Food Rots- People Starve

While the country is experiencing massive food shortages, many vendors say they are forced to throw rotting vegetables away as people don’t have the money to purchase their goods any longer.

Piles and piles of rotting vegetables at food markets situated right in Zimbabwe’s central business district would elsewhere be viewed as a sign of plenty. But the nation has not been spared the irony of food wastage at a time of food shortages. 

In Bulawayo’s sprawling vegetable market in the CBD, which provides a livelihood for hundreds of vendors, rotting vegetables have become the norm. This is happening at a time vendors say there is a shortage of vegetables that range from staples such as African kale, cabbages and tomatoes, and whose shortages have pushed up prices. 

“We cannot give away the vegetables just because we fear they will rot,” said Mihla Hadebe, who sells anything from tomatoes to cabbages to mangoes and cucumbers. "Even if we lower prices, people just do not have money that is why you see a lot of vegetables rotting like this,” Hadebe told IPS 

“In Zimbabwe, nearly 1 in 3 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while 93 per cent of children between 6 months and 2 years of age are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet,” James Maiden, UNICEF Zimbabwe spokesperson told IPS. “Across the country about 34,000 children are critically suffering from acute malnutrition,” Maiden said. 

Zimbabwe is one of many countries that have seen record high temperatures, throwing agriculture activity into uncertainty as food insecurity worsens. This has worsened everyday diets amid poor salaries despite full supermarkets in a country that falls under sub-Saharan African region where the Food Sustainability Index says is home to the world’s hungriest populations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says the number of people requiring food assistance continues to rise in Zimbabwe, stating that half the population — nearly 8 million people — is now facing food insecurity. It has also raised concerns about under-nourishment for both children and adults. 

Nathan Hayes, an analyst with the EIU, believes the country has been slow in responding to the food and nutrition crisis.

“Making matters worse, poor rains have exacerbated the food crisis. This ongoing economic crisis means that social safety nets have been cut, leaving many families vulnerable and unable to afford sufficient food each day,” Hayes explained. 

Nigeria: need poverty exist

The Material World Column from the  February 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the myths prevalent about Africa, none is promoted as widely as the idea that overpopulation is the core cause of African poverty. Nigeria has the largest increase in population and is destined to become the third most populated country in the world. By 2015 one-fifth of Africa’s births occurred in Nigeria alone, accounting for 5 percent of all global births. In absolute terms, Nigeria is projected to add from 2031 to 2050 an additional 224 million babies (21 percent of the births in Africa and 8 percent of all births in the world).

On average, a Nigerian woman gives birth to 5.5 children. In the conservative, Muslim-majority north, the number goes up to eight children. This is clearly more than most women want, let alone can afford. Women in northern Nigeria have little say in reproduction and require a signed letter from their husband to get family planning which is further undermined by cultural norms such as the prevalence of polygamy, child marriage, teen pregnancy, poor education.

Wealth in Nigeria in the decade ending in 2017 increased 19 percent. These increases, Oxfam has noted, could have created an opportunity to improve the lives of many. Yet, Oxfam pointed out, Nigeria has the worst score on social spending, not only in Africa but in the world.

Instead, the increases in GDP have essentially benefited only a select few. There are currently 29,500 millionaires in Nigeria. The five wealthiest Nigerians hold a combined fortune worth $29.9 billion, for just about a $6 billion average. Nigeria’s single richest individual, Aliko Dangote, Oxfam calculated, annually earns enough income off his wealth to take 2 million poor Nigerians out of extreme poverty every year and still at the end of the year be every bit as rich as at the start. Oxfam pointed out that he ‘earns’ about 150,000 times more from his wealth than the poorest 10 percent of Nigerians spend on average on their basic consumption in a year (LINK). Dangote could spend $1 million a day and still not run out of money for 46 years.

Corruption has long plagued Nigeria due to public officials feasting on funds generated from crude oil exports. Last year, Nigeria ranked 148th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index. A report in 2012 found that it costs Nigerians $8.3 billion to pay the salaries of those in politics yet only $7.4 billion was to be spent on developing infrastructure. A Nigerian senator takes home well over a million dollars every year in salary plus expenses and benefits. Nigerian politicians get away with this in a country where millions go to bed hungry.

In Nigeria more than 60 percent of the population live on less than a dollar a day. The unemployment rate stands at 23 percent. According to reports Nigeria has overtaken India as the world’s poverty capital. A study estimated that 87 million people in a country of nearly 200 million were living in extreme poverty, compared with 73 million people in India. According to a 2018 African Development Bank report, nearly 80 percent of Nigeria’s 190 million people live on less than $2 a day. A report on inequality by Oxfam International said one in 10 children in Nigeria died before the age of five. UN data puts Nigeria’s under-five mortality rate at 100 per 1,000 children – or one in 10.

Need this poverty exist?

The Danish Consul-General, Per Christensen, has said that Nigeria could produce food for some 600 million people through the application of the right technology. He said, ‘Let me say that the agricultural development potential in Nigeria is bigger than that of Brazil when Nigerian farmers engage in technology farming’.

Nigerian experts point to the case of India, condemned by many experts in the 1960s to perpetual hunger. Today India is producing the bulk of its own food.

There are a number of reasons why the population boom in Nigeria is going unchecked, such as children being seen as a status symbol and a retirement plan. But the lack of political will is uppermost. People who claim that too many people is the issue are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor.

Conservation for who?

From our companion blog Socialism Or Your Money Back

Investigators sent to northern Congo by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to assess allegations of human rights abuses gathered “credible” evidence from different sources that hunter-gatherer Baka tribespeople living close to a proposed national park had been subjected to violence and physical abuse from the guards over years. Armed ecoguards partly funded by the conservation group WWF to protect wildlife in the Republic of Congo beat up and intimidated hundreds of Baka pygmies living deep in the rainforests.

Stephen Corry, the director of tribal defence NGO Survival International, said: “This UNDP report is a devastating indictment which should spell the end of WWF’s model of ‘fortress conservation’ which has caused so much damage to people and the environment throughout Africa.

The allegations included Baka tribespeople being beaten by the ecoguards, the criminalisation and illegal imprisonment of Baka men, summary evictions from the forest, the burning and destruction of property, and the confiscation of food. The UNDP’s social and environmental compliance unit heard how the ecoguards allegedly treated the Baka men as “sub-human” and humiliated some Baka women by forcing them to take off their clothes and “be like naked children”.

The report says: “These beatings occur when the Baka are in their camps along the road as well as when they are in the forest. They affect men, women and children. Other reports refer to ecoguards pointing a gun at one Baka to force him to beat another and guards taking away the machetes of the Baka, then beating them with those machetes.

“There are reports of Baka men having been taken to prison and of torture and rape inside prison. The widow of one Baka man spoke about her husband being so ill-treated in prison that he died shortly after his release. He had been transported to the prison in a WWF-marked vehicle.”

The draft report adds: “The violence and threats are leading to trauma and suffering in the Baka communities. It is also preventing the Baka from pursuing their customary livelihoods, which in turn is contributing to their further marginalisation and impoverishment.” The report adds: “Baka men find they can no longer go into the forest to obtain honey. They fear that they are no longer able to trap small animals without running the risk of being severely punished by the ecoguards. There are numerous reports of Baka caught in the forest being beaten.”

The UNDP acted after it received appeals from the Baka in 2018. One, signed by people in Mbaye village, said: “They ban us from going to the forest. If we make camps in the forest the ecoguards burn them down. Many Baka are dead today. Children are getting thinner. We are already finished off with the lack of forest medicines. We tried to tell our difficulties to the WWF but they do not accept them. They just tell us we cannot go to the forest.”

Local Congolese WWF officials interviewed by the UNDP team “acknowledged the evidence of abuse against the Baku” by the guards, says the report. “Such occurrences were presented as isolated incidents due to the existence of a few bad apples among the ecoguards in what was otherwise a successful operation. A WWF staff member … explained that these incidences were occurring because of the psychological ramifications of putting someone in a uniform and giving him a gun, which for some men represents a licence to commit abuse.”

he $21.4m flagship Tridom 11 project in northern Congo set up in 2017 with money from the WWF, UNDP, the European commission, US and Congolese governments and the Global Environment Facility, as well as logging and palm oil conglomerates, includes as its centrepiece a 1,456 sq km area of forest known as Messok Dja. This global biodiversity hotspot is rich in wildlife, including elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees, and has been lived in and used for the hunting of small game by the semi-nomadic Baka tribes for millennia.

Investigators  identified multiple failures  to adhere to human rights policies and standards, and said little consideration had been given to the impact of the project on the Baka peoples. 

Not only were communities given little information that their customary land was to be turned into a protected area, but funders had assumed that the conservation project would bring environmental and social benefits, says the report.

Investigators also said they found no evidence that the UNDP had taken into account the risk of co-financing the project with palm oil and logging companies whose work by its nature threatens large-scale biodiversity loss.

“Logging, palm oil and tourism companies, as well as conservation NGOs are working together to steal Baka land. All the relevant UN policies and laws regarding respect for indigenous peoples and human rights were ignored from the beginning,” Stephen Corry explained.

The report strongly criticises the way conservation is practised in central Africa. “The goal of establishing Messok Dja as a protected area was pursued by following the established patterns of conservation projects in the Congo Basin, which largely exclude indigenous peoples and treat them as threats rather than partners,” it says.

The international NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) found that WWF had only consulted the Baka communities likely to be affected by the park seven years after the idea had been conceived and long after discussions with government and logging companies had begun.

“By then it was far too late in the process. Information provided to communities has been incomplete and provided late,” the FPP report said.

The Socialist Standard carried an article some years back on this topic
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2015/2010s/no-1334-october-2015/material-world-exiled-gardens-eden/

Give Africa a voice on climate change

The Fridays for Future movement held a press conference Friday focused on the need for the world to better recognize the amazing climate activism taking place in Africa—a continent that is already enduring severe impacts of global heating in spite of its limited contributions to creating the crisis.

Climate activists and experts joined the event via video, including Vanessa Nakate of Fridays for Future Uganda, who was cropped out of an Associated Press photo with four white school strikers while attending the World Economic Forum's summit in Davos, Switzerland last week. The incident put a spotlight on the erasure of Africans in conversations and reporting about the climate emergency.

Nakate said that "African activists are doing so much... and it gets so frustrating when no one really cares about them."

Not only do journalists and news outlets often lack African voices in climate coverage, they also fail to report on how global heating is impacting the continent. A new CARE International analysis that Common Dreams reported on this week found that nine of the 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises in the world last year were in Africa, and many of those crises were climate-related.

Muigai, who is from Nairobi, pointed out that "Africa at large is being affected by the negative impacts of climate change... A great example of the impacts of this is the locust infestation in East Africa, which will soon lead to food insecurity."

Muigai said that due to lack of quality education, some people in less developed countries don't fully understand climate issues.

The African continent, Muigai noted, is also dealing with issues like deforestation and bad energy policies that contribute to global heating. She said that "all of us, at the end of the day, will be affected by climate change."

Melithafa explained that in South Africa, where severe drought has hit crops and water supplies, people are living though climate impacts each day. Highlighting how wealth inequality factors into climate issues, Melithafa said that as the rich dig private wells, poorer residents "already struggling to make ends meet, just to get a decent meal at the end of the day," also have to buy drinking water.

Mcunu, the climate scientist, pointed to the difficulties of responding to extreme weather events, scarcity of food and clean water, and electricity demands as key issues the continent is grappling with related to the climate crisis.

"How is it that we are not being spotlighted in stories or being told in these stories?" Mcunu said. "That's the main challenge we have as a continent."

"It is said that Africa only contributes to approximately 5% of the [global greenhouse gas] emissions, yet we are the most impacted," she added. She noted efforts to raise awareness worldwide about African knowledge and adaption initiatives as well as the necessity of working with scientists on the continent to gather accurate data.

Mcunu emphasized the importance of international cooperation to not only adapt to the impacts of climate change but also prevent further global heating, particularly by decarbonizing economies.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/31/fridays-future-movement-urges-greater-global-focus-africas-climate-champions

Anything to survive

The United Nations says a record 45 million people in southern Africa face hunger amid a "silent catastrophe" caused by repeated drought, widespread flooding and economic chaos. Swathes of southern Africa have experienced their lowest rainfall since 1981, according to the United Nations, which says the crisis is fuelled by climate change as temperatures in the region rise at about twice the global rate. Countries affected include Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Madagascar, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland).

World Vision said staff had seen a significant increase in girls resorting to transactional sex in Angola and Zimbabwe amid "huge levels of desperation".

Young girls in southern Africa are selling sex - sometimes for less than the cost of bread - to survive a hunger crisis ensnaring tens of millions, aid agencies said on Thursday. In Angola, girls of 12 sell themselves for as little as 40 cents to feed their families as the south of the country faces its worst drought in four decades

Robert Bulten, World Vision's emergencies director in Angola, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation a girl might get 500 kwanzas ($1) for sex - enough to buy about a kilo of beans or two kilos of maize - but could get as little as 200 kwanzas.

"We definitely know there's an increase. It's difficult to quantify because it's taboo ... but I would say a significant number are doing this," he said. "We're talking about girls between 12 and 17."

Bulten said the price of some staples had doubled since last year. With the next harvest not due until June, he predicted hunger would worsen.

In Zimbabwe, CARE International said there were reports of girls as young as 14 resorting to selling sex, especially en route to South Africa and near goldmines.

"Sometimes they earn as little as 5 RGT ($0.31) for one sexual encounter, which is really awful ... it's not even enough to buy a loaf," said CARE's regional gender expert Everjoy Mahuku.

ActionAid regional advisor Chikondi Chabvuta said women and girls "on the edge of survival" were forced into transactional sex in Mozambique and Malawi.

Aid workers said many of the girls would normally be in school. In some cases, they had dropped out because of deepening family poverty, but many schools had also closed.

World Vision's Bulten said the crisis in southern Angola had also increased the incidence of rape and child marriage. Girls were at heightened risk of rape while walking long distances for water or foraging in forests, he said. Families struggling to make ends meet may marry girls off early so they have one less mouth to feed, but Bulten said sometimes it was to keep them out of the prostitution. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said the crisis had driven up child marriage in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and Namibia.

http://news.trust.org/item/20200130182713-wao6m/