While most industries in Zimbabwe are shutting down, the food business continues to thrive. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

Millicent Gananda, 34, and her two children enjoy their food at a roadside restaurant in downtown Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, before they dash into the supermarket next door.

“I can only afford to [buy what is on this] list after almost three months [of saving] because life is hard these days,” Gananda tells IPS as she later emerges laden with groceries to take home.

Gananda, a teacher at a government school, says she can’t afford anything except basic foodstuffs for her family amid a failing economy in this southern African nation.

Gananda is not the only one here solely able to purchase just food these days.

“Feeding my family has become priority number one as times become tougher and tougher here,” Adious Matutu, a married man and father of five from Zimbabwe’s Gweru town in the Midlands Province, 277 kms west of Harare, tells IPS.

Shupikai Chipunza owns an informal grocery shop in Harare. And while may others are being affected by the economic downturn, her business is doing well.

“I take home over 1,300 dollars daily in sales as people buy groceries from my shop here. It is a trend that has gone up this year because people are concentrating on feeding themselves, setting aside other needs that have nothing to do with keeping them alive,” Chipunza tells IPS.

As hundreds of industries shut down across Zimbabwe, there has been an increase in the number of food outlets that are opening.

A 2013 National Social Security Authority Harare Regional Employer Closures and Registrations Report for July 2011 to July 2013 says 711 companies in Harare closed down during this time, rendering 8,336 individuals jobless.

But statistics released this year by the Indigenous Food Processors Association, an independent organisation made up of local Zimbabwean food entrepreneurs, show that 70 food shops, either supermarkets or retail stores, are opening monthly nationwide.

This appears to be an increase from last year. According to statistics released by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) in 2013, 26 food outlets, including both formal and informal restaurants and grocery stores, opened every three months, countrywide.

The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, an organisation which develops and monitors business activities here, admitted earlier this year that industries were in a comatose state — save for the food business.

Clothing supermarket chain, Greatermans, shut down operations on Jun. 30, paving the way for South Africa’s giant food supermarket, Pick ’n Pay. American fast food chain KFC reopened in Zimbabwe this year after seven years of absence. KFC turned its back on this southern African nation at the height of the economic crisis in 2007.

Economists say the current situation is a result of survival.

“Although people are saving so hard the little money they are getting amid the worsening liquidity crunch here, it is towards food that they now channel that hard-earned money,” independent economist Kingston Nyakurukwa tells IPS.

An average urban Zimbabwean family of six earns about 564 dollars monthly, according to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ).

“[It] is giving an advantage to the food business community here and as more and more people direct their little earnings towards merely putting food on their tables, it renders business opportunities to entrepreneurs who are now daily shifting focus to dealing in food items,” adds Nyakurukwa.

A senior government official from the country’s Ministry of Finance told IPS on the condition of anonymity: “Economic hardships are taking toll on ordinary people, resulting in them becoming more willing to part with a few dollars on food in order for them to just live on, resulting in the swift growth of food business here.”

Meanwhile, food entrepreneurs like 37-year-old Agnes Madzore are smiling all the way to the bank.

“My restaurant here is giving me more money than the clothing shops that I operate,” Madzore tells IPS, adding that her restaurant makes 285 dollars a day.

And Chipunza says her venture continues to thrive against all odds.

“With more people opting to focus on feeding themselves ahead of all other priorities here despite our country experiencing serious economic challenges, ventures in food businesses are paying back indeed,” she says.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Syrian mother and child near Ma'arat Al-Numan, rebel-held Syria, in autumn 2013. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
BEIRUT, Jul 19 2014 (IPS)

Gaunt, haggard Syrian children begging and selling gum have become a fixture in streets of the Lebanese capital; having fled the ongoing conflict, they continue to be stalked by its effects.

Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

By the end of January, almost 40,000 Syrian children had been born as refugees, while the total number of minors who had fled abroad quadrupled to over 1.2 million between March 2013 and March 2014.Most who make it across the Syria-Lebanon border live in informal settlements in extremely poor hygienic conditions, which for many means diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition, and – for the most vulnerable – sometimes death.

Lack of proper healthcare, food and clean water has resulted in countless loss of life during the Syrian conflict, now well into its fourth year. These deaths are left out of the daily tallies of ‘war casualties’, even as stunted bodies and emaciated faces peer out of photos from areas under siege.

The case of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp on the outskirts of Damascus momentarily grabbed the international community’s attention earlier this year, when Amnesty International released a report detailing the deaths of nearly 200 people under a government siege. Many other areas have experienced and continue to suffer the same fate, out of the public spotlight.

A Palestinian-Syrian originally from Yarmouk who has escaped abroad told IPS that some of her family are still in Hajar Al-Aswad, an area near Damascus with a population of roughly 600,000 prior to the conflict. She said that those trapped in the area were suffering ‘’as badly if not worse than in Yarmouk’’ and had been subjected to equally brutal starvation tactics. The area has, however, failed to garner similar attention.

The city of Homs, one of the first to rise up against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, was also kept under regime siege for three years until May of this year, when Syrian troops and foreign Hezbollah fighters took control.

With the Syria conflict well into its fourth year, the U.N. Security Council decided for the first time on July 14 to authorize cross-border aid without the Assad government’s approval via four border crossings in neighbouring states. The resolution established a monitoring mechanism for a 180-day period for loading aid convoys in Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.

The first supplies will include water sanitation tablets and hygiene kits, essential to preventing the water-borne diseases responsible for diarrhoea – which, in turn, produces severe states of malnutrition.

Miram Azar, from UNICEF’s Beirut office, told IPS that  ‘’prior to the Syria crisis, malnutrition was not common in Lebanon or Syria, so UNICEF and other actors have had to educate public health providers on the detection, monitoring and treatment’’ even before beginning to deal with the issue itself.

However, it was already on the rise: ‘’malnutrition was a challenge to Syria even before the conflict’’, said a UNICEF report released this year. ‘’The number of stunted children – those too short for their age and whose brain may not properly develop – rose from 23 to 29 per cent between 2009 and 2011.’’

Malnutrition experienced in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life (from pregnancy to two years old) results in lifelong consequences, including greater susceptibility to illness, obesity, reduced cognitive abilities and lower development potential of the nation they live in.

Azar noted that ‘’malnutrition is a concern due to the deteriorating food security faced by refugees before they left Syria’’ as well as ‘’the increase in food prices during winter.’’

The Syrian economy has been crippled by the conflict and crop production has fallen drastically. Violence has destroyed farms, razed fields and displaced farmers.

The price of basic foodstuffs has become prohibitive in many areas. On a visit to rebel-held areas in the northern Idlib province autumn of 2013, residents told IPS that the cost of staples such as rice and bread had risen by more than ten times their cost prior to the conflict, and in other areas inflation was worse.

Jihad Yazigi , an expert on the Syrian economy, argued in a European Council on Foreign Affairs (ECFR) policy brief published earlier this year that the war economy, which ‘’both feeds directly off the violence and incentivises continued fighting’’, was becoming ever more entrenched.

Meanwhile, political prisoners who have been released as a result of amnesties tell stories of severe water and food deprivation within jails. Many were detained on the basis of peaceful activities, including exercising their right to freedom of expression and providing humanitarian aid, on the basis of a counterterrorism law adopted by the government in July 2012.

There are no accurate figures available for Syria’s prison population. However, the monitoring group, Violations Documentation Centre, reports that 40,853 people detained since the start of the uprising in March 2011 remain in jail.

Maher Esber, a former political prisoner who was in one of Syria’s most notorious jails between 2006 and 2011 and is now an activist living in the Lebanese capital, told IPS that it was normal for taps to be turned on for only 10 minutes per day for drinking and hygiene purposes in the detention facilities.

Much of the country’s water supply has also been damaged or destroyed over the past years, with knock-on effects on infectious diseases and malnutrition. A major pumping station in Aleppo was damaged on May 10, leaving roughly half what was previously Syria’s most populated city without running water. Relentless regime barrel bombing has made it impossible to fix the mains, and experts have warned of a potential humanitarian catastrophe for those still inside the city.

The U.N. decision earlier this month was made subsequent to refusal by the Syrian regime to comply with a February resolution demanding rapid, safe, and unhindered access, and the Syrian regime had warned that it considered non-authorised aid deliveries into rebel-held areas as an attack.