Prevalence of undernourishment: trend and contribution of East African countries to sub-Saharan Africa from 1991 to 2015

Abstract Background Sustainable development goal of target 2.1 is about to end hunger and ensure access by all people to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round by 2030. But, still malnutrition affects around one in three people on the planet and the vast majority of these hungry people live in lower-middle-income regions including East African countries. Thus, this study aimed to compare the trend of selected East African countries based on prevalence of undernourishment and to identify their contribution to the sub-Saharan Africa prevalence. Methods The yearly prevalence of undernourishment data of sub-Saharan Africa and East African countries from 1991 to 2015 was retrieved from World Bank and Knoema report. In the time series analysis, line graph was used to picture and compare the trend, and augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test was used to check the stationarity of the data. Again, Johansen cointegration tests (trace and max-Eigen statistic) and linear regression were used to ascertain the long-run relationship between the variables and to examine the contribution of East African country to sub-Saharan prevalence, respectively. Results The trend confirms that the prevalence of undernourishment was falling from 33.73% in 1991 to 20.15% in 2015 in sub-Saharan Africa, from 74.81% in 1991 to 28.8% in 2015 in Ethiopia, and from 32.4% in 1991 to 19.1% in 2015 in Kenya, respectively. Both trace and max-Eigen statistic show that the test values (14.55 and 12.15) were less than the critical values (15.41 and 14.07), respectively, and the adjusted R 2 in the linear regression was 0.39. Conclusion The prevalence of undernourishment of SSA, Ethiopia and Kenya falls gradually from 1991 to 2015, and Kenya’s prevalence is lower than the prevalence of the region sub-Saharan Africa, but Ethiopia’s prevalence is still higher than the region. More than one-third of prevalence of undernourishment of sub-Saharan Africa was contributed from Ethiopia and Kenya, which had a long-run relationship with sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, this study recommends to the government of Ethiopia and Kenya to continue to tackle the main reasons for the high prevalence of undernourishment: climate change, poverty, and food and agricultural policy