REUTERSFile picture: Siphiwe Sibeko

Chikwawa, Malawi – The Maize that is a food staple for much of southern Africa is now so expensive that it has become a luxury many cannot afford, after the worst drought in three decades damaged crops from Ethiopia to South Africa.

In Malawi, one of a dozen nations affected by the dry spell, Meleniya Mateyu says she has to forage for wild water-lily roots called nyika from streams and swamps to feed her two orphaned grandchildren. The small amount of grain she gets from an aid agency is barely enough for them to eat during one meal a day.

“We are surviving on nyika,” Mateyu said in an interview at her village in the southern district of Chikwawa, about 50km south of the capital, Blantyre. “This year’s hunger is the worst I’ve seen in 10 years.”

The drought – a symptom of the global El Niño weather pattern – is shrinking grain production across southern and eastern Africa and increasing the risk of widening hunger for some of the poorest populations in the world.

Read also: Food prices escalate at an alarming rate

Of the 34 countries that will require food aid this year, 27 are on the continent, the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) data show. And the need is growing even as the rest of the planet enjoys a grain glut and shrinking food costs.

Dire situation

The situation may be the worst since southern Africa’s last major food crisis in 2002/03, with 28 million people already contending with hunger, according to January figures provided by the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency.

The World Food Programme says that as many as 50 million people may eventually be affected in the region. Another 10 million people are at risk in Ethiopia because of drought, along with millions more in conflict-ridden countries including South Sudan and the Central African Republic.

While the UN says the region is having its worst drought in 35 years, it has been a century since fields were this dry in South Africa, the biggest grower on the continent, and five decades for Ethiopia. That’s compounding the strain on a part of the world where more than 40 percent of the people live at or below the international poverty line of $1.90 (R29.03) a day, according to the World Bank.

Even with global food costs tracked by the UN dropping to a seven-year low, few in southern Africa are benefiting. The logistics of getting supplies from sea ports to landlocked markets in Malawi and Zimbabwe increases the cost.

Read also: SA may cut crop estimate

Like many other countries in the region, South Africa’s buying power is eroded by its weakening currency. And the economies of Angola and Zambia have been hit by struggling oil and mining industries.

“Importing food for many of these countries is going to be much more costly now than it was a year ago,” Debbie Hillier, a humanitarian policy officer at Oxfam International in England, said. “Countries have suffered very seriously from the decline in commodity prices.”

Food costs might double in Zimbabwe, which would need to import as much as 1 million tons of grain, Steve Wiggins, a research fellow at the UK’s Overseas Development Institute, said.

While ocean freight costs are low, the country has to import through South Africa and Mozambique. In a normal production year, local wholesale maize in Zimbabwe would cost about $120 to $150 a ton, but prices would probably be at least $100 higher this year with the added transportation costs, he said.

“The country in the region that is just looking down the barrel is Zimbabwe,” Wiggins said. “The bottom 10 to 20 percent of Zimbabweans will be in terrible straits in terms of sorting out their food during 2016.”

Depleted

To make matters worse, regional stockpiles are already depleted. Grain production fell 21 percent last year across southern and eastern Africa, and prospects for the next harvest, which begins in April and May, were “acutely unfavourable”, the FAO said on March 9.

South Africa predicts the harvest will be half what it produced two years ago and that the country will have to import maize to feed itself.

Even with the drought, southern Africa is producing more grain than two decades ago, doubling maize output since 1998, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data show.

Countries and international organisations have already started to prepare for a crisis by stepping up imports and calling on donors for aid.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation, has appealed for $1.4 billion from international donors. The government has been buying up wheat in global markets since at least October, including a tender for 500 000 tons this week. The USDA forecasts the country’s wheat imports will almost triple this year.

Zimbabwe declared a national disaster last month and asked for $1.6bn in aid. The government says it has secured about half of the maize it needs so far after agreeing to import from Zambia and Ukraine.

Every meal

All that aid still may not be enough to prevent shortages, especially for white maize, used to make thick porridges known as nsima or pap, which some people in southern Africa eat for almost every meal.

Most maize harvested around the world is the yellow variety. Outside of southern Africa, only Mexico is a major producer of white maize, and it does not have a lot to export, according to Oxfam.

In addition, many southern African countries have laws prohibiting imports of genetically modified maize, which rules out much of the supply from the US, the world’s top exporter.

The effects of El Niño are expected to weaken over the next few months, according to the US Climate Prediction Center. But it will be too late to save crops across southern Africa.

Tendai Mhishi, a 50-year-old maize farmer in Runhanga Village, Zimbabwe, said his crop this year was a total write-off. He and his six children have been skipping meals in order to ration food.

“There are days one of my kids refuses to go to school all because of hunger,” Mhishi said in an interview. “This year, things have been really tough.”

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

Mayendit County is one of the nine counties of Unity State; it borders Leer, Koch, Tonj North, Tonj East, Rumbek North, and Panyijar counties. Mayendit South where the survey was conducted has five payams namely; Madol 1, Madol 2, Bhor, Pabuong and Malkuer. Agriculture is the county’s primary economic activity. The people are nomadic agro – pastoralists who engage in both agriculture and rearing of livestock, especially cattle. Fishing is also prevalent in the area.

Samaritan’s Purse International Relief and UNIDO are implementing various interventions in the county namely food security, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) nutrition and health.

Back in April 2014, the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF conducted a rapid assessment which identified a population of 20,500 in southern Mayendit with a proxy Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rate of 29.2% and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) rate of 1.9%. In August 2014, Samaritans Purse (SP) conducted mass Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) screening which registered a children under five (U5) proxy GAM rate of 9.9% and a Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLW) under nutrition rate of 26.2%. While Mayendit saw an improvement in malnutrition prevalence in 2014, recent mass MUAC screening conducted by SP in March 2015 registered a proxy GAM of 20.24% in children U5. Due to its more secure location, it is likely that southern Mayendit will receive an influx of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) as fighting resumes during the dry season. This will put additional pressure on already limited food resources and increase the likelihood of a deterioration of U5 and PLW’s nutritional status. In addition, the recent Knowledge Attitude and Practices (KAP) survey that was conducted in November 2015 by SP showed that the nutrition situation was poor as the levels were above the emergency threshold of 15%.

To get a better understanding and assess the severity of the nutrition and mortality situation in Mayendit County, SP with OFDA funding conducted a Nutrition and Mortality SMART survey from the 10th to 23th December, 2015. Enumerator training was conducted from 11th to 14th December, 2015 with data collection conducted from the 15th to 23rd December, 2015.

Objectives

The overall survey objective was to determine the nutrition status among children aged 6 -59 months and to estimate crude and under-five retrospective mortality rates in Mayendit County. This also included collecting morbidity data (2-week recall), immunization and supplementation coverage, and a qualitative component on Food Security and Livelihoods (FSL).

Methodology

The survey was a cross sectional study with two-stage cluster sampling using SMART methodology. Anthropometric data, two-week retrospective morbidity, Measles and vitamin A coverage and retrospective mortality data was collected. The sampling frame was drawn from the population of five payams. The first stage involved random selection of 36 clusters based on probability to proportional to size using the ENA for SMART software Nov, 2013 version (9th July 2015 update).

Results

Findings of the nutrition survey indicate poor nutrition situation among the surveyed population as per WHO standards. The prevalence of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) in Mayendit County based on weight for height z scores /and or oedema was 16.1% [(12.1 – 21.0 95% C.I.) and the prevalence of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) was 2.4% [1.3 – 4.5, 95% C.I.]. The poor nutrition situation is attributed to poor food security due to the insecurity and high incidence of disease among children aged 6-59 months. Results for Anthropometry, Mortality, and Immunization and Morbidity indicators are summarized below.

Conclusion and recommendations

The findings of the assessment depict a poor nutrition situation, above the WHO emergency threshold in Mayendit South which is being caused by an interplay of factors ranging from household food insecurity, disease, poor maternal care practices and limited programme coverage. This calls for concerted efforts with an integrated approach on the interventions being implemented in the area with a special focus on the Supplementary Feeding Programme (SFP) due to the high cases of moderately malnourished children and Outpatient Therapeutic Programme (OTP) due to the high numbers of severely malnourished children. The IYCF programme currently being implemented requires to integrate a BCC and an IMCI component in order to improve the nutrition situation. In addition, the health programme implemented should be scaled up and increase its focus on integrated management of childhood illnesses (IMCI). In addition, the food security and livelihoods (FSL) programme implemented in the area require immediate scale-up as the population start the dry period and as drought makes most of the households vulnerable to food insecurity and eventually malnutrition. The FSL programme needs to focus on empowering the livelihoods of the population e.g. giving fishing nets, in order for them to be able to mitigate household food insecurity.

Lastly, there is an urgent need to increase the coverage and scale up of the programmes currently implemented in Mayendit South in order to have a wider reach of the vulnerable populations.

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