Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi – all Southern African countries – are currently facing food crises driven by long spells of EL Nino-driven drought causing an upward trajectory in the countries’ food prices and threatening millions of innocent citizens with hunger.
The leaders of all three countries have declared a national state of disaster, considering their respective but common crises.
In the case of Zimbabwe, which used to be southern Africa’s food basket, its President, Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa, said on Wednesday, 3 April 2024, that the country needed $2 billion (£1.6 billion) to tackle hunger caused by low rainfall which has wiped out about half of the maize crop, causing biting grain shortage, reported the BBC. An estimated 2.7 million Zimbabweans are projected to face hunger as a consequence. “Top on our priority is securing food for all Zimbabweans. No Zimbabwean must succumb to or die from hunger,” Mr Mnangagwa told journalists. Already grappling with inflation driven by high food prices, the drought, which has also had a damning effect on cattle production, has forced Zimbabwe to join the regional scramble to find enough maize on the international market.
This is not the region’s first climate change crisis. In 1992, for instance, a quarter of the national cattle herd in Zimbabwe perished as a result of a drought. There have been droughts in 2016 and 2019, as well, with similar devastating consequences.
Africa’s climate change crisis
Africa, according to the International Rescue Committee, is home to seven of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate disasters. These countries, however, are among the least contributors to the emission of greenhouse gases, mainly Carbon dioxide, that are produced as a result of the burning of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas, as well as deforestation and cement production. They have the lowest average Carbon dioxide (CO2) footprints at about 0.1 tonnes per year, yet they are the most exposed to global warming and climate change disasters such as drought, floods, heatwaves, and tropical cyclones. They include Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The non-African countries that make the list include Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen.
According to the IRC, “Climate change has had a devastating impact on Somalia, worsening challenges of drought and extreme food insecurity”. In March 2023, flash floods “affected 460,000 people in Somalia, displacing tens of thousands”. The country’s political instability, the IRC noted, “has made it difficult to address its climate crisis and protect vulnerable communities”.
For the DRC, the IRC pointed out that “the frequency of torrential rainfall” has “accelerated over the last ten years” For example, it said: “In May 2023, they caused serious flooding and landslides in South Kivu, wiping out entire villages, affecting more than 15,000 people and tragically claiming over 500 lives”. Persistent conflict (over 100 armed groups fight for control in eastern Congo, often targeting civilians), economic challenges, and disease outbreaks (measles, malaria, and Ebola) have weakened the country’s ability to prepare for climate disasters and disrupted humanitarian support while citizens face floods and rising food insecurity, the IRC noted.
Describing Chad as “the world’s most climate-vulnerable country” on the Notre Dame-Global Adaptation Initiative Index, which examines a country’s exposure, sensitivity, and capacity to adapt to the negative effects of climate change, the IRC said flooding in late 2022 affected more than 1 million people in the country while an economic crisis has led to widespread food insecurity. It mentioned that growing conflict and tensions related to the country’s Transitional Military Council have limited progress in building climate resilience.
With South Sudan, the IRC said the country has “high fragility and low climate readiness”, thus, becoming “increasingly vulnerable to climate disasters”. It recommends “better climate resiliency to protect South Sudanese citizens from climate shocks, like the severe floods that affected over 900,000 people in late 2022”. However, it noted that despite the end of the civil war in 2018, local conflicts remain widespread, putting South Sudan in a poor state as far as fighting climate change disasters is concerned.
Concerning the Central African Republic (CAR), the IRC said “severe flooding threatens the safety and health” of the citizens, “particularly those living in camps for internally displaced people, by contributing to the spread of water-borne illnesses like cholera. Other diseases like malaria, meningitis and monkeypox also strain CAR’s weakened health system”.
In West Africa, it singled out Nigeria, referring to the flooding in late 2022 that affected 2.5 million people and caused “extensive damage to the country’s farmland”. It projected that by mid-2023, an estimated 25 million Nigerians were to face “high levels of food insecurity” as a result of climate disasters.
In Eastern Africa, the IRC said drought is affecting more than 24 million Ethiopians and warned that the number was expected to rise as the country entered its sixth consecutive failed rainy season. Numerous internal conflicts as well as the Russia-Ukraine war, it noted, have hampered and worsened the food insecurity crisis in Ethiopia and other East African Countries. For instance, it said after Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a mechanism that allowed Ukraine to resume grain exports to countries like Ethiopia which sources 90% of its wheat from Ukraine and Russia, food prices increased drastically across the region.
Africa’s Global CO2 Emissions Contribution vis-à-vis others’
In 2021, the world produced 37.12 billion tonnes of CO2. Oxfam says the richest 10% of people make more than half of this pollution.
Africa doesn’t produce as much CO2 as other continents. China makes the most with 11.47 billion tonnes, followed by the United States (5 billion tonnes), India (2.7 billion tonnes), Russia (1.75 billion tonnes), and Japan (1.07 billion tonnes). Africa makes only 1.45 billion tonnes, even though it has 17% of the world’s people.
Each person in Africa makes just 1 tonne of CO2 each year. South America makes 2.5 tonnes per person, Asia makes 4.6 tonnes, Europe makes 7.1 tonnes, Oceania makes 10 tonnes, and North America makes 10.3 tonnes. That means an average person in the US or Australia makes as much CO2 in a month as someone in Africa does in a year.
Three countries in Africa make more than 60% of the continent’s CO2: South Africa makes 435.9 million tonnes, Egypt makes 249.6 million tonnes, and Algeria makes 176.2 million tonnes. South Africa mostly uses coal for its CO2. Libya, an oil-producing country, makes the most CO2 per person in Africa.
Making Africa food-sufficient and food-secure
On 14 February 2024, the BBC broadcast a very disturbing report about Nigerians turning to “throw-away” rice (afafata) for survival due to the rising cost of food. These are grains that, in the past, millers either rejected after processing or sold to farmers to feed their fish. Afafata means “battling” in the widely-spoken Hausa language in northern Nigeria, because the locals say the grains are a battle to cook and eat. “A few years ago, people didn’t care about this type of rice, and we usually threw it away along with the rice hulls, but times have changed,” the BBC quoted Isah Hamisu, a rice mill worker in the northern city of Kano, as saying.
The grains are broken, dirty and tough; but cheaper and more affordable to poorer families. They are gaining in price because humans now compete with fish for it. This is hurting fish farmers who now pay more for the less-than-usual quantity of afafata. “Normal rice is 4,000 naira ($2.70) per bowl which is beyond my means, I can only afford afafata which is 2,500 naira ($1.69) now,” Hajiya Rabi Isah, based in Kano state, told the BBC. She added: “Without afafata, feeding my family would be a major issue for me.” One bowl of rice from the market can feed an average family in Kano for a day. A standard 50kg (110lb) bag of rice, which could help feed a household of between eight and 10 for about a month, now costs 77,000 naira ($53; £41). This is an increase of more than 70% since the middle of last year and exceeds the monthly income of a majority of Nigerians. Many more families in the north are now opting to buy afafata.
Market seller Saminu Uba, who works in Kano’s Medile market, told the BBC the afafata side of his business is booming. “Most people can no longer afford normal rice and they come for this which is cheaper even though it tastes less good,” he told the BBC. One of his customers, Hashimu Dahiru, admits people are having to find ways of adapting. “The cost of goods is alarming – in just two months the price of everything has doubled,” he said. “Our wives spend hours removing stones and dirt from the rice before cooking and even then it ends up tasting not nice, but we have to eat to survive.” The situation sparked food protests in Niger state, central Nigeria, where protesters blocked roads and held placards saying that they were being suffocated by the rising prices. A few days later there was a similar demonstration in Kano in the north-west. In the aftermath, Governor Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf admitted there was starvation in his state and said a solution must be found.
Changing Africa’s starvation and food insecurity narrative
For decades, Africa has been broadcast to the world as the face of starvation. This has often been a consequence of wars and bad weather – mostly drought. But the narrative has to change. The continent and her people must no more be the face of starvation on international news channels like the CNN and BBC.
Africa’s agricultural potential
Africa has 65% of all the uncultivated arable land left in the world and has to make use of it to be food sufficient because feeding 9.5 billion people in the world by 2050 will be a tall order due to climate change and the limited amount of arable land in many developed countries. Africa’s food import bill hit $85 billion in 2021, and is expected to surpass $110 billion by 2025, with 283 million people going to be hungry every year.
Food security and starvation-ending interventions
The African Development Bank (AfDB) is trying to help the situation. It has invested over $8 billion in agriculture over the past seven years which has improved food security for 250 million people. When the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted wheat and maize exports, for instance, the bank rapidly approved a $1.5 billion emergency food production facility for African countries. Today, that facility is supporting 20 million farmers in 36 countries to produce 38 million tonnes of food valued at $12 billion. That is 8 million metric tonnes above the 30 million metric tonnes of food Africa was losing from imports from Russia and Ukraine, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina said in a speech in November last year. As a result of that intervention, he said Africa “did not beg. Africa produced more food. And Africa gained respect.”
The bank’s support to Ethiopia helped it achieve self-sufficiency in wheat within four years, turning it into a wheat exporting nation. To replicate global success, the African Development Bank helped organise the Feed Africa summit in January, which attracted 34 heads of state and government. African leaders at that summit committed to driving self-sufficiency and food sovereignty within five years. Some $72 billion was mobilised to help Africa achieve these targets.
However, Dr Adesina believes that Africa must do more than simply produce more food and agricultural commodities. “Take, for example, that Africa which accounts for 65% of the production of cocoa, receives only 2% of the $120 billion global value for chocolates. While African farmers languish in poverty, chocolate processors smile all the way to the bank. One is condemned to penury and the other creates wealth. The same can be said of cotton, tea, coffee, cashew, and other raw commodities that Africa exports at a significant loss in revenues and jobs. Let me be very clear on two issues on this: The export of raw commodities is the door to poverty. The export of value-added products is the highway to wealth”.
For Africa to be food sufficient, Dr Adesina said the continent must turn itself into a global powerhouse in food and agriculture. That is why the Bank and its partners have provided $1.6 billion for the development of Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones to support private sector processing and value addition to commodities in 25 zones across 15 countries. The newly launched $3 billion Alliance for Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones will support the development of these zones in 11 more countries. “Africa must turn the sweat of its farmers into wealth”, he added.
The World Bank’s food security interventions in Africa
The World Bank acknowledges that as the impacts of climate change continue to intensify and global shocks upend business-as-usual, Sub-Saharan Africa is feeling the brunt of what has been coined “the perfect storm” – a food, fuel, and fertiliser crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, scarring effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, soaring inflation, rising debt, and extreme weather.
According to the Bretton Woods institution, while inflation levels urgently need to be tamed and the burden of debt made more sustainable, perhaps no priority is more pressing than addressing food insecurity to safeguard the calorie and nutrition needs of Africa’s one billion people and protect their human development.
It notes that at least one in five Africans goes to bed hungry and an estimated 140 million people in Africa face acute food insecurity, according to the 2022 Global Report on Food Crises 2022 Mid-Year Update. The Horn of Africa, the WB notes, “is suffering from persistent drought and countries that depend on Russia and Ukraine for wheat and sunflower oil imports have seen prices skyrocket out of reach of ordinary people”.
In response to these challenges, the WB says countries in Eastern and Southern Africa are implementing a range of short, medium, and long term actions (as presented below) with World Bank support, to cushion the blow of the current crisis on the poorest households and set African food systems on a more resilient and productive pathway.
Enabling the Poorest Households to Feed their Families
Across the sub-region, social protection programmes have been essential to enable households to cope with high food prices and localised shortages. The poorest households are the most vulnerable since they spend the largest share of their income on food, the WB said.
In Somalia, “the Baxnaano programme came to us at a right moment,” relates Ms. Nishey Mohamed Kheyre, a mother of eight, living in the Bakool region. “Our livelihood was mainly dependent on farming, but we have been impacted in recent years by bad harvests and locust infestation. We have been getting assistance for some time now, and the money I got was used to purchase food, clothing, and pay school fees for my children who are currently attending school in Xuddur. I was even able to buy some chickens for our household and sell the eggs for income.”
Since its launch in 2019, Baxnaano has provided a platform for the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) to play a new and continuing role in social safety net provision to households facing chronic poverty and the aggravating impacts of multiple climate-related shocks. More than 1 million people (about 9% of the population) have received nutrition-linked unconditional cash transfers to meet basic consumption needs.
Baxnaano’s built-in shock-responsive features protected food security and livelihoods of an additional 600,000 people from a major 2020 locust outbreak through temporary scale up of the regular program and delivery of emergency cash transfers (ECTs). By laying the foundations of the first state-led social safety net system in Somalia, Baxnaano has worked to help restore citizens’ trust in state institutions and contribute to the FGS’ state-building efforts. The pandemic also increased the vulnerability of urban households previously left out of social protection programmes.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Solidarity by Economic Transfers Against the Poverty in Kinshasa or STEP-KIN programme stepped up to protect urban households suffering from food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. STEP-KIN set up a cash transfer program from scratch, using a combination of digital tools to overcome a severely data-constrained environment to target and deliver cash transfers to vulnerable households in Kinshasa. The emergency digital cash transfer program identified, registered, and paid more than 270,000 individuals in 100 poor neighbourhoods, becoming the largest cash-based operation in Kinshasa.
Catherine Eswabo, a doughnut seller, was one of the beneficiaries. She wonders how her family would have survived without the programme. “The cash was the only means for my family to stock up on corn flour, rice, and oil during lockdown, leaving the rest to the vagaries of day-to-day coping,” she said. “Now that wheat flour price has doubled, my doughnut business is wrecked, my family desperately needs assistance to cope with rising food prices.” Mrs. Eswabo’s family now only relies on the income of her husband, a motorcycle taxi driver whose business is increasingly disrupted by repetitive fuel crisis. The next phase of STEP-KIN will reach an additional 250,000 beneficiaries.
Seizing agribusiness opportunities
Bruno Mweemba, the managing director of Panuka Farms in Zambia, a small horticulture business, believes that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) like his play an important role in ensuring the region’s food security. Thanks to the World Bank-supported Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project, Panuka Farms was able to modernise its cold storage and switch from open field farming to greenhouse cultivation — allowing Mweemba to reduce food losses and climate-proof his production, increasing food supply in a changing climate. By meeting the demand for high-value vegetables such as English cucumbers, Panuka Farms has been able to compete with imported foods to supply produce to retailers like Shoprite and Pick-n-Pay, allowing Zambians to access fresher produce at a lower price. His farm has also been able to produce new jobs as he now employs 24 staff, most of them recent college graduates who are given the opportunity to manage different aspects of the farm.
The ongoing IDA-financed project has led to growth and job creation in the country’s increasingly dynamic agribusiness sector, through matching grants and productive alliances that allow farmers to pool their efforts and successfully compete with food imports in terms of quantity, quality, and consistency. In addition to providing access to finance, the project helped 232 agribusiness firms with business development services through coaching and mentorship sessions.
In Malawi, the World Bank-financed Agricultural Commercialisation Project (AGCOM) is helping markets work for smallholders who already operate commercially or are in transition to becoming commercial. A few years in, the results are promising – the benefits of investing in smallholder commercial agriculture, and the approach, known as “productive alliances”, is proving to be an effective way for smallholders to get organised and improve their productivity and sales. Part of this approach involves building and strengthening farmer organisations, allowing small-holder farmers in Malawi to seize market opportunities because as a group they are able to get more information, reduce costs, and reap the rewards that come from selling in volume. AGCOM’s productive alliances are also fostering job creation in Malawi. Opportunities for employment are crucial to buffer the impact of the looming food crisis and create opportunities for the 400,000-plus young people joining the workforce in Malawi every year. AGCOM has raised the expectations of smallholder farmers, agribusinesses, and government authorities. It has shown them that commercialised smallholder agriculture can be a source of growth to help Malawi weather the global food crisis. In the medium- and long-term, it can also help overcome poverty driven by the subsistence mono-cropping of maize, writes Francisco Obreque, Senior Agricultural Specialist, reflecting on the project’s impact in a blog published in August.
Seizing market opportunities also requires investing in the infrastructure that allows farmers to bring their produce to market quickly, safely, and affordably. For years, the poor condition of the main road to the Alaotra Mangoro Region in Madagascar stunted agricultural productivity and the region’s food production potential. Now, thanks to the IDA financed Connectivity for Rural Livelihood Improvement Project, a 40km section of the RN44 is complete, resulting in reduced travel time between Marovoay and Vohidiala from eight hours to three. Farmers are thrilled to see an increase in their prices now that they can easily reach Ambatondrazaka, the capital city of the region, where they can set better prices for their products. What used to cost as low as 400 ariary per kilo, can now be sold at more than three times as much.
Completion of the project’s second phase is expected to more than double the agricultural output of select agriculture products such as litchi – a boon for a country suffering from severe malnutrition and food insecurity. Improving connectivity, resilience, and management of key roads to provide reliable and year-long access to the southern part of the country, which is most affected by food insecurity, is an essential step to unlocking a key agricultural region in the northwest.
Climate-proofing agriculture
Climate change and extreme weather are posing severe threats to farmers across Eastern and Southern Africa. These farmers rely on their crops to feed themselves, their families, their communities, and their countries – a fragile food chain that is incredibly vulnerable to changing weather patterns. Protecting these farmers and building their crops’ resilience to climate change is therefore paramount on the food security agenda.
The World Bank has been working with development partners, scientists, and researchers over the years to support farmers in the region to adopt improved technologies and climate-smart agriculture (CSA). For example, in Lesotho, Bokang Petje, the owner and managing director of Happy C&J Village Farm in the village of Mahloenyeng, was able to add a borehole and drip irrigation to his farm as a way of directly watering individual plants rather than casting spray over a large area. The process not only conserves soil nutrients but also minimises or prevents waste of a precious resource.
Along with the shade netting provided by the Smallholder Agriculture Development Project (SADP) II to protect his crops from frost, Petje was also able to invest in the plastic tunnelling necessary to protect his lettuce, cabbage, tomato, and potato crops from hail. With his expanded farm and the ability to grow crops throughout the year despite the increases in hailstorms and chilly weather that have come with climate changes, he is now able to sell his vegetables and fruit in local grocery stores.
In Kenya, the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Project is helping to increase agricultural productivity and build resilience to climate-change risks in smallholder farming and pastoral communities. This is done by scaling up climate-smart agricultural practices, strengthening climate-smart agricultural research and seed systems, and supporting agrometeorological, market, climate, and advisory services.
In the words of Bobojon Yatimov, World Bank Senior Agricultural Specialist for Lesotho: “It is imperative to support farmers who rely on the food they grow for their families and for income, especially given that climate shocks are more frequent than ever before […] Prolonged and severe droughts of 2016 and 2019, and the floods of the 2021 and 2022 are clear manifestations of this changing weather patterns, which is adversely affecting the agriculture sector.”
Climate-resilient food systems are also the focus of a new $2.3 billion regional programme, approved by the World Bank in June 2022, available to Eastern and Southern African countries wishing to tackle the underlying structural challenges of food insecurity and address their vulnerability to unpredictable shocks. The first phase of financing will support Madagascar and Ethiopia, two countries which are facing acute food insecurity and historic droughts.
The first phase will also support the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which will strengthen information and data sharing, and the Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA), which will leverage its existing networks and outreach tools for regional coordination mechanisms. With a total financing package of $788.10 million, the initial phase of the program is expected to benefit 2.3 million people. The World Bank believes several countries in the region, such as Angola, Tanzania and Zambia, have the potential to become agricultural powerhouses on the continent. But this will require transforming the agricultural sector to meet the needs of the people, economy, and environment. The World Bank says it is ramping up its efforts and joining forces with partners across the food systems landscape to help these countries and others prepare and implement this critical transformation.
