Statement by His Excellency Mr. Elias Magosi, SADC Executive Secretary on World Food Day 2025

Theme: “Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future.”

16 October 2025 – Today, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) joins the worldwide group in commemorating World Food Day 2025 underneath the theme “Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future.” This theme is a strong reminder that attaining meals and vitamin safety requires collective motion, cross-sectoral partnerships and a shared imaginative and prescient for a affluent and resilient future.

Food and vitamin safety stay central to SADC’s regional integration agenda. The SADC Secretariat continues to help Member States in constructing resilient agrifood techniques by strengthening insurance policies that promote equitable entry to land, water, forests, fisheries, livestock, and agricultural inputs. We additionally advance nutrition-sensitive approaches that handle the wants of girls, infants and younger kids, youth, smallholders, and weak populations.

Despite these efforts, meals and dietary insecurity throughout Southern Africa stays unacceptably excessive. According to the 2024 SADC State of Food and Nutrition Security Report, an estimated 67.7 million folks throughout 16 Member States have been meals insecure in the course of the 2024–2025 interval. Child malnutrition stays a severe concern, with roughly 23 million kids underneath 5 estimated to be stunted, and 49 million affected by little one meals poverty, which means they lack entry to the various meals teams essential for optimum progress.

To handle these challenges, the SADC Secretariat, with help from its companions, continues to implement strategic interventions to strengthen agrifood techniques. The EUR 10 million European Union-funded undertaking “Support Towards the Operationalization of the SADC Regional Agricultural Policy” (STOSAR II), applied in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and SADC Member States, has been instrumental in advancing these efforts and accelerating the implementation of the SADC Regional Agricultural Policy (RAP).

Phase I of the STOSAR Project laid crucial foundations by supporting the event of harmonised regional coverage frameworks, strengthening agricultural info techniques, notably by way of the SADC Agricultural Information Management System (AIMS), and bettering institutional coordination. It additionally enhanced productiveness in each crop and livestock sectors by way of improved plant and animal well being administration, illness and pest surveillance, promotion of protected commerce, and help for meals fortification methods and insurance policies. These efforts have expanded market entry and improved meals availability, security, and variety throughout the area.

Building on these beneficial properties, STOSAR II deepens regional integration and scales up coordinated motion to operationalise the RAP. It strengthens agricultural info techniques for evidence-based planning, harmonises frameworks for plant and animal well being to safeguard manufacturing and commerce, and enhances meals and vitamin safety monitoring and response. The undertaking additionally promotes inclusive worth chain growth, agro-processing, and market integration to stimulate funding, create jobs, and enhance regional competitiveness. These efforts align with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and SADC Vision 2050.

In current years, agrifood techniques have confronted unprecedented pressures from battle, local weather extremes, financial shocks, and rising inequality – all inserting immense stress on land, water assets, and biodiversity. As these challenges intensify, SADC stays dedicated to supporting Member States in constructing resilience by way of catastrophe danger discount and response, early warning techniques, land restoration, improved water and soil administration, and promotion of climate-adapted agricultural improvements.

In collaboration with FAO underneath the Hand-in-Hand (HiHi) framework, SADC is scaling up efforts to implement data-driven, country-led programmes that speed up agrifood techniques transformation. This consists of using geospatial modelling and analytic instruments, alongside strong partnership-building approaches to information investments into high-potential areas for irrigation, mechanisation, agro-processing, and commerce integration. These efforts intention to shift the area from disaster response to long-term transformation, elevating incomes, bettering dietary range and dietary standing, and strengthening resilience to local weather change.

As we commemorate World Food Day 2025, I name upon all stakeholders, Member States, growth companions, regional establishments, the non-public sector, civil society, farmer organisations, and communities, to proceed working hand in hand. Together, we should empower smallholder farmers, girls, youth, and weak teams; prioritise vitamin in agricultural planning; and strengthen partnerships and innovation.

The SADC Secretariat encourages Member States to align nationwide frameworks with the Right to Adequate Food by integrating it into agricultural, social safety, and vitamin insurance policies and programmes. Let us reaffirm our shared dedication to a food-secure, resilient, and affluent SADC area, the place each particular person can dwell free from starvation and malnutrition, and the place agriculture serves as a real pathway to sustainable growth. 

H.E Mr. Elias Magosi 

Executive Secretary

Southern African Development Community (SADC)