition. We explored the programme-based budget allocations and expenditure from 2017 to 2019 in the Chad Republic, Gambia and Ghana for food and nutrition security (FNS) activities in various sectors. The total annual allocations for FNS activities from 2017 to 2019 in the Chad Republic, Gambia and Ghana were €24,796,501, €155,416,112 and €3,299,472,194 of which 93.5%, 15.7% and 100% respectively of allocated funded were expended. The proportion of FNS allocations and expenditure was <5% of the gross domestic product across the three countries. Three-quarters (the Chad Republic and Gambia) and one-quarter (Ghana) of all FNS activities were nutrition-friendly as compared to being nutrition-specific/sensitive. Of the nutrition-specific/sensitive activities, about 9 in 10 were nutrition-sensitive. The main thematic areas of FNS activities were agriculture/food systems, health, education, water, sanitation and hygiene. There were significant resource gaps in FNS budget allocations and expenditure across the three countries making it difficult to establish a consistent domestic funding trend. Resource mobilisation plans to bridge budget implementation gaps for domestic funding are urgently needed to scale-up government commitments toward the attainment of the sustainable development goals in these countries.