JULY 2002
The Hunger Project’s Strategy to Enable our Partners in Malawi to Face the Current Food Shortage
The current severe food shortage in Southern Africa is a multi-faceted, regional problem which is effecting several countries, and has reportedly hit Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho the hardest. In Malawi, the situation was created by drought and subsequent severe floods which destroyed most of the crops. As a result, the whole nation faces a food deficit which prompted the government to declare a "national emergency" in February this year. In the beginning of the crisis, the World Food Program and other humanitarian relief organizations did not have enough food to distribute to the people. Our Hunger Project partner populations were saved from starvation because they had stored food in their food banks, built by THP-Malawi in partnership with the population. These food banks held enough to provide for the population’s minimum needs for about two months.
However, due to the severity of the food shortage, most of our partners were not able to ensure their own food security for a longer period of time. But fortunately, the World Food Program now has imported enough maize from Australia, Argentina and the U.S.A. to distribute to the population of Malawi, including our partners who will be able to replenish their respective food banks.
In addition, THP-Malawi, through its African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI) program, has continued to provide "micro-loans" to rural women during this difficult time. The availability of these "micro-loans" has enabled the women to maintain or recommence their farming and income-generating activities in order to provide for their families. Between January and March this year, the AWFFI program of THP-Malawi disbursed almost $17,500 in "micro-loans" to women farmers. The National Coordinator of AWFFI-Malawi reported that, although the situation had been challenging, it is now getting better. She said: "…this was the hardest time for our partners since the country is experiencing its worst food shortage, so that most members were concentrating on looking for food. Now as people are harvesting, we are expecting the situation to normalize, as food prices are going down."
The main objective of The Hunger Project in Malawi is to ensure that our rural partners have access to food all year round. This is achieved through a "food security" strategy which has three main components:
(1) Increasing staple food production and diversification of other food crops,
(2) Creating food banks and food preservation through food processing technique, and
(3) Providing access to affordable credit for farming and income-generating activities.
To increase food production, THP-Malawi has two large community fields – one in each Epicenter – where the community produces diversified crops such as maize (the staple food in Malawi), cassava, potatoes and other vegetables using improved techniques and irrigation. The crops produced on the communal farms are processed and packaged to be made available to families and are stored in food banks in each Epicenter.
This experience has made THP-Malawi even more aware of the need to mobilize the population to produce more food and to assist them in building larger food banks to ensure food availability to our partners year round and to avoid such crises. Under these circumstances, if additional funds are available to THP-Global, THP-Malawi plans to expand food security activities in our existing Epicenters and to increase the number of Epicenters in Malawi. In this way, THP-Malawi could ensure food security for more people. In conclusion, in spite of this unexpected disaster, the food security strategy of The Hunger Project enabled the population of our Epicenters to be better off than the rest of the general population of Malawi, to avoid severe hunger and ultimately be self reliant to end hunger on a sustainable basis.
The Hunger Project’s Director of the Africa Region, Dr. Fitigu Tadesse, and the Senior Program Officer for the African Woman Food Farmer Initiative (AWFFI), Ms. Jennifer Thomson, visited Malawi from May 30th to June 5th and can provide more details as requested.
Map of Malawi (from The Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2002 edition)