Maryan Aden Ali, a Somali mother of six living in the southern town of Hudur, has not had a proper meal since last month. “As we wake up in the morning, there is no food to have breakfast, forget lunch or dinner,” she says.
“Goods like milk, water and medicines have almost disappeared from Hudur.” “One mother and her two children starved to death last week.
Who knows if we will be next,” Ali said, interrupting her conversation with dpa because she was too weak to talk.
The United Nations World Food Programme expects to provide food aid to 1.3 million people this year in Somalia, said Ralf Sudhoff, director of WFP’s Berlin office. Hassan Ibrahim Hassan, deputy governor of Bakool province where Hudur is located, blames the situation on the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab.
Fighting between al-Shabaab and government troops has prevented farmers from planting, Hassan said. The group also besieges localities captured by the government and African Union troops backing it – making food prices soar – and attacks convoys transporting food aid.
The situation in Somalia is an extreme expression of the problems of hunger and food insecurity with which Africa has struggled for decades. The continent first received food aid in the late 1950s, and since the mid-1980s the number of African food emergencies has tripled, according to the African Development Bank.
Food security will be the focus of an African Union summit starting in the Equatorial Guinean capital Malabo on Friday. Food security is a challenge that goes far beyond health concerns. Hungry children develop cognitive problems and drop of out of school early, ADB said, warning that “the dynamic relationship between food security and poor education, bad health and poverty can last for generations.” Large-scale famines are often created by wars or comparable conflicts. In South Sudan, where a six-month military conflict has prevented farmers from planting, seven million people are estimated to be food insecure – two-thirds of the population.
In Mingkaman in the centre of the country, tens of thousands of displaced people fear returning to their farms, where their houses have often been destroyed. “There is no food, shelter or health facilities there,” displaced Jacob Auyen said. South Sudan director for Oxfam Emma Jane Drew, whose organization faces having to feed displaced people coming even from areas where fighting has calmed down, describes the situation as “desperate.”
In another trouble spot, the Central African Republic, violence between Muslims and Christians has prevented farmers from planting for two years. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned of impending famine. Food insecurity is not, however, limited to crisis situations. It is a complex problem involving factors such as poverty, high HIV rates, lack of modernization in agriculture, land disputes and lack of regional and global responses. Malawi in south-east Africa is at peace. But small-scale farmers making up about 80 per cent of the population struggle with problems affecting their counterparts in many countries of the continent.
Rapid population growth – an average of 5.6 children per woman – forces farmers to keep dividing their plots between their descendants, with the average farm size shrinking from 1.5 hectares in 1968 to 0.8 hectares in 2000. The cost of fuel and non-subsidized fertilizers has meanwhile gone up, while small-scale farmers lose part of their income to middlemen controlling market access, said John Chipeta from the National Smallholder Farmers’ Association of Malawi (NASFAM).
“We were unable to send our children to school. We had very little hope for the future,” said Mkukumila Banda, president of a group of farmers in Nathenje south of the capital Lilongwe, whose lives improved after then president Joyce Banda donated them cows in 2013. Droughts intensified by climate change are further deteriorating food security in the country which has faced several famines in the 2000s. “Food intake in villages we keep track of is seldom sufficient,” said Joss Koppens from the Catholic non-governmental organization Centre for Social Concern.
“There is a very serious situation in some villages, with stunted growth in some children,” said Emmanuel Mlaka from LandNet, a non-governmental organization dealing with land issues. Critics blame undernourishment also on the typical Malawian diet, based one-sidedly on maize.
Rapid solutions for Africa’s lack of food security are hardly in sight. Aid must reach disaster areas faster; more action needs to be taken to end violent conflicts; and African governments must prioritize agriculture and adequate nourishment, Sudhoff said. # dpa Notebook ## Internet links – [African Union website](dpaq.de/YeRQ5) – [African Development Bank report](http://dpaq.de/1if49) – [World Food Programme website](http://dpaq.de/wh9zW) – [Food and Agricultural Organization website](http://dpaq.de/ibQ5E) – [Oxfam website](http://dpaq.de/NFwCB) -[NASFAM website](http://dpaq.de/NIZ7B) – [Centre for Social Concern website](http://dpaq.de/dn2t0) – [LandNet on Facebook](http://dpaq.de/PeHVW) * * * * The following information is not intended for publication
## dpa contacts – Reporting by: Sinikka Tarvainen in Johannesburg and Lilongwe, Mohamed Odowa in Mogadishu, Francis Lagu in Juba and Ndalla Ignace in Bangui – Editing by: – Tel: +49 30 2852 31472; [email protected]
Source : Sapa-dpa /gm
