The East African Community (EAC) has made substantial progress on its regional integration agenda. Within a short period of time, it has been able to attain a common market status and is currently working towards establishing a monetary union by 2012, according to this article. Given that the region is prone to food shortages and drought, promoting regional integration and cooperation around agriculture has the potential to help the EAC address its and food security challenges. The author argues that NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Plan (CAADP) should be used as a regional integration and food security tool. The EAC Secretariat is working towards developing a regional CAADP compact in 2012, adopting a bottom-up approach, building on the existing national compacts and addressing challenges shared among partner states. Most stakeholders within the region agree that a regional CAADP process is the appropriate framework to stimulate improved coordination of regional agricultural initiatives addressing food security. Stakeholders have called for stronger commitment and action from the regional level that allows farmers, especially smallholders, to move beyond subsistence.
Poverty and health
A new film from the African Biodiversity Network (ABN) and the Gaia Foundation, narrated by actor Jeremy Irons, addresses pervasive myths about agriculture, development and Africa’s ability to feed herself. Africa is under growing pressure to turn to hybrid seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms in an effort to scale up agricultural production. In April 2012, President Obama of the United States launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which will see the combined forces of agribusiness giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill, DuPont and Yara investing US$3 billion into creating new markets in Africa, amidst claims that this will solve hunger and malnutrition. In the process, the enormous wealth and diversity of locally adapted seeds and farmer knowledge is ignored, undermined and eroded by policy makers. ‘Seeds of Freedom’ shows how powerful corporate interests are destroying the biological diversity of the world’s crops. As the global food supply becomes dependent on just a few seed varieties, owned by a handful of corporations, global food insecurity is set to deepen.
The tensions over huge land purchases and leases by foreign companies and governments in south western Ethiopia illustrate the central importance of access to water in the global land rush, according to this article. Hidden behind the current scramble for land is a world-wide struggle for control over water. Those who have been buying up vast stretches of farmland in recent years understand that the access to water they gain, often included for free and without restriction, may well be worth more over the long-term, than the land deals themselves. In recent years, Saudi Arabian companies have been acquiring millions of hectares of lands in developing countries to produce food to ship back home, as their country lacks water needed for agricultural production. Indian companies are doing the same, as their country’s aquifers have become depleted by decades of unsustainable irrigation. All of the land deals in Africa involve large-scale, industrial agriculture operations that will consume massive amounts of water. These water resources are lifelines for local farmers, pastoralists and other rural communities. These mega-irrigation schemes will not only put the livelihoods of millions of rural communities at risk, they will threaten the freshwater sources of entire regions, says GRAIN.
Exposure to household air pollutants released during cooking has been linked to numerous adverse health outcomes among residents of rural areas in low-income countries. This study describes the roles of local vendors, behaviour change, promotional incentives, and integration of cookstoves with household water treatment interventions to motivate adoption of locally-produced, ceramic cookstoves (upesi jiko) in an impoverished, rural African population. The project was conducted in 60 rural Kenyan villages in 2008 and 2009. During an initial, eight-month assessment period in 10 villages, 159 (75%) of 213 upesi jiko sales occurred in five villages where vendors received behaviour change training. The combined strategy was found to effectively motivate the adoption of cookstoves into a large number of households. The mobilisation and training of local vendors as well as appropriate promotion and pricing incentives created opportunities to reinforce health messages and promote the sale and installation of cookstoves. The authors conclude that additional applications of similar strategies will be needed to determine whether the strategy can be exported equitably and whether reductions in fuel use, household air pollution, and the incidence of respiratory diseases will follow.
Health experts have pointed out that African countries with good maternal health statistics are generally those that have long-term political stability, like Botswana, arguing that this shows that stability is a fundamental basis for development. Generally, maternal health is neglected in public health, as most African countries focus on the eradication of poverty and hunger, according to a spokesperson from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ivory Coast. The UNDP spokesperson added that few governments seem to be aware of the close link between maternal health and poverty. It takes strong leadership at the country level to shift priorities and spend more on maternal and child health, as well as more effectively implement existing policies and international agreements, he added. One example is the right to family planning, which has not yet been included in public health care provision in many African countries.
The campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA) was launched at Osindisweni Hospital in Ethekwini District, KwaZulu-Natal Province on 4 May 2012. CARMMA aims to accelerate the implementation of activities to stem maternal and child mortality and meet Africa’s targets for Millennium Development Goals four and five - to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality rate and to reduce by two thirds the child mortality rate between 1990 and 2015. South Africa has a rising maternal mortality rate, yet it is one of the last countries in southern Africa to implement the campaign since it was started in 2009. In many of the countries, the national champions of CARMMA or the national authorities have committed to follow-up activities to intensify the reduction of maternal mortality in their countries, including Malawi, Zambia, Rwanda and Swaziland.
In this article, Global Health Watch provides an analysis of WHO’s ‘Draft implementation plan on maternal infant and young child nutrition’ (shown also in this section of the newsletter) . While it welcomes the evidence-based approach adopted in the draft, it argues that the plan fails to deal with the intersection of trade relations and nutrition, and steers clear of the challenges to be faced in building a regulatory framework to regulate transnational agribusiness and food corporations at global and country level. This is especially problematic at the moment, as new provisions are being inserted into preferential trade agreements to provide transnational corporations with powerful new defences against regulation at both the national and international levels. Global Health Watch argues that that nutrition needs to be understood in the context of food security (and insecurity). Food security in Africa is jeopardised by speculation in food commodities, which was the main contributor to a 50% rise in food prices in 2008, as well as the diversion of land growing food to growing biofuels. Global Health Watch argue that WHO cannot address the issues of trade and the regulation of transnational industry alone but it can take a pro-active stance in working with other competent intergovernmental bodies.
Before his death in April 2012, Malawi's former president Bingu wa Mutharika resisted calls by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to devalue the Malawian kwacha as a way to boost exports, arguing that poor people would be negatively impacted. His decision alienated external funders, who withdrew support. Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda, has moved quickly to restore relations with funders, in part by meeting the IMF's conditions for a support package. On 7 May 2012, she devalued the kwacha by nearly 50% and untied the currency from the dollar. External funders have started responding, with the World Bank reportedly working on a package to help poor Malawians cope with the effects of devaluation and the United Kingdom (UK) agreeing to unlock aid frozen in 2011. The UK's International Department for International Development (DFID) are reported to have pledged to release an initial £30 million (US$47.3 million) tranche of urgent funding, of which £10 million ($15.8 million) will be used to support Malawi's healthcare system, and £20 million will go to towards stabilising the economy. The implications for household poverty of the measures funded are as yet not reported.
In this study, researchers aimed to determine short- and long-term trends in child malnutrition in Eastern and Southern Africa and how these are affected by drought and HIV. An analysis was conducted of data from national surveys, generally from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Results indicated that overall trends in child nutrition are improving as national averages; the improvement is slowed but not stopped by the effects of intermittent droughts. In Southern Africa, the prevalence rates of underweight showed signs of recovery from the 2001–03 crisis. As expected, food production and price indicators were related (although weakly) to changes in malnutrition prevalence; the association was strongest between changes in food production and price indicators and changes in malnutrition prevalence in the following year. Despite severe intermittent droughts and the HIV and AIDS epidemic (now declining but still with very high prevalence rates), underlying trends in child underweight are improving when drought is absent. Preventing effects of drought and HIV could release potential for improvement and, when supported by national nutrition programmes, help to accelerate the rates of improvement, now generally averaging around 0.3% per year, to those needed to meet Millennium Development Goals (0.4 to 0.9% per year).
Malaria is commonly considered a disease of the poor, but there is very little evidence of a possible two-way causality in the association between malaria and poverty. This study aimed to address this gap. In the study, results show that households with a child who tested positive for malaria at the time of the survey had a wealth index that was, on average, 1.9 units lower. If malaria is indeed a cause of poverty, as the findings of this study suggest, then malaria control activities, and particularly the current efforts to eliminate/eradicate malaria, are much more than just a public health policy, but also a poverty alleviation strategy, the authors argue.