Prevalence and Factors Associated with Food Insecurity among Older Adults in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Food insecurity has been undermining the health and well-being of a growing number of older adults in Sub-Saharan Africa. This review aimed to examine the prevalence of food insecurity and the related contributing factors of food insecurity among older adults in Sub-Saharan Africa. We used PubMed, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science Core Collection as our search engines and included 22 articles for data extraction. Prevalence of severe and moderate food insecurity in households with older adults ranged from 6.0 to 87.3% and from 8.3 to 48.5%, respectively. Various socio-economic (e.g., low education level, being widowed, low income, lower wealth position of households, living in a rental house, living in rural areas, lack of social grants or pensions), demographic (e.g., female, Black racial group, larger family size), and health and nutrition status-related (e.g., self-reported poor health status, having a functional and mobility-related disability, psychological disorders) factors influence food insecurity in older adults in Sub-Saharan Africa. The findings of this review can help stakeholders to prioritize the issue of food insecurity, design and implement policies and programs to improve food security among older adults in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords:

• Older adults
• food insecurity
• prevalence
• factors
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest with respect to the research activity, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author contributions

Sanjoy Saha (S.S.), Andrew Behnke (A.B.), and Wilna Olderwage-Theron (W.O.-T.) were responsible for the conception of the review and contributed to methodologies and reviewing the article. S.S. and Noshin Mubtasim (N.M.), and Makenzie Miller (M.M.) contributed to the data search, review of included papers. S.S. was responsible for drafting this review paper and M.M. was responsible to review the article. All authors reviewed and approved the final version.