Nearly three million people in Niger will be exposed to an acute food crisis in 2023, especially during the rainy season, warned the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations Organization (OCHA). Globally, about 40 million people swell the number of Africans who could die of hunger.
ACurrently, “approximately two million people suffer from acute food insecurity (between November and December) in Niger”, lamented OCHA in its latest report.
The organization also noted that although there was an adequate agricultural and pastoral season in 2022, analyzes show that 2.9 million people could experience acute food insecurity between June and August 2023.
“Although these figures are lower than last year’s numbers, they are higher than in years considered ‘normal’, such as 2020/2021”, explained the organization.
This food crisis is hitting children from 0 to 5 years of age very hard. According to OCHA, “nearly 300,000 children under the age of 5 were treated for acute and severe malnutrition”.
The organization declared that in 2022 the situation is also “worrying” due to “the persistence of the price crisis, forced displacement and insecurity”.
The combination of these factors in a rainy season (which was early and longer than normal) is causing families to resort to negative strategies to adapt to the emergency that affect their livelihoods, such as debt, selling their land or its productive assets, the UN agency said, warning that “the terrible impacts [desta situação] will be felt in 2023”.
The United Nations institution pointed out that the global rate of acute malnutrition is 12.2% in 2022 (compared to 12.5% in 2021), with 2.4% suffering from severe acute malnutrition and 9.8% from moderate acute malnutrition.
Nearly 300,000 children under the age of 5 suffering from severe acute malnutrition were hospitalized between January and September last year for treatment, with 12% experiencing medical complications.
“In the same period, 275,000 children aged between 6 and 23 months were treated for moderate acute malnutrition with the support of the World Food Program (WFP)”, indicated the agency, which praised this support to prevent “a serious crisis in 2022”.
According to OCHA, the worrying outlook for next year could have been more dire without a swift response to the country’s unprecedented food crisis in 2022.
A crisis caused by a series of factors such as the poor agricultural and pastoral season of 2021/2022, rising food, transport and fertilizer prices, civil insecurity and forced displacement.
According to the indicators of the harmonized framework of March 2022, more than 4.4 million people were in a situation of acute and severe food insecurity in the rainy season from June to August 2022 in the country.
“This is a record number for Niger and an increase of over 90 percent compared to last year. For the West African region, this figure has risen to over 38 million people over the same period, a 40 percent increase from 2021,” the organization said.
HUNGER COULD KILL 123 MILLION AFRICAN
O head of division at the African Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Luc Eyraud, said last October 15 that, since 2019, about 40 million people have increased the number of Africans who may die of hunger, for a total of 123 million. Does Angola (still) belong to Africa?
“Food insecurity is very worrying, the number of people in severe food insecurity has risen to 123 million; there are many concepts about malnutrition, extreme food insecurity, but what this means is that their lives are at risk, there are families dying because they don’t have enough food, and the number has increased massively in the last three years, one in three of these people have entered in this situation since 2019”, said Luc Eyraud.
In an interview with Lusa as part of the release of the report on the economic prospects for the sub-Saharan African region, the director of the division responsible for producing the document said that there are many reasons for the degradation of food conditions in most countries in Africa, but highlighted disruptions in the supply chain and price increases, in addition to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the exchange rate evolution of African currencies.
“As prices are in dollars, inflation is felt more in these countries, and climate change has created the worst drought in the last 40 years in the Horn of Africa, so putting all these factors together, we are left with a huge concern”, said the responsible, speaking via videoconference from Washington, where the Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank take place.
Asked about what African countries can do to counteract the situation, Luc Eyraud said that, in the short term, capital transfers to families are fundamental, but he stressed that aid cannot be permanent.
“What we advise in the short term is a well-established system of social transfers, as in Portugal, but in Africa it is very difficult to do this, not only because of the lack of infrastructure, but also because of the weight of the informal sector in the economy, which which ends up making everyone have subsidies and benefit from tax cuts on energy and food”, he explained.
“We have to recognize that it is legitimate to use these mechanisms in an emergency situation, but given the vulnerabilities of public finances, this aid cannot be permanent, and that is the biggest challenge: helping, yes, but recognizing that aid is very expensive and they are not directed specifically at those who need them most”, he pointed out.
In the medium term, he added, Africa needs to “increase food production, but betting on measures and techniques that are resilient to climate change, for example using new types of seeds”.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, at the beginning of 2020, the IMF has already channeled around 50 billion dollars (51.12 billion euros) to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, including 23 billion dollars ( 23.51 billion euros) in Special Drawing Rights, and has financial assistance programs in 22 of the 45 countries in the region.
The IMF launched the funding window against shocks, the Resilience and Sustainability Fund, which will increase the capital available to countries in need, calculated on the basis of a 50% increase on the amount they can borrow from the IMF, which is currently 150% of the shareholding in the institution.
“It’s a decent amount of money that can provide significant help,” he said, noting that the amount depends on the country.
For now, this new fund is already endowed with 20 billion dollars (820.4 billion euros), and has already guaranteed commitments worth 37 billion dollars (37.8 billion euros), close to the objective of 45 billion dollars (46 billion euros) defined when it was announced.
IMF AND THE KINGDOM (NABAB) OF JOÃO LOURENÇO
NAt the beginning of this year, the IMF considered that the diversification of Angola’s economy, still very dependent on oil revenues, is the main priority and is crucial to guarantee sustainable and inclusive economic growth. It is said that this recipe has been in existence for 47 years, as many as the MPLA has been in the Government…
“Implementing political actions to foster economic diversification is imperative to achieving sustainable and inclusive growth in Angola”, reads an analysis of the country, carried out as background information within the scope of the review of the financial adjustment program that ended at the end of December from 2021.
“Angola’s economy is overly dependent on the oil sector, leaving the economy vulnerable to fluctuations in global oil prices; this encompasses the symptoms of ‘Dutch disease’ [‘dutch disease’, no original em inglês], which can erode competitiveness and delay the development of other sectors”, reads the analysis. It’s not exactly the discovery of gunpowder, but it’s close.
For this reason, he adds, “the development of non-oil sectors is even more critical to achieving sustainable growth, taking into account the uncertainties regarding the long-term prospects for local oil production and global trends towards the neutrality of carbon emissions. carbon”.
The MPLA has done well, having been at the head of a rich country for 47 years, unable to generate wealth and only a few rich people (from the party) and, at this point, more than 20 million poor people. It’s work!
“The Angolan authorities are moving in the right direction, despite some efforts having to be intensified and accelerated”, reads the note made by the IMF at the time, which exemplifies the privatization program to defend more speed in the implementation of reforms.
In fact, by calling the fox (the IMF) into the henhouse, the MPLA showed that this is the recipe for a party whose strategy is to work for the few who have millions, forgetting the millions who have little or… nothing.
“PRODESI is working in the right direction and tackling some of the constraints identified in this analysis, but implementation efforts should be strengthened, and the policy response should adopt a holistic approach to building conditions to improve access to credit given by the private sector”, says the IMF, referring to the difficulty of obtaining bank credit by small and medium-sized companies, especially or almost exclusively those owned by Angolans.
Despite the praise for the government’s efforts to comply with the program and the reforms agreed under the agreement that allowed the disbursement of US$4.5 billion over the last three years, the IMF points out that there is still much work to be done.
In fact, the MPLA has not yet realized (and the IMF will not teach it) that it is on a backwards conveyor belt. So he just walks on the mat, saying he’s making progress. However, it is always in the same place. And when someone proves that this is what is happening (Folha 8 never tires of proving it), the government’s solution is to replace ministers, whichever one is the worst.
“The authorities continue to strengthen macroeconomic stability, by capitalizing on the objectives achieved under the financing program, but further improvements need to be achieved in productivity, in particular by improving Angola’s infrastructure and human capital”, say the analysts, giving specific examples of what authorities should do.
“Continuing to improve governance and the business environment, especially by opening access to credit to small and medium-sized enterprises and individual entrepreneurs, reducing the administrative burden on investment, reducing price controls on goods and services, will be crucial to establish an environment in which innovation and entrepreneurship can help boost growth in other sectors”, among which the IMF points to agriculture and telecommunications.
In September 2019, the Executive (as has been the case for 47 years) said it was working – whatever that may be – with the private sector to increase production so that the country would have a strategic reserve made up mostly of national products.
The guarantee was given by the Secretary of State for Commerce, Amadeu Nunes, who was speaking to journalists at the end of a meeting with businessmen from the agricultural sector.
Amadeu Nunes stated that at that time there was still no strategic food reserve for the country: “We are working on it, I think that by the end of the year the reserve process will be ready and the festive season will also be assured”.
“We do not want to make the reserve with imports, it is essential that there is national capacity to have a national reserve with national products”, he underlined.
On the other hand, the Secretary of State understood that the rise and fall of product prices in the markets is linked to supply and demand (which is, admittedly, an original discovery), making it necessary to increase the national capacity to production to lower prices, because the country cannot continue to import to lower prices.
“The state cannot continue to spend so much currency on imports, but we also have to receive currency on exports, not least because Angola was once an exporting country and we have that capacity”, he assured.
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