The aim of this study was to examine growth indicators and dietary intake patterns of orphans and vulnerable children aged 4-18 years residing in state-run residential care facilities in Durban, South Africa. Thirty-three girls and 110 boys, aged 5-18 years, in three different children’s homes participated in the study. The results showed that stunting and overweight were prevalent in this group: 4.7% of the boys aged 4-8 years and 3.3% of the boys aged 14-18 years were severely stunted, while 13.3% of the girls aged 9-13 years and 20% of the girls aged 14-18 years were stunted. A small number were wasted. At the same time, 33.3% of the girls aged 4-8 years and 33.4% of the girls aged 9-13 years were at risk of being overweight, while 26.7% of the girls aged 14-18 years were overweight. One hundred per cent or more of the dietary reference intakes for energy, protein, carbohydrate and most of the micronutrients were met, except for calcium and iodine. A low intake of vitamin C among older boys and girls was reported. None of the groups met the recommended fibre intake. The authors call for the development and implementation of a comprehensive nutrition education programme for both child care workers and children.
Poverty and health
Wealthy states are currently purchasing millions of hectares of land in poor states throughout Africa. This is a problem for many reasons, including increasing rural poverty and driving millions of people off land that they have been farming for generations. These land purchases also have environmental effects and are resulting in food shortages and food insecurity across Africa. In this paper, the author discusses this controversial practice and concludes that these land purchases should be considered land grabs. He focuses on the environmental effects that such land grabs have and also discusses the social effects of these land grabs on the communities in which they are taking place. The author concludes that African states must immediately recognise that these deals have environmental repercussions that harm not only the natural resources, but their citizens as well; and should thus put measures in place to curb the incidences and conclusion of these deals. African governments should instead sell such land to African entities, or at the very least, entities that will be required to keep a portion of all grown food in the host state to feed the populace. They must also reform land tenure and land registration laws to ensure that their citizens are not forced off land that they have farmed for generations. Only when African states control their land can they ensure that their citizens do not go hungry.
At the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty convened in early April 2013 in Washington, DC, the World Bank Group issued this statement. In the light of land grabs by multinationals that displace smallholder farmers, the Group argues that modern, efficient and transparent policies on land rights are vital to reducing poverty and promoting growth, agriculture production, better nutrition and sustainable development. It supports and endorses the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (the VGs). These guidelines are a major international instrument to inform specific policy reforms, and inform Bank procedures and guidance to clients. The World Bank Group is already working with countries to implement the VGs, with a special focus on Africa. With its partners, it has also developed the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) as a diagnostic tool to assess the status of land governance at the country level. LGAF assessments have been carried out - or are underway - in 18 countries, 10 of them in Africa.
In this paper, the authors call for a post-2015 framework to support a vision of the world where poor women and men have dignity and are able to flourish through participating in enabling societies and equitable economies that operate within safe ecological boundaries nationally and globally. The framework will: prioritise global issues that support and facilitate transformational change; keep issues that matter most to people in poverty on the international agenda; secure national action that drives progress on the ground; and enable better accountability, data collection, and monitoring and evaluation. CAFOD has identified three areas for action: empowering governance, which enables people to participate in the decision-making which affects their lives; the need for poor women and men to be able to participate in equitable economies and get a fair return for their contribution; and, resilient livelihoods, so that people’s dignity and flourishing are not undermined by environmental shocks and stresses, and development pathways are within ecological limits. These have the potential to transform the lives of people in poverty through addressing the underlying causes of poverty that prevent people from achieving their own aspirations.
To achieve maximum impact on food and nutrition security, knowledge and research policy should focus on local agriculture and food sectors - this means including small-scale farmers in regional food chains as well as making investments in the food system work for the rural poor by taking into account local environmental and cultural values. This article focuses on what a knowledge agenda on food and nutrition security should look like and what actors should be involved. The author argues that one of the main causes of current economic growth without food security is that small-scale farmers are not included in the formal food system and do not benefit from investments in agriculture and food, especially in sub-Saharan African. They also lack access to knowledge to improve their situation. To help create resilient and inclusive food markets, the author recommends strengthening cooperatives and producer organisations, developing comprehensive business models, designing a framework for public-private partnerships that include small-scale farmers and takes into account local cultural and environmental values, taking away the constraints to access knowledge by farmers, and pursuing coherent policies.
In 2009, researchers in Ghana commenced a study to explored the social and relativist dimension of poverty in five communities in the South of Ghana with differing socio-economic characteristics. This research was meant to inform the development and implementation of policies and programmes to identify and target the poor for premium exemptions under Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). They employed participatory wealth ranking (PWR) as a qualitative tool for the exploration of community concepts, identification and ranking of households into socio-economic groups. Key informants within the community ranked households into wealth categories after discussing in detail concepts and indicators of poverty. Results showed that community-defined indicators of poverty covered themes related to type of employment, educational attainment of children, food availability, physical appearance, housing conditions, asset ownership, health seeking behaviour, social exclusion and marginalisation. In conclusion, the in-depth nature of the PWR process precludes it from being used in a large national-scale programme such as the NHIS. However, the authors argue that it can provide valuable qualitative input to inform policy and programmes exempting health payments for poor people.
To feed the world’s growing population in a sustainable and inclusive way with good quality food is one of the main challenges facing the world in the 21st Century. The author of this article argues that the solution lies partly at the local level: the livelihoods, and the cultural, socioeconomic and environmental circumstances in which food is produced, processed and distributed. This means that the debate around food security should move to the local level and how small-scale farmers can be part of (formal) food markets, mainly regionally, in a sustainable way. Building resilient and inclusive local food markets also requires policies that take the macro-level players into account, that link the local to the global. More comprehensive knowledge and research into food security is needed, and the role of civil society and local governments should also be studied. This implies participation and a bottom-up approach. Currently, investments in food security are mainly channelled through national policies and centralised negotiations; however, these decisions should be made within a participatory local democracy.
Interventions for school age children can supplement efforts to reduce levels of stunting in the preschool years. In this study, researchers aimed to assess the nutrition status and associated risk factors of children in selected public primary schools in Dagoretti Division, Nairobi. They randomly selected 208 students aged 4-11years of both gender from four public primary schools in Dagoretti Division. Data was collected from school registers and directly questioning the students, parents /guardians. Among the children surveyed, 24.5% were stunted, 14.9% underweight and 9.7% were wasted. There were more boys than girls who were stunted. Breakfast contributed 10.2% of the daily energy intake. Few children consumed foods from more than four food groups. Incidence of diarrhoea, colds/coughs increased the risk of stunting and underweight. Overall, the most important predictors of malnutrition were consumption of food that is inadequate in required calories and from less than four varieties of food groups.
This report covers a period in which PLAAS sought to clarify and consolidate its vision, and elaborate an agenda for research, policymaking, teaching and training that emphasises the centrality of the dynamics of chronic poverty and structural inequality in South Africa. The particular emphasis is on understanding how the workings of agro-food systems can either perpetuate structural poverty and marginalisation — or alleviate it. Within this broad field of investigation, PLAAS’s work focuses on the dynamics of marginalised livelihoods in agro-food systems; particularly livelihoods that are vulnerable, structurally excluded or adversely incorporated, such as those of farm workers, small and subsistence farmers, artisanal fishers and fishing communities, and the informally self-employed, in urban and in rural contexts.
This paper aims to describe ethnic differences in alcohol and other drug (AOD) use and AOD-related sexual risks for HIV among vulnerable women from Cape Town, South Africa. Researchers collected data on 720 AOD-using women (324 Black African; 396 Coloured [mixed race]) recruited from poor communities in Cape Town and compared them for differences in AOD use and AOD-related sexual risk behaviour. They found differences in patterns of AOD use, with self-reported drug problems, heavy episodic drinking and methamphetamine use being most prevalent among Coloured women and cannabis use being most likely among Black African women. However, more than half of Black African women reported drug-related problems and more than a third tested positive for recent methamphetamine use. More than a third of the Black African women reported being AOD-impaired and having unprotected sex during their last sexual encounter. Coloured women had four-fold greater odds of reporting that their last sexual episode was AOD-impaired and unprotected. These findings support the need to develop and test tailor-made AOD risk reduction interventions for women from both ethnic groups.