The report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) shows that EU development aid for food security in sub-Saharan Africa is mostly effective and makes an important contribution to achieving food security. Still, only half of the interventions have reasonable prospects of being sustainable and makes a number of recommendations to the European Commission to improve development aid.

The Special Report published by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) assessed the so far EU funding of €3,1 billion for food security interventions in sub-Saharan Africa granted through the European Development Fund (EDF). According to the report, most of EU aid for food security in sub-Saharan Africa is effective and makes an important contribution to achieving food security. Nonetheless, ECA also considers that there is scope for significant improvement in several areas.

The audit, which focused on EU direct development support for the three dimensions of food security, i.e. food availability, access to food and food utilisation (nutrition), showed the need for improvements in several areas. For example, it highlighted that while the Commission focused its development aid on countries with the highest number of undernourished people, it did not sufficiently consider the potential scope for EU support in other countries which also suffer from chronic food insecurity. In fact, according to ECA, EU aid properly addresses countries’ needs and priorities as regards food availability and access to food. However, the Commission has not placed adequate emphasis on nutrition. Furthermore, the Food Facility, set up in order to react to the impact of the 2007-2008 food price crisis, was not designed to address long term food price volatility.

Bearing in mind these findings, ECA recommended that for the programming period after 2013, that the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) should carry out a structured assessment of the food security situation in each country and systematically consider the potential scope for EU support in this area. It also recommends to the Commission to examine the feasibility of a permanent instrument to address the consequences of potential future food-crises in developing countries, give adequate priority to nutrition when defining the cooperation strategy, identifying and designing interventions, and using policy dialogue with partner governments, notably in the framework of budget support programmes, to set out intervention objectives that are sufficiently precise and measurable through performance indicators. It should ensure that the objectives are achievable by better assessing the risks and assumptions concerning the successful implementation of interventions, and to better support the financial sustainability of agricultural and social transfer programmes.