SOUTHERN AFRICA-AGRICULTURE: Another Bad Season

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

HARARE, Nov 7 1995 (IPS) - For the fourth year running, poor rains have played havoc with agricultural production in Southern Africa, and the region is again facing an acute cereal deficit.

The 11-nation Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) faces a cereal shortfall of 3.9 million tonnes. The largest deficits have been assessed in Angola (725 tonnes), Zimbabwe (680,000 tonnes) and Zambia (557,000 tonnes).

“But appeals for food aid have so far yielded only 476,000 tonnes in pledges with many countries still hoping for further support,” says the Food Security bulletin of the Harare-based SADC Regional Early Warning Unit.

Only 410,000 tonnes has been delivered out of the planned imports of 3.02 million tonnes.

The problems confronting the region have landed on the desk of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative for southern and east Africa.

Victoria Sekitoleko, formerly Uganda’s minister of agriculture, is responsible for 21 countries all of which are facing food security problems of varying degrees. The hardest hit in East Africa are Ethiopia and Rwanda.

“The situation is likely to worsen in 1996,” says Sekitoleko, despite SADC members increasing cereal imports to cover demand.

The price of food has already jumped by 25 percent in parts of the southern African sub-region, she points out.

That means more hungry mouths to add to the FAO estimate of 800 million people world-wide suffering from a lack of food. Of these, 192 million children under the age of five, mostly from Africa, have acute or chronic protein and energy deficiencies.

To help tackle the problem, FAO recently launched a special programme on food production in support of food security in Low- Income Food-Deficit Countries.

There are 88 nations that fall into this category — 44 in Africa, 23 in Asia and the Pacific, nine in Latin America and 12 in Europe/Commonwealth of Independent States.

The programme is oriented towards increasing overall food availability, stabilising yields and generating employment and income in the agricultural sector, with particular attention to African countries.

“We are currently funding 200 projects at a cost of 200 dollars in the sub-region,” explains Sekitoloke.

The projects include fisheries rehabilitation in Eritrea, rural oil protein production and processing in Kenya and improving land use in Swaziland.

These activities will be managed by the FAO sub-regional office, opened Monday in Harare. The event, marked by a one-day conference, was highlighted by accusations of neglect by governments of small-scale farmers, the backbone of African agriculture.

The president of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, Garry Magadzire, wondered why Zimbabwe, with 75 percent of its population depending on agriculture, runs short of food.

“The problem is,” he said, “there is no investment in small- scale farming”. Magadzire urged governments to step in to reverse the situation.

In Botswana, farmers are given free seeds to boost production. “Still this has not improved the situation because of drought. Drought is the major stumbling block,” said a spokesman from Botswana’s ministry of agriculture.

Kenya’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, C.A. Makwere, suggested providing subsidies for African farmers. “Even the United States”, he argued, “provide some form of subsidy to its farmers”.

Others like Dr Sam Muchena of the Harare-based Africa Centre for Fertiliser Development strongly believes that improvement in crop yields lies in the better use of fertilisers.

According to his Centre, sub-Saharan Africa is at the bottom of the world chart of fertiliser use. At the top is East Asia, followed by Western Europe.

Rebuffing prophets of doom however, Zimbabwe’s minister of agriculture, Dennis Norman, urged Africans not to lose hope. “All is not lost,” he stressed.

SOUTHERN AFRICA-AGRICULTURE: Another Bad Season

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

HARARE, Nov 7 1995 (IPS) - For the fourth year running, poor rains have played havoc with agricultural production in Southern Africa, and the region is again facing an acute cereal deficit.
(more…)