Drought affecting millions in Africa's Sahel

Ndjamena -- The Arabic nomads in central Chad always have moved from place to place, following the rains with their camels and cattle. But in that parched stretch of Africa, some nomads have stopped moving, saying the droughts now come too often.

Chad is one of eight countries on the Sahel, a belt of arid land that stretches across Africa below the Sahara Desert. The region has always been prone to drought, but residents and aid workers say this year is the worst they've known.

The situation has prompted the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch a global social media campaign to raise awareness about the region's children, who are now in urgent need of food aid.

One of those children is an 18-month-old boy named Goni, who lies in a nutritional center, his hands bandaged so he doesn't pull out the feeding tube that keeps him alive. His mother, Saidi Mohamed, sits next to him in despair.

"This year, I didn't harvest anything. Even the seeds didn't grow. We couldn't even eat the seeds because everything was lost," says Mohamed.

Like others at the center, Mohamed used to depend on money sent by relatives working in Libya -- but when the revolution took place there last year, her family fled and the help disappeared. Now, she can't afford food at the market because the prices have risen so high.

"I have some hope because my child is feeling better," Mohamed said. "When he arrived, he couldn't even open his eyes. (But) when he recovers fully, I will have no other option but to go back to our village."

Across the Sahel, the crops have failed and hunger and malnutrition loom large. UNICEF says more than 10 million people are in danger of starving to death, and that 1 million children are at risk of malnutrition.

Halima Adoum says she had to watch her son die because he didn't have enough to eat. After locusts and droughts destroyed her crops, she wasn't able to pay for food.

Adoum resorted to feeding grass to her 4-year-old son Ahmed, who then died.

"When my son died, I was in shock. I was just in shock," Adoum said.

She said she has nothing for her remaining four children. Her one thought is of getting by.

"Every day, I am just thinking, 'How am I going to get food?' Again and again, 'How am I going to get food? How am I going to get food?'"

The crisis was set in motion last year with a lack of rains and drought, and it has grown worse because the drought has continued, UNICEF officials say.

With less food being grown, people are starting to sell their personal belongings and livestock so they get by in the coming weeks -- but that doesn't take care of their needs long-term, said UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake, who spoke to CNN on a dry plain in Banda, south of Chad's capital, Ndjamena.

Rising food prices are another problem. And Mali, another country in the Sahel, is coping with thousands of refugees after a military coup there last month.

Lake said it's clear the region is on the threshold of a crisis and that now is the last chance to act.

"If you have an earthquake, or if you have a flood, you don't have much in the way of advance warning -- a little with a flood, none with an earthquake -- so you have to respond as quickly as you can," he said. "Here we know it's coming. Here, there's absolutely no excuse."

UNICEF's campaign, called #SahelNOW, asks users on Facebook, Twitter and other social media to post messages to spread word of the problem and raise funds for affected children.

Read more about the campaign

The fund hopes to raise $120 million to treat and feed the region's children. At this point, UNICEF says it has about $30 million on hand.

In Chad alone, more than 6 million people have been affected by the crisis, with 3.5 million of them younger than 18. An estimated 127,300 children under age 5 are already suffering from severe acute malnutrition, UNICEF says.

The country also has the highest numbers of polio cases in Africa and is dealing with a meningitis outbreak, diseases that could complicate children's needs amid the crisis, the organization says.

Source: CNN

Trees 'boost African crop yields and food security'

Planting trees that improve soil quality can help boost crop yields for African farmers, an assessment shows. 

Fertiliser tree systems (FTS) also help boost food security and play a role in "climate proofing" the region's arable land, the paper adds.

 

Researchers from the World Agroforestry Centre say poor soil fertility is one of the main obstacles to improving food production in Africa. 

The results appear in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.

"In Africa, it is generally agreed that poor soil management - along with poor water management - is most greatly affecting yields," explained co-author Frank Place, head of the centre's Impact Assessment team.

He said that despite chemical fertilisers having been on the market for more than half a century, farmers appeared reluctant or unable to buy them.

"Therefore, there have been a lot of attempts to bring in other types of nutrients from other systems - such as livestock and plants" he told BBC News.

"We have been working quite a lot on what is broadly referred to as 'fertiliser tree systems'."

Although it has been known for centuries that certain plants, such as legumes, "fix" nitrogen in the soil and boost food crop yields, Dr Place said that the centre's researchers had been looking to develop a more active management approach such as FTS.

"Some farms, for example in Zambia, where the farms are larger, it is possible to rest arable land and allow it to lie fallow," he observed.

"But in place such as much of Malawi, where population densities are higher, they cannot afford to fallow their land; so we came up with alternative management systems where they could intercrop the trees with the (maize)."

While the technique is not new, Dr Place said that some of the nitrogen-fixing species used by farmers were probably not the most effective.

For example, farmers in East Africa had been using Cajanus cajan (also known as pigeon pea).

"A lot of the nitrogen was being stored in the trees' seeds; so there was an effort to use other trees that put a greater volume in the soil, such as Gliricidia sepium (one of its common name is mother of cocoa)," he said.

"A really nice thing about G. sepium is that we have been coppicing some of those trees for 20 years and they still continue to grow back vigorously." 

However, he acknowledged that there were a number of challenges that had to be addressed in order to maximise yields.

For example, some systems suggested planting rows of trees between rows of crops with mixed results.

"We realised that there were a few management problems with that sort of system - what tended to happen was that there was too much competition between the crops and the trees," Dr Place explained.

"We developed a new management system where the trees were cut very low to the ground at the time you are planting the crop so then there was no light competition. 

"The trees go into a dormant state when you cut them like this, so the root system is not competing straight away for the nutrients, so the maize is free to become established.

"The trees only really start to come out out of the dormant phase when the maize is already tall."

Another challenge was to provide enough seeds in order to have mass-scale planting. He said that balancing the provision of high-quality seeds with large local engagement was another hurdle that had to be overcome.

But the rewards in improved yields were noticeable, he added.

"Some of the studies have shown that in TFS across Africa as a whole, yields are doubling or more in two-thirds of cases."

Where the systems were not delivering such good results, Dr Place said that scientists were looking to refine current practices and modify them to suit the local conditions.

'Climate proofing'

As well as helping to boost yields, the use of trees in agriculture has other benefits - such as helping to "climate proof" agriculture land.

One example, Dr Place said, was the use of Faidherbia albida (common names include winter thorn and apple-ring acacia) in West African arable landscapes.

"It has a deep penetrating tap root, and it can secure a good water supply even in dry years," he explained.

"Generally speaking, tree roots do go much deeper than crop roots, so it is recycling nutrients and water from deeper reaches. 

"There are also studies showing that these roots act as conduits and bring up water to surface root systems (such as those belonging to crops)."

The editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, Professor Jules Pretty from Essex University in , said the study illustrated that there was a growing movement of agricultural innovations across Africa that were increasing yields and at the same time improving the environment. 

"Trees and shrubs in agricultural systems seem to break some of the rules of agriculture - in this case, farmers are using shrubs to create a diverse rotation pattern rather than year-on-year maize," he told BBC News. 

"The trees fix nitrogen and improve the soil; the leaves can be fed to livestock; the crops then benefit greatly in subsequent years."

Source: BBC

African agriculture as solution for World food crisis

Cabbage farms in Egypt.

Concerns around the earth’s ability to nourish a population of 6 billion people, expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050, are increasingly abundant. According to the UN’s FAO, food production will have to increase by 70% to feed the globe’s larger, more urbanised, and more affluent population, by 2050, necessitating a total average annual net investment in developing world agriculture of US$83 billion.

Much of the new demand for food continues to originate from the developing world’s rising, and increasingly affluent, population. For many emerging markets, rising demand is being met with diminishing local resources – most principally arable land and irrigable water – placing pronounced strain on local governments. In China, which is home to 20% of the world’s population and less than 8% of its arable land, total cropland is expected to decline from 135 million hectares today, to 129 million ha in 2020 (120 million ha is considered the “red line” for Chinese food security). Meanwhile, in large part due to rapid urbanisation and excessive water use by China’s industrial sector, almost half of China’s cities face water shortages.

Attention is increasingly turning to Africa

Naturally, as nations seek external sources of nutrition, focus is narrowing on those regions which still have large untapped agricultural potential. No region (with the exception to an extent of Latin America) epitomises this residual allure more than Sub-Saharan Africa. It is estimated that over 60% of the world’s available and unexploited cropland is in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Cassava farm.

While water scarcity is increasingly prominent in most North African, and some Southern African, nations, for much of West, Central and parts of East Africa, renewable water reserves are plentiful. Central Africa receives around 38% of total precipitation in Africa per year, and holds 48% of Africa’s total internal renewable water reserves. The Gulf of Guinea region is similarly well-endowed, with 15% of Africa’s total annual precipitation and 24% of the continent’s internal renewable water resources. The Congo River Basin alone holds 23% of Africa’s irrigation potential, while the Nile River Basin holds a further 19%.

Investment is key to unlocking Africa’s potential

The majority of the large investments concluded in recent years have been structured on a government-to-government basis. Unsurprisingly, Gulf States have been prominent, though several Asian nations, most prominently China and South Korea, continue to play pivotal roles.

Beyond government transactions, the potential value inherent in untapped farmland within a climate of elevated global demand and volatile prices has inspired a surge of private and institutional investor interest, much of which is focusing on primary agriculture as opposed to agri-business and other agricultural support industries. For instance, London-listed Agriterra owns a variety of African agricultural assets, including 14,000 ha of land for ranching, as well as a maize processing facility in Mozambique. Private Indian investors, often backed by government loans, have purchased land in several African countries – principally Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal, and Mozambique. Indian horticultural firm Karuturi Global has, for instance, emerged as the world’s largest exporter of fresh cut roses on the spine of its investments in Kenya and Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the firm has since branched out into agriculture, leasing 100,000 ha of land (Karuturi claims it has access to 300,000 ha) in the Gambella Province to produce crops primarily for local demand.

Rice farming

Meanwhile, alternative investment firms, such as Emergent Asset Management through its African AgriLand Fund, have in turn attracted private investors to Africa’s agricultural sector. Private equity interest has also spiked considerably since 2008.

The reasons for Africa’s underperformance are complex, and varied. Yet, certain elementary causal dimensions are clear. For one, African governments have persistently underinvested in the sector. On average, African countries allocate 4% of their budgetary expenditures to agriculture, compared to 14% in Asia. Spending on agricultural research and development has also been consistently minimal, even declining between 1991 and 2000 in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then, Africa’s largely small-scale farmers rely disproportionately on rain-fed agriculture, in the absence of sufficient irrigation systems. Indicatively, only around 6.5% of African farmland is irrigated, compared to 40% in Asia. Irrigation has the ability to raise agricultural productivity by more than 50%.

In addition to insufficient use of irrigation systems, which places Africa’s smallholder farmers in a constant state of insecurity given the unreliability of rain patterns, access to and use of fertilisers remains low. According to World Bank data, Sub-Saharan Africa uses just 11.6 kg of fertiliser per hectare of arable land, compared to a world average of 119 kg/ha, and a South Asian average of 148 kg/ha of arable land.

Meanwhile, given inadequate storage and transport facilities in Africa, post-harvest waste is a perennial concern. It is estimated that post-harvest grain losses in Sub-Saharan Africa are equal to $4 billion per year – approximately 15% of total output.

Finally, and related to both insufficient irrigation and fertiliser usage, smallholder farmers in Africa are generally locked out of the formal economy, unable to raise finance for investing in the means to secure increased output.

Policies are increasingly supporting Africa’s own Green Revolution

Ndama-breed cattle.

Fortunately, new levels of investment in African agriculture are increasingly being supported by enhanced policy frameworks. Under the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (NEPAD) CAADP, 22 African countries have committed to raise the budget share for agriculture to 10%. CAADP aims to see agricultural productivity in Africa increase by 6%. Meanwhile, critical research support is being lent to small-scale farmers by organisations such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). And innovative financing mechanisms between donor institutions and commercial banks are increasing access to financing for African farmers. For instance, in Kenya, Equity Bank is administering a $47.6 million credit line from AGRA and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for small-scale Kenyan farmers.

These shifts are inspired in part by the tremendous success of so-called green revolutions in other emerging markets – principally Mexico, Brazil, China and India. In Africa, as in some of these markets, investment in agriculture, bolstered by adequate policy support, has the ability to substantially raise growth, and create new employment opportunities.

Source: How We Made In Africa. This article is a shortened and edited version of Freemantle’s original report, titled Africa’s dormant resources potential.

Small Scale Farmers in 12 African Countries Warn their Governments over GMO Seed Companies

Dar-es-Salaam - A GROUPING of small scale farmers in 12 African countries has asked governments to be wary of agribusiness giants who want to bring in Genetically Modified Crops under the disguise of support to small holder farmers.

The grouping, under Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) said in Dar es Salaam on Monday that there was threat that genetically modified (GMO) crops pose for indigenous plant species, organic harvests, small farmers, and the health and welfare of everyone.

ESAFF Regional Chairperson Elizabeth Mpofu said it was important to educate everyone about genetically modified crops and, more importantly, how to fight big billion dollar companies like Monsanto that are hovering like hawks ready to swoop in for the kill.

She warned about the ruthless practices of corporations which acquire patents, sometimes illegitimately, to crop genes and end up controlling the farmers who grow them.

“Our seed has stood the test of time and can be used to produce bumper harvest,” she said.

She said there should be something to relieve the economy of farmers towards escalating seed prices.

ESAFF also said small scale farmers should push for the governments in Africa to allocate more money into the agriculture sector by honouring the 10 per cent budget allocation to agriculture as of their Maputo 2003 declaration.

They said that since small scale farmers are the biggest producers in member countries, they should be included in decision making processes at policy level on land rights, access to inputs, farm equipments since they feed nations.

In Tanzania, the sector experienced a 35.5 per cent increase in funding from 666.9bn/- the previous fiscal year to 903.8bn/- in the current 2010/2011 national budget.

The ESAFF triennial general summit starts in Morogoro today with Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Seychelles, Madagascar, South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi while Mozambique has applied for membership.

The objective is to bring farmers together to share about the challenges of new agriculture caused by internal and external factors.

The ESAFF chair said some of these include the food price increase, climate change, land grabbing, market access and also the growing concentration of agriculture input supply to few global agrochemical companies.

“There is a trend that shows that Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont are using these initiatives to colonize Africa from seeds to super marketing. This will mean that small scale farmers will lose their right to seeds and the whole productive chain,” she said.

ESAFF Board member from Tanzania, Mr Elias Kawea, argued that it is also known that, these agrochemical companies are promoting non conventional seeds (GMOs) and imposing them through various programmes made as rendering solutions to the African hunger situations.

Their proposition to African governments is that all these initiatives must include the decisions of the real practitioners of production of small scale farmers.

Source: Daily News Tanzania

Looking to Africa for Ideas About How to Fight Hunger

11 million hungry from East Africa's drought, worst in 60 years

NAIROBI, Kenya — East Africa's worst drought in 60 years is putting 11 million lives at risk, many of them in war-torn Somalia, where thousands of hungry families are making the dangerous trek across parched, violent territory to the promise of safety and food in Kenya.

Aid agencies warn the drought is regional — affecting Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia — and the hunger that now stalks the land may become famine.

Somali refugees line up on July 6, 2011. Photo: Roberto Schmidt

Most of the Somali refugees arrive at Dadaab, a sprawling complex of overcrowded camps in northeastern Kenya built in 1991 for 90,000 people. Today it is home to more than four times that number. It is the world’s largest refugee camp and one of the fastest growing human settlements on the planet.

But it is not large enough for the new refugees, who are currently arriving at a rate as high as 1,000 per day.

Bowing to international pressure, Kenya’s government has agreed to open a new refugee camp to house some of those thousands of hungry, desperate and bedraggled victims of Somalia’s decades-long war who cross into Kenya. The exodus has accelerated because of the drought that is pushing their already marginal existence to the edge of oblivion.

A few miles away from Dadaab’s dusty squalor is Ifo-II, a new $20 million facility for refugees built by the U.N. in 2010. But a year later the gleaming new camp remains empty. The lines of brick houses with tin roofs, deep wells for fresh water, latrines and health facilities are all empty and unused.

Kenya blocked opening the camp, complaining that the new facility would encourage more refugees whose arrival could provide cover for Somalia’s Islamist militants who have threatened Kenya in the past, such as the Al Shabaab insurgents. Kenya has suffered several terrorist bombings. 

“We have security concerns that Al Shabaab could be coming into our country under the guise of refugees,” said Kenya’s security minister George Saitoti earlier this week.

But on Thursday Prime Minister Raila Odinga caved into the pressure from aid agencies and the U.N. to open Ifo-II. “Although we consider our own security, we cannot turn away refugees,” he said.

The new camp will help to decongest Dadaab, but it amounts to little more than a sticking a bandaid on a gaping wound as refugees continue to flood across the border joining communities that are themselves suffering from drought-created food shortages.

Two consecutive poor rainy seasons has resulted in “one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones,” according to the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet). The drought has compounded the problems created by more than 20 years of war in Somalia.

“More than 11 million people need urgent assistance to stay alive, as they face their worst drought in decades,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. U.N. agencies have asked for $1.6 billion dollars to pay for essential life-saving programs in the region, but have only received half that amount,” Ban said. “Our priority is to stop the suffering now.”

Civilians fleeing conflict and drought have made long, often deadly, walks southwards from Somalia in search of food and safety.

“Women and children have made the most incredible journeys, walking for weeks through the desert and braving hunger and attacks by armed robbers and wild animals, to get to the camps in Kenya,” said Joost van de Lest, head of Oxfam in Kenya.

“The numbers arriving are overwhelming and basic services are insufficient,” warned Nick Guttman, head of the humanitarian division at charity Christian Aid.

“Most people have been walking for weeks on end and are in a very poor state of health. Many only make the very difficult and arduous journey to Dadaab when their last animals have died and they have no other choice,” Guttman said after visiting the area this week.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, called the conflict and drought “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.”

In Somalia itself the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says malnutrition levels are currently the highest in the world.

“The population is no longer able to cope with harsh climate conditions, such as the current drought, while at the same time struggling to survive armed conflict and other violence,” said Andrea Heath, ICRC economic security coordinator.

The combination of conflict forcing people from their homes while drought kills off livestock and dries up the land has caused suffering for thousands. To make matters worse, Al Shabaab, Somalia's ruthless Al Qaeda-linked rebel group, has restricted Western humanitarian access in recent years and food prices have shot up.

In Somalia the cost of sorghum, a staple grain, has risen by 240 percent over the last year.

So dire is the situation that Al Shabaab said it will lift restrictions imposed on humanitarian activities in areas it controls, although aid agencies are wary of returning. The UN’s World Food Programme is considering a return to Al Shabaab-controlled territory after an 18-month absence.

“WFP withdrew from areas under Al Shabaab control … because of threats to the lives of our staff and the imposition of unacceptable operating conditions, including the imposition of informal taxes, and a demand that no female staff work for us there,” the agency said in a statement.

WFP added that it would “explore every possibility to return” with the necessary security guarantees.

This week the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, airlifted 5 tons of food and medicine into the Al Shabaab-controlled town of Baidoa. “We are ready to work anywhere in Somalia," said UNICEF Somalia head Rozanne Chorlton, "provided we get unhindered access to reach the most vulnerable children in need.”

Source: Globalpost