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Southern Africa: Famine & AIDS Update
AFRICA ACTION
Africa Policy E-Journal
January 29, 2003 (030129)
Southern Africa: Famine & AIDS Update
(Reposted from sources cited below)
This posting contains reports and analysis on the continuing food
crisis in Southern Africa, from the UN Integrated Regional
Information Networks (IRIN). Another posting today includes two
distinct but related items: an Africa Action press release
responding to President Bush's announcement of new funding for AIDS
beginning next year, and a report from Rep. Frank Wolf (Republican,
Virginia) reporting on his recent trip to the Horn of Africa and
the escalating famine in that region.
One of the key themes common to these postings is that AIDS and
poverty are sharply accentuating the impact of weather conditions
by reducing the capacity of families and societies to respond.
Another is that existing international responses, including that
from the United States, fall far short when measured either against
immediate steps needed to save lives or against long-term
strategies to address structural problems.
+++++++++++++++++end summary/introduction+++++++++++++++++++++++
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.irinnews.org
[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations]
New Thinking Needed on Food Security
January 20, 2003
Southern Africa's food crisis is not a short-term transitory
phenomenon that will be over when this year's harvest is gathered.
It points, instead, to a failure of development policies and the
impact of HIV/AIDS, for which there are no easy solutions,
humanitarian officials acknowledge.
Over 14 million people in six countries are at risk through a
combination of poverty, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, government policy
mistakes, and the collapse of social services and traditional
safety nets. UN agencies and NGOs have called for a rethink of
development strategies and partnerships that can help lift the
region's subsistence farmers out of chronic food insecurity.
Although the immediate humanitarian response "has gone someway to
stabilise the situation ... the outlook is clearly not good and
there are not many reasons for hope," Chris Kaye, the Regional
Disaster Response Advisor of the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs said.
By the end of December the food component (US $507 million) of the
UN's US $611 million consolidated appeal for the region was only 62
percent funded. Donors were even less generous towards non-food
projects, providing only 20 percent of the money needed. An
anticipated El Nino year in 2003 threatens another drought, but
that is likely to be overshadowed by the expected war in Iraq,
which will divert attention from the Southern Africa crisis, Kaye
said.
THE DEVELOPMENT DILEMNA
The humanitarian response of providing food aid "will not solve the
problem because the underlying causes of the HIV/AIDS pandemic will
not make this famine a normal famine. There is no end to it because
people are too weak to plant, too weak to harvest so this will go
on. The problems don't go away with better weather. That means the
response of governments and the international community make must
recognise that," Urban Jonsson, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)
Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa told IRIN in
November.
"There are no answers at the moment," Michael Drinkwater, the
regional coordinator of the development NGO CARE International
conceded. "We are looking at a situation where countries will need
ongoing assistance for many years to come in agriculture, health,
at the macro-economic level ... Throwing money at it is not going
to help, we need to work much more strategically."
The failure of rains over two consecutive seasons should not have
precipitated a crisis as deep as the region has now experienced.
The current emergency, therefore, points to a slow erosion of
people's coping mechanisms exposing a more deep-seated and complex
problem of vulnerability. According to UNICEF, for example, 59
percent of Zambian children under five were already malnourished in
2000. In Malawi it was 49 percent, 44 percent in Lesotho and 27
percent in Zimbabwe.
Even under normal conditions, subsistence farmers in Malawi can
only grow 90 percent of their food needs. From December until the
next harvest in March, many eke out an existence by providing
casual labour known as "ganyu" within the community, using money
earned to buy food on the market. But if the planting season has
been poor, labour opportunities dry up and the price of food on the
market rises.
"That daily wage rate has not changed in five years, it's about 20
kwacha [US 27 cents] per day. But the inflation rate in Malawi has
been outstanding. So you have this inflation rate, to which all the
other prices get adjusted accordingly - fuel transport, maize
prices, they're all directly linked. But the casual labour rate
hasn't budged - it's a precarious situation," Nicholas Haan,
Regional Programme Advisor of the World Food Programme's (WFP)
Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping unit told IRIN in June.
A FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT?
Most of Southern Africa's agriculture is rain fed. The staple crop
is maize, a non-indigenous plant which is not drought-resistant,
but as a commercial crop has edged out more traditional and hardier
cereals from national diets. The lack of irrigation and crop
diversification means that small-scale farmers are particularly
vulnerable to climatic changes in a region where drought is
endemic.
"A lot of lip service has been paid to agriculture in the region,"
Reggie Mugwara, the director of the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) Food and Natural Resources Unit explained. "I
think we need to redirect our investments back into agriculture,
particularly smallholder agriculture, which is the engine of growth
for most of the countries that have been affected [by the
drought]."
A failure of governance - poor accountability and a lack of
democratisation - has been cited as one of the key causes for the
region's emergency. The finger has been repeatedly pointed at
Zimbabwe's land reform programme, which has undermined a previously
robust agricultural economy, and financial mismanagement in Malawi,
which led to a decision to sell off the country's grain reserve as
shortages were already becoming apparent.
"Famine is always a product of decision-making failures. Southern
Africa is where it is now because of the decisions and actions of
the powerful. Thus, the key solution to preventing hunger lies in
increasing people's participation in, and the effectiveness of,
governance," Donald Mavunduse, emergencies programme adviser with
the UK-based NGO Acton Aid wrote in in an Overseas Development
Institute (ODI) report.
A lack of management capacity by governments has also been
mentioned as a contributory factor. "Disasters happen, whether it
is floods or whatever. What is important is what capacity, what
policies have been put in place, what is it that needs to be done
institutionally to strengthen the institutions in order to respond
[effectively]?" Mugwara asked. This was a goal that greater
regional policy integration through SADC could help to achieve, he
noted.
Famine early warning systems in Southern Africa have in the past
typically looked at "macro data" of rainfall and crop yields rather
than the "ground-truthing" to determine people's ability to afford
food - the kind of analysis that raised the first alarm over
conditions in Malawi in 2001. "At present many governments in
Southern Africa do not have the capacity for a well-functioning
statistics system. [Economic] liberalisation has led to contracts
for data collection and analysis being put up on a two-three years
basis, so there is little institutional learning. Such turnover is
too high to help Africa," participants at an ODI meeting in July
noted.
QUESTIONING THE DONORS
But at the policy level, there is also little room for new thinking
by African governments. They are constrained by the "Washington
consensus" on market reforms championed by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the ideologically correct
development path. It frowns on government intervention, and looks
at short-term financial considerations rather than medium-term food
security, critics argue. The debt burden also robs governments of
development resources.
The role of the state has been downsized - it is no longer that of
a food security guarantor, however inefficiently it operated in the
past. Subsidised inputs such as fertiliser were stopped, social
services starved of funds, and the commodity boards that fixed
producer prices and collected farmers' produce abolished. They were
supposed to have been replaced by the private sector, but in most
cases local entrepreneurs could not rise to the challenge or lacked
the profit incentive to reach the more remote regions.
The poor, for the most part, are now on their own. "The reform
programmes, yes are necessary, [but] they are painful ... I think
we need some contingency plans in order to minimise the worst
effects," said Mugwara. "You can't go back to the old ways, but we
cannot also ignore the present realities ... that the vulnerable
are much more vulnerable than they were."
Smallholder agriculture, the predominant source of livelihoods in
Africa, had proved to be at least as efficient as large farms when
farmers received similar support services in inputs like seeds,
fertiliser and credit, the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI) said in a report last year. Raising their output
would stimulate the rest of the economy. Each 1 percent increase in
agricultural productivity had been shown to reduce poverty by 0.6
percent, the institute said.
But public investment in African agriculture has been falling for
many years. World Bank lending for agriculture slumped from about
31 percent of its total lending in 1979-81 to less than 10 percent
in 1999-2000. The funding levels required to boost agriculture
"depart sharply from recent trends", IFPRI acknowledged.
In a report on the food crisis released in June, Oxfam warned that
until the right to food was put at the top of the agenda of
international financial institutions and national governments, food
security would remain precarious. It said Africa needed policies
that were carefully thought-out and implemented, and not driven by
dogma, political opportunism or hypocrisy.
"At the same time as African farmers are told that they can no
longer have free seeds or fertilisers, US farmers are receiving an
average US $20,000 a year in subsidies - which is soon to increase
by 70 percent - and EU [European Union] farmers US $16,000," noted
the briefing paper.
It cited an IMF evaluation that found that in Zambia between 1991
and 1994, the liberalisation of state marketing had contributed to
a 30 percent increase in rural poverty. "It is clear that without
some form of state intervention as a safety net, poor people have
become much more vulnerable to shocks such as erratic weather.
Unfortunately, the IMF and other donors are not learning this
lesson."
African countries also face gigantic hurdles in establishing an
agro-export economy to trade their way out of poverty, due to
tariff barriers and produce dumping by European and US producers.
"Rich countries spend vast sums of money protecting the interests
of their producers, while at the same time forcing poor countries
to open their markets to subsidised imports," Oxfam argued.
Chris Kaye believes that both regional governments and the
international community need to reform the way they operate, and
develop a "compact" on the way forward.
"Governments must wake up to their responsibilities and show they
are caring for their own people, because if they don't, no
self-respecting donor will do that for them." By the same token, he
said, the depth of the problems confronted by the region required
a "much more concerted effort by donors ... otherwise Southern
Africa will go down the tube".
Southern Africa: Year-Ender 2002 - the Scramble for Food
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
January 20, 2003
The year 2002 in Southern Africa was marked by a scramble for food
- by the over 14 million people who faced starvation, and by
humanitarian agencies begging international donors for the urgent
funds needed to buy food to prevent a catastrophe.
As nutritionists watched malnutrition rates spiral, and clinic
workers tended to emaciated mothers and their children, the
presidents of Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho declared a
disaster and appealed to the international community for help.
Developments in Swaziland and Mozambique were also worrying.
Unlike the drought of 1992 that saw swathes of Southern Africa
reduced to bare trees and parched clay, the current erratic weather
patterns were accompanied by the challenges of economic crises,
tenuous national grain reserves and a growing realisation of the
devastating effect HIV/AIDS was having on families and communities.
Initial estimates said that about 12 million people would need help
until the harvest this April and May, but subsequent assessments
revised this to over 14 million. By the end of the year, as figures
started trickling in from the latest vulnerability assessments, it
was clear that even more people would need help. In Zimbabwe the
figure has leapt from about six million people - half the
population - to at least 7.2 million.
Humanitarian workers distributing lifesaving rations of maize, corn
soya blend, pulses and cooking oil reported that families
throughout the region had exhausted their coping mechanisms. They
had sold everything of value to buy food. Competition with other
equally desperate families meant they often received far less than
the item's true worth.
Women walked for miles to sell water to truck drivers, they scoured
the land for firewood to barter for food, took their children out
of school to help and in their most desperate hour, some turned to
prostitution. Men tried to find casual labour, they traveled to
cities in the hopes of finding a job or risked their lives by
searching for traces of gold in closed and dangerous mines.
In Malawi, many smallholder farmers, who already sat in front of
empty fields because they did not have money to buy fertiliser to
coax a meagre crop from their soil, lost their chance of casual
labour on other farms when they were weakened by one of the worst
cholera epidemics in years. In Lesotho, villagers dependent on food
aid were cut off from supplies when thick snow fell in the highest
mountain regions.
In July the World Food Programme (WFP) launched a massive appeal
for the US $507 million they would need to tide families over until
the next harvest and hoped to meet 67 percent of the region's
emergency needs.
"It has been a very challenging year," said Deborah Saidy, WFP
Deputy Emergency Coordinator for Southern Africa.
Saidy explained that the organisation had opened a new office in
Swaziland, had scaled up operations in other countries in response
to the extra needs, and had identified implementing partners.
"It has been a difficult year for sure. We have seen people resort
to disastrous coping measures and there is no doubt that because
this current food crisis comes on top of HIV/AIDS, it is extremely
difficult for the populations affected," Saidy said.
"For many people this is the second or third consecutive year of
erratic weather conditions or economic hardship. Southern Africa is
no stranger to natural disaster like localised flooding, hail or
drought, but this time a very broad area was affected by drought
and many countries did not have strategic reserves.
"If we compare this disaster with [the regional drought of] 1992,
HIV/AIDS has taken hold much more firmly and we see a far higher
number of dependents and more child-headed households," Saidy said.
Tracking charts show that general food distribution in the six
countries from July varied, reflecting difficulties NGOs faced. In
Malawi distribution was generally high, but in Zimbabwe this
plummeted to just 17 percent of beneficiaries in August. The figure
for Zambia was 28 percent in October while in Mozambique, 56
percent of beneficiaries were reached in December.
Saidy explained that the varying figures were due to a number of
constrains faced by humanitarian workers. An unexpected and
significant setback was the rejection of genetically modified (GM)
food by some countries. Most have now agreed to accept milled GM
food, while Zambia will announce its revised position later this
month in parliament. However, as the saga unfolded, agencies were
left desperately trying to find alternative food to give to
beneficiaries.
Conversely, deliveries to countries like Swaziland went very
smoothly without any constraints, she said.
However, in spite of the difficulties, the latest situation report
from Zambia does chalk up many achievements. Seeds and inputs were
distributed, food for work rations were provided for preparation
work for conservation farming techniques, insecticide treated nets
were distributed, therapeutic feeding programmes were strengthened
and sexual exploitation training was conducted for staff directly
connected to food distribution.
"The donor response to the South African operation was very
generous but now we're at the peak of the crisis and we expect a
shortfall of 300,000 mt urgently. Zimbabwe is of the most concern
because half the population requires food aid," Saidy said.
In December Zimbabwe's inflation rate reached 198 percent,
reflecting the severity of circumstances the average Zimbabwean
faces.
Andrew Timpson, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Officer in the Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the humanitarian
programme in Zimbabwe was "in a state of catch up" during 2002 as
assessments gave a stronger idea of new areas of vulnerabilities,
tonnages [of food aid] and dealt with problems registering NGO
partners allowed to deliver food aid.
Timpson said that although the food appeal was 67 percent funded
which was considered good, education, water, sanitation and health
programmes were not well recoursed.
Under the land reform programme, which reached its peak in 2002,
there was concern over underutilisation of newly settled land and
the possibility of lower crop yields. In addition there was
uncertainty about farmers' tenure and it appeared that the
government owned the land, making it difficult for farmers to
access credit at the banks, Timpson said.
However, while the resettled farmers battle to eke out a living,
the plight of farmworkers was becoming increasingly worrying. A
maximum of 10 percent received farms, while many others were
evicted and made homeless. Those who received retrenchment packages
from the former farm owners have tried to make the funds last,
while others are particularly vulnerable and relying on NGOs like
the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe for food.
Timpson said another group of vulnerable people in Zimbabwe was
people living in urban areas.
For Angola the year was a mixture of triumph and frustration. While
the ceasefire opened the country to many new business
opportunities, it also allowed humanitarian workers to access new
areas and the full impact of the war on the lives of millions of
people was finally realised. Millions of people needed food aid,
medical facilities and schools. And while organisations like WFP
and Medecines Sans Frontieres pushed to reach more and more people,
they were hampered by landmines, poor roads and rutted runways.
But as countries take stock of what needs to be done for the year
ahead, there is one aspect that they have no control over - the
weather. Erratic weather continues to threaten all recovery efforts
and as Malawi and Mozambique emerge from a flood and a cyclone,
many parts of the region are now bracing themselves for yet another
year of drought, and the parched conditions that meteorologists
warn another El Nino will bring.
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Date distributed (ymd): 030129
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +security/peace+ +health+
The Africa Action E-Journal is a free information service
provided by Africa Action, including both original
commentary and reposted documents. Africa Action provides this
information and analysis in order to promote U.S. and
international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of
human rights.
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