Editor's Note [Volume 22 No. 1 (2022)]

Food First

Dear Reader, it has been a tough beginning of the year for us at AJFAND. All the same, we hope that 2022 will be a better year than the previous 2 years. We have every hope that the pandemic will slow down and with it, a return to some semblance of a normal life. But this is only hope, and hope we must have in order to move forward. Many people I know have gone; quite a number were just dying suddenly, without anyone knowing the cause as no postmortem is done, while quite a number were brought down by COVID.

After two years of “sitting back”, I ventured out to my project areas in western Kenya. After 2 extended trips, I did not need to be convinced. Rural families are much poorer because one can just see poverty exposed. I could tell that the old are the most vulnerable, while the youth males are lost. There are no jobs, absolutely none. If we want to stop people from starving, we have to start some kind of social safety net program.

For me, it is always “FOOD FIRST”.

I am sure what I have seen in western Kenya exists in many other places of the world. Are we really able to feed the world? Is Zero hunger by 2030 achievable?

With weakened immunity, we need not just food but more nutrition. Is this achievable? I want to stay hopeful, but it is hard for someone like me who has spent my whole professional life on hunger reduction to see the desperation people get into when they do not know where their next meal is going to come from. Does the world have answers to these problems? I am not sure.

If we paid attention to it instead of going to war and wasting resources there, we might just find solutions. Why? Finding a solution to any problem, however complex, requires focus.

So we continue to search for answers, but let us continue to solve hunger and poverty problems where we can.

Issue 106 has 15 peer-reviewed issues and 2 commentaries.

Please enjoy.

Ruth Oniang'o
Editor-in-Chief, AJFAND