By Chris Bishop.







There are fears that the scourge COVID-19 virus could leave hunger as well as death and sickness in its wake. The World Food Programme fears that the lockdowns across Africa could paralyse farms and threaten the production of food for hungry millions. It feeds 4.1 million Zimbabweans alone in a massive project that helps an estimated 45 million hungry people across sub-Saharan Africa – that is more than the populations of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi combined. As the lockdowns affect ports and movement, the future holds fears for those delivering the food. “Most of the food in Africa is produced by small farmers, most of them women. For that to happen we need to make sure seeds are delivered to farms and planted, transport needs to stay on the move across the country and markets where farmer can buy supplies s can stay open,” says Lola Castro WFP’s Regional Director for Southern Africa. “We really need to maintain our normal distribution maybe in the future especially on the small holder farmers who must have access to markets. We may see more people needing food if the disease gets worse.” Castro warned in a webcast, arranged by the World Health Organisation, that undernourished people and those with HIV-Aids were prone to COVID-19. She said that the WFP was asking for $450 million to buy up the crop currently being harvested to keep supply up and the region’s hungry fed. “Food security in rural and urban populations needed to be looked at differently …We have to make sure your most vulnerable are supported like people with HIV-Aids .Governments are putting measures for that.” says Castro. Another problem for food security is the fact that lockdown has closed down tens of thousands of schools from Lilongwe to Lagos. For many hungry school children in Africa, school is only place they can be sure of a hot meal. “Many countries have closed schools and hundreds of millions of children are not going to school,” says Matshidiso Moete, the regional director for Africa for the World Health Organisation. Governments across Africa are going to have to make some very tough decisions when considering how long to keep the lockdown in place.

Mozambique records first COVID-19 death

The fight to keep 4.1 million Zimbabweans fed in COVID-19 lockdown.

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As South Africa enters day 1 of a national lock-down, many other Sub-Saharan African countries have also entered into partial lock-downs with the restriction of movement as a key element for curbing the number of infections. However, across the globe many people are already facing dire humanitarian emergencies and the World food programme is putting in measures to ensure that Sub-Saharan Africa has enough food to sustain itself during the Covid-19 pandemic. Joining CNBC Africa for more is Lola Castro, Regional Director for Southern Africa at the World Food Programme.

How COVID-19 impacts food security in SAA

How COVID-19 impacts food security in SSA

Global hunger levels have risen for the first time in more than a decade, now affecting 11 percent of the world’s population, as conflict, climate change and economic woes bite, U.N. agencies said on Friday.
Last year, 815 million people were hungry &#8211; 38 million more than in 2015 &#8211; the five agencies said in the first global assessment since governments set an international target to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030, as one of a set of so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The number of hungry began to rise in 2014, but this is the first time in more then a decade that the proportion of the global population going hungry has risen.
About 489 million of the hungry are living in countries affected by conflict.
“Over the past decade, conflicts have risen dramatically in number and become more complex and intractable in nature,” the heads of five U.N. agencies said in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017 report.
“This has set off alarm bells we cannot afford to ignore: we will not end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 unless we address all the factors that undermine food security and nutrition,” they said.
Famine struck parts of South Sudan earlier this year, and there is a high risk that it could return there &#8211; and develop in other countries affected by conflict: northeast Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, the agencies said.
The report was produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organization (WHO).
<h3 data-reactid="50">HUNGER AND WAR</h3>
The agencies called for new ways of working to achieve the goal of ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030.
“It’s not only about meeting need, but also ending the need and addressing the root causes of hunger,” Zlatan Milisic, WFP’s deputy director of programmes told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In war-torn countries, it means agencies need to spend more time understanding the complexities of the conflict and working towards building peace, he said.
“We have a lot of research &#8230; which says food insecurity doesn’t directly lead to conflict, but it is a very powerful trigger &#8230; (and) food security has been as seen as a contributor to maintaining peace,” Milisic said.
Aid can sometimes increase tensions in a community. For example, unless aid for refugees supports their hosts as well, it may raise tensions with those families &#8211; who are often poor themselves with little access to basic services.
Aid programmes that create jobs, restore roads and improve farming in countries recovering from war help address root causes of conflict, FAO says.
Intense and prolonged droughts can significantly increase the likelihood of conflict, according to the report. And these are expected to become more frequent with climate change.
<h3 data-reactid="58">FEWER CHILDREN STUNTED</h3>
The proportion of children stunted by hunger fell to 22.9 percent in 2016, from 29.5 percent in 2005. Now, about 155 million children under five years old are affected. Stunting can undermine children’s physical and mental development.
“We see there is a decline &#8211; we also know that decline is not as fast as we would like &#8230; to meet the SDG targets,” said Victor Aguayo, UNICEF’s director for nutrition said.
The number of stunted children &#8211; short for their age &#8211; fell by 40 percent between 1990 and 2015 and Aguayo said this decline should continue.
Progress hinges around improving diets for women and children, improving the status of women in society, and lowering poverty levels, he added.
A worrying trend is the rise of child obesity, with an estimated 41 million children around the world now overweight.
“Obesity is going to increasingly affect the poor, caused by poor diet and poor lifestyle,” Aguayo said.
<h3>NEW TREND?</h3>
Asia has the largest number of hungry people &#8211; 520 million &#8211; and sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of hungry, affecting 20 percent of the population.
Wars, droughts linked to last year’s El Niño weather phenomenon and a global economic slowdown have affected people’s access to food, the agencies said.
Falling commodity prices &#8211; especially for oil &#8211; have made it harder for some countries to import food and to fund state subsidies which normally protect people from hunger, said Jose Rosero Moncayo of FAO’s statistics division.
Overall, however, it’s not clear whether the rise in the number of hungry people is a sign of longer-term trend, he said.
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Reporting by Alex Whiting @Alexwhi, Editing by Ros Russell.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women&#8217;s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit <a href="http://news.trust.org/climate">news.trust.org/climate</a>
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Global hunger rises for first time in decade: U.N. agencies

HAMBURG, July 8 (Reuters) &#8211; U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday promised $639 million in aid to feed people left starving because of drought and conflict in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen.
Trump&#8217;s pledge came during a working session of the G20 summit of world leaders in Hamburg, providing a &#8220;godsend&#8221; to the United Nations&#8217; World Food Programme, the group&#8217;s executive director, David Beasley, told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.
&#8220;We&#8217;re facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two,&#8221; said Beasley, a Republican and former South Carolina governor who was nominated by Trump to head the U.N. agency fighting hunger worldwide.
The new funding brings to over $1.8 billion aid promised by the United States for fiscal year 2017 for the crises in the four countries, where the United Nations has estimated more than 30 million people need urgent food assistance.
READ: <a href="http://cnbc.africa/newsletters/nigeria/2017/07/07/op-ed-nigerias-acting-president-yemi-osinbajo-g20-time-move-beyond-pledges-back-africas-future/">Op-ed: Nigeria&#8217;s Acting President Yemi Osinbajo to G20: It&#8217;s time to move beyond pledges to back Africa&#8217;s future</a>
&#8220;With this new assistance, the United States is providing additional emergency food and nutrition assistance, life-saving medical care, improved sanitation, emergency shelter and protection for those who have been affected by conflict,&#8221; USAID said in a statement.
Rob Jenkins, acting head of the USAID&#8217;s bureau of democracy, conflict and humanitarian assistance, said of the funding, over $191 million would go to Yemen, $199 million to South Sudan, $121 million to Nigeria and almost $126 million for Somalia.
Conflict in all four countries had made it difficult to reach some communities in need of food, he noted.
&#8220;We&#8217;re in a dire situation right now,&#8221; said Jenkins, adding that USAID was also concerned with the situation in southern Ethiopia.
&#8220;The situation in southern Ethiopia fortunately does not rise to the dire situation of the other four, but the situation is deteriorating and might very well be catastrophic without additional interventions,&#8221; he said, adding that Washington had already provided some $252 million this year to Ethiopia, &#8220;but the needs continue to grow.&#8221;
Beasley said the U.S. funding was about a third of what the WFP estimated was required this year to deal with urgent food needs in the four countries in crisis as well as in other areas.
The WFP estimates that 109 million people around the world will need food assistance this year, up from 80 million last year, with 10 of the 13 worst-affected zones stemming from wars and &#8220;man-made&#8221; crises, Beasley said.
&#8220;We estimated that if we didn&#8217;t receive the funding we needed immediately that 400,000 to 600,000 children would be dying in the next four months,&#8221; he said.
Trump&#8217;s announcement came after his administration proposed sharp cuts in funding for the U.S. State Department and other humanitarian missions as part of his &#8220;America First&#8221; policy.
Beasley said the agency had worked hard with the White House and the U.S. government to secure the funding, but Trump would insist that other countries contributed more as well.
A WFP spokesman said Germany recently pledged an additional 200 million euros for food relief. (Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; editing by John Stonestreet)
© Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved

G20: US President Trump has just agreed to aid for Africa

LAGOS
At least half of Nigerian government food aid sent northeast for hungry people driven from their homes by Boko Haram has been &#8220;diverted&#8221; and never reached them, a government official said.
Some 1.5 million people are on the brink of famine in the northeast, where the jihadist group has killed more than 20,000 people and forced 2.7 million to flee during its eight-year uprising to create an Islamic caliphate.
A programme was launched on June 8 by Yemi Osinbajo, acting president while President Muhammadu Buhari is in Britain on medical leave, to distribute grain to 1.8 million people still displaced by the insurgency, many of whom live in camps.
&#8220;Over 1,000 trucks of assorted grains are now on course, delivering the grains intact to beneficiaries since the commencement of the present programme as against the reported diversion of over 50 trucks in every 100 trucks sent to the northeast,&#8221; said Osinbajo&#8217;s spokesman Laolu Akande in an emailed statement late on Saturday.
&#8220;The issue of diversion of relief materials, including food and related matters, which has dogged food delivery to the IDPs [internally displaced people] would be significantly curbed under the new distribution matrix.&#8221;
Akande said 1,376 military personnel and 656 armed police would guard the food as it was moved from warehouses and distributed to displaced people in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe &#8211; the three states worst hit by the insurgency.
Boko Haram controlled an area of the northeast around the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has since been pushed out of most of the territory by Nigeria&#8217;s army and troops from neighbouring countries.
But the Islamists continue to carry out attacks in the northeast and neighbouring Cameroon and Niger.
Boko Haram killed 14 people in bombings and shootings in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on June 7, in a large-scale attack quelled by the army after several hours.
A U.N. official said this month the World Food Programme had scaled back its emergency plans in the northeast because of lack of funds, now aiming to supply food to 1.4 million people instead of the 1.8 million previously intended.
The U.N. says it needs $1.05 billion this year to deal with the crisis in northeast Nigeria &#8211; which, along with Somalia and South Sudan, is one of three humanitarian emergencies unfolding in Africa &#8211; but has only received about a quarter of that sum.
(Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Andrew Roche)

Nigeria says half of govt food aid never reached victims of Boko Haram

ABUJA (Reuters) &#8211; The United Nations&#8217; World Food Programme could in a few weeks run out of funding to feed millions living on the brink of famine in Nigeria, four people familiar with the matter said, intensifying one of the world&#8217;s largest humanitarian crises. 
In the northeast, 4.7 million people, many of them refugees from the conflict with Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, need rations to survive, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), one of the main aid groups handing out food. Many of those living in camps for displaced people say they already barely get enough to eat. 
&#8220;With the money they have right now, and if they won&#8217;t cut rations, they can only go to May 18,&#8221; one person said, citing talks with the WFP, who asked to not be named because they were not authorised to speak to media. 
The WFP was &#8220;reasonably certain&#8221; it would get enough funding to last until late June, the person added. 
&#8220;All humanitarian crises globally are woefully underfunded and for WFP Nigeria is in one of the worst situations for funding,&#8221; a WFP spokeswoman said. 
&#8220;We are trying to save lives. We need over the next six months $207 million for Nigeria. At the moment the programme is 13 percent funded for 2017. It&#8217;s extremely low. Of the four countries facing famine it is the least funded.&#8221; 
The conflict with Islamist insurgency Boko Haram, which seeks to establish a caliphate in Nigeria&#8217;s northeast, began in 2009 and shows no sign of ending. It has killed more than 20,000 people and displaced more than two million. 
Nigeria&#8217;s northeast is now teetering on the brink of famine, aid organisations say, pointing to two years of missed crop harvests in what was once a breadbasket for the country, and the high likelihood of missing a third. 
The approaching rainy season increases the risk of disease spreading, especially within camps for the displaced, adding more stress to efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis. 
The wet season also means tens of thousands of refugees are attempting to return home to farm, despite facing serious dangers, saying there is not enough food provided in the camps to sustain them.
CONTINGENCY PLAN
In a meeting on Monday with the WFP in Nigeria&#8217;s capital Abuja, donor countries and organisations, criticised the group for not having a satisfactory contingency plan if funding starts to dry up, two of the people with knowledge of the talks said.
The WFP spokeswoman said meetings with donors were genial, open and frank. 
&#8220;When we are funded and able to get out to the field we are getting to people. This crisis can be averted and we want people to understand this will work if it&#8217;s funded. We can avert the famine.&#8221; 
The U.S. Embassy in Abuja said the U.S. government was working &#8220;urgently and cooperatively with our partners in an effort to address the critical humanitarian needs in northeastern Nigeria&#8221;. 
&#8220;There is not adequate funding to sustain the global response to those needs here. Additional resources must be found urgently so that feeding does not stop,&#8221; the embassy said in emailed comments to Reuters. 
The WFP and donors have also locked horns over who is to blame for the lack of funding reaching the aid organisation, with the U.N. agency saying the money promised has not been released to them and donors arguing that basic paperwork still has not been submitted, the two people said. 
&#8220;There&#8217;s a dark cloud hanging over them that they&#8217;ll cut rations,&#8221; one person said. &#8220;It shouldn&#8217;t be this way.&#8221; 
The WFP, along with other groups, has come under fire in Nigeria for its slow reaction to the humanitarian crisis in the northeast, only launching a full-fledged response last year while other aid organisations had been in the country since at least 2014. 
On Wednesday, the U.N. children&#8217;s fund said its response to the crisis &#8220;remains severely underfunded&#8221;, a warning echoed by many other aid groups. 
The United Nations says it needs $1.5 billion in humanitarian aid this year for the Lake Chad region &#8211; which spreads across parts of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad &#8211; and $457 million had been pledged for 2017 by late February. 
Despite the Nigerian army saying the insurgency is on the run, large parts of the country&#8217;s northeast, particularly in Borno state, remain under threat from Boko Haram. Suicide bombings and gun attacks have increased in the region since the end of the rainy season late last year.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Susan Thomas)

World Food Programme

The fight to keep 4.1 million Zimbabweans fed in COVID-19 lockdown.

How COVID-19 impacts food security in SSA

Global hunger rises for first time in decade: U.N. agencies

G20: US President Trump has just agreed to aid for Africa

Nigeria says half of govt food aid never reached victims of Boko Haram

With Nigeria’s northeast facing famine, WFP funds could dry up in weeks –sources

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World Food Programme

The fight to keep 4.1 million Zimbabweans fed in COVID-19 lockdown.

How COVID-19 impacts food security in SSA

Global hunger rises for first time in decade: U.N. agencies

G20: US President Trump has just agreed to aid for Africa

Nigeria says half of govt food aid never reached victims of Boko Haram

With Nigeria’s northeast facing famine, WFP funds could dry up in weeks –sources

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