Breaking the hunger cycle: Can women's empowerment solve Africa's undernourishment crisis?

Women’s empowerment is increasingly recognized as a vital factor in achieving global development goals, particularly the eradication of hunger (SDG 2) and the advancement of gender equality (SDG 5). Despite this relevance, existing studies remain limited in scope, often relying on cross-sectional, country-specific, or child-focused analyses that do not capture the broader, population-level relationship between women’s empowerment and undernourishment across Africa. To address this gap, the present study offers a continent-wide assessment of how multiple dimensions of women’s empowerment, including civil liberties, civil society participation, political participation, and political empowerment, shape undernourishment in 50 African countries from 2002 to 2020. Using a panel framework that combines fixed effects estimation, Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, and the two-step system GMM estimator, the analysis identifies a consistent and significant negative relationship between women’s empowerment and the prevalence of undernourishment. All four empowerment dimensions contribute meaningfully to improved nutritional outcomes, and extensive robustness checks confirm the reliability of the findings. The study thus provides clear empirical evidence that strengthening women’s agency is a multidimensional pathway to reducing undernourishment, offering a foundation for more targeted and gender-responsive policy strategies to advance food security across Africa. • The study analyzes women’s empowerment and undernourishment in 50 African countries • FE, Driscoll–Kraay, and system GMM are applied as econometric techniques • Result indicate that women’s empowerment consistently reduces undernourishment in Africa • The study offers evidence-based guidance for achieving SDGs 2 and 5.