Hunger makes the international news during times of famine, yet chronic food shortages are a feature of everyday life for millions of people in Africa and Asia. What can be done to change this and what role can journalists play? This paper looks at the issues around food security and factors involved in making it worse, such as ill-advised and inadequate policy decisions, conflict and HIV/AIDS. Suggestions are given on ways in which food security can be improved. The article finishes by discussing the role the media could play in highlighting the food security issue by spotting trends and alerting both farmers and governments to potential problems. It also suggests questions journalists can ask with regard to the related issues.
Poverty and health
Ensuring a food secure future: Ingredients for change
Panos Media Toolkit on Communicating Research (3), 2007
Kenya: Flood-related diseases, HIV/AIDS reverse rainfall gains
Integrated Regional Information Networks, 26 March 2007
Adequate rainfall in the last three months of 2006 improved food security in the parts of Kenya affected by the severe drought that hit the Horn of Africa last year, a famine warning agency reported. However, in some areas, outbreaks of diseases related to floods, as well as high HIV/AIDS prevalence, reversed the gains of a good harvest and pasture regeneration.
Does living in an urban environment confer advantages for childhood nutritional status? Analysis of disparities in nutritional status by wealth and residence in Angola, Central African Republic and Senegal
Kennedy G, Nantel G, Brouwer ID, Kok FJ: Public Health and Nutrition 9(2):187-93, April 2006
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between childhood undernutrition and poverty in urban and rural areas.
Toward Food and Nutrition Security in Africa
International Food Policy Research Institute, January 2007
Several major initiatives in the past few years have brought renewed attention and commitment to economic development and food and nutrition security in Africa. The recent economic recovery and the new commitment to change among African leaders and development partners indicate for the first time after decades that Africa is poised to achieve real progress toward food and nutrition security. Sustaining and accelerating growth to reach the poverty reduction and nutrition Millennium Development Goals will require clear strategies to guide future policy and investment decisions. Furthermore, these goals seek to only halve the number of poor and malnourished in the next 10 years, something a number of African countries will fail to do. Progress toward food and nutrition security in Africa, therefore, calls for more than growth and requires a greater focus on human welfare improvement supported by adequate investments in health and nutrition safety nets to protect vulnerable segments of the population.
Madagascar: Children go hungry after floods, drought and Cyclone Bondo
Integrated Regional Information Network, 27 December 2006
Madagascar has called for international aid to help stem a nutritional emergency that has left thousands of children malnourished in the vulnerable south. "Madagascar has sent a message, through the president [recently re-elected Marc Ravalomanana], and called on the international community to help us," Anbinintsoa Raveloharison, Director of the National Nutrition Office (ONN) of the Ministry of Health and Family Planning, told IRIN.
Whistling in the dark: Why the World Bank's Latest Poverty projections are meaningless
Woodward D: Jubilee Research, January 2007
Last month saw the publication of the World Bank’s latest annual Global Economic Prospects report, setting out the Bank’s vision of the global economy until 2030, including its latest projections for poverty. The breathless excitement with which the Bank presents this flight of fancy is quite extraordinary. This document provides an assessment of the latest much-hyped poverty projections from the World Bank.
Community and faith-based groups lend a hand
id21 Insights 64, November 2006
Several households falling into poverty as a result of HIV/AIDS desperately need support systems. African communities have modified existing safety net mechanisms and pioneered new responses such as home based care programmes, support groups and orphans and vulnerable children initiatives. Safety nets protect people from the worst effects of poverty. They prevent poor households from making hasty decisions to sell productive assets and increase their chances of escaping destitution. But how long can self-resourced initiatives continue to function?
Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development
World Bank, 2006
Two developments have led to this report. The first is the growing international awareness that many MDGs will not be reached unless malnutrition is tackled, and that this continued failure of the development community to tackle malnutrition may derail other international efforts in health and in poverty reduction. The second development is the now unequivocal evidence that there are workable solutions to the malnutrition problem and that they are excellent economic investments. The May 2004 Copenhagen Consensus of eminent economists (including several Nobel laureates) concluded that the returns of investing in micronutrient programs are second only to the returns of fighting HIV/AIDS among a lengthy list of ways to meet the world’s development challenges.
Mental Health and Poverty in Africa
European Foundation Centre, 20 November 2006
World Health Organisation (WHO) together with other key partners have joined forces to develop a new Project "Mental Health and Poverty Project: Improving Mental Health, Reducing Poverty (MHaPP)". The project will undertake an analysis of existing mental health policies in poor countries, provide interventions to assist in the development and implementation of mental health policies in those countries, and evaluate the policy implementation in order to provide new knowledge regarding comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to breaking the negative cycle of poverty and mental ill-health. The project will be conducted in four African countries: Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.
The Millennium Villages Project: A new approach to ending rural poverty in Africa?
Cabral L, Farrington J, Ludi L: Overseas Development Institute
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an initiative of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is an attempt at an integrated and bottom-up approach to getting African villages out of the poverty trap. It involves massive injections of capital targeted at, presently, a handful of villages, combining agricultural support with health, infrastructure and education interventions. Taking a critical stance, this paper finds that although these aims are admirable, significant questions remain with regard to scalability and long-term sustainability of the MVP.