via Mali / Ruée sur les terres irrigable de l’Office du Niger | JOURNAL.

Maioria dos angolanos, moçambicanos e cabo-verdianos vive em favelas.

Em 2010, mais de 86% da população urbana de Angola, quase 80% dos habitantes de Moçambique e mais de 70% da população de Cabo Verde viviam em favelas, segundo a ONU. O tema foi esta semana discutido na capital alemã.

A questão das favelas foi um dos problemas abordados num seminário sobre a urbanização dos países lusófonos promovido pela Sociedade Alemã para os Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa DASP, em Berlim.Dados da Organização das Nações Unidas ONU mostram o movimento de milhares de pessoas que deixaram o campo em busca de uma vida melhor. Em 2010, 90% da população brasileira vivia em áreas urbanas, enquanto em Moçambique o número de pessoas a residir nessas zonas estava perto dos 40%.Segundo o economista e professor de administração de empresas Christian Hauser, muitas pessoas mudaram-se para as cidades por considerarem que a situação no campo é ainda pior. “Acham que o acesso à água e ao saneamento é pior no campo do que na cidade, mesmo quando a situação na cidade também é precária”, refere. A Sociedade Alemã para os Países Africanos de Língua Portuguesa foi fundada em 1984Movimento do campo para a cidade cresceEste movimento descontrolado da população tem resultados muitas vezes indesejados, como o surgimento de favelas. “Muitas pessoas vêm do interior. Como não têm onde ficar, formam bairros informais que são chamados de favelas. Depois, com medidas do governo e o desenvolvimento económico, a situação vai melhorando”, explica Hauser.Na capital moçambicana, Maputo, que foi projetada para 400 mil habitantes, já vivem hoje um milhão e meio de pessoas, muitas das quais em favelas, conta Siegfried Lingel, cônsul-geral honorário de Moçambique na Alemanha.

E este cenário repete-se noutras cidades do país. “Em Nampula, temos 500 mil habitantes. Na Beira, e por todos os lados, aumenta o movimento do campo para a cidade”, explica.A situação gera uma avalanche de problemas e abrange diversas questões sociais. “Não há abastecimento de água, a higiene é uma catástrofe, não há esgotos, há lixo e doenças. Entre os bairros mais abastados e estas favelas há muita agressividade que ainda pode piorar muito”, afirma Siegfried Lingel.É aos governos que cabe o desafio de promover o desenvolvimento nessas áreas e oferecer uma vida digna à população, lembra Christian Hauser. Para o economista, quando a população nessas cidades está a crescer, é necessário ter infra-estruturas de saneamento, água potável e transportes. “É preciso mais investimentos em infra-estruturas”, defende.Autora: Cris VieiraBerlimEdição: Madalena Sampaio/António Rocha

via Maioria dos angolanos, moçambicanos e cabo-verdianos vive em favelas | África | DW.DE | 03.02.2012.

via Maioria dos angolanos, moçambicanos e cabo-verdianos vive em favelas | África | DW.DE | 03.02.2012.

via IPS Inter Press Service – Telling Africa’s Untold Stories » “A Catastrophic Year” as Hunger Crisis Looms over Sahel.

A Catastrophic Year” as Hunger Crisis Looms over Sahel

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By Kristin Palitza

Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. / Kristin Palitza/IPS

NOUAKCHOTT, Feb 15 (IPS) – Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel – the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south – have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria have all called for international assistance to prevent yet another hunger crisis on the continent. Only Senegal, which will hold presidential elections later this month, has refrained from announcing an emergency, largely for political reasons.

“It’s a catastrophic year. The drought is severe. We need urgent intervention to prevent a famine,” warns Ahmed Weddady, national director in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation of Mauritania, the country with the world’s least amount of potable water, which suffered the worst harvest shortfall in the region. A third of its population already suffers severe food insecurity.

After a drought destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel late last year, rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food in early February. That’s a good six months before the next harvest is expected.

But the world’s rich nations, plagued by financial crises and having just spent millions of dollars in emergency aid during last year’s Somalia famine, have been slow to respond to the appeals. Barely half of the 650 million dollars needed by the United Nations (U.N.) alone have been pledged. Other aid agencies say they are equally short of funds.

The catch: the longer donors wait, the more lives will be lost and the more expensive it will be to help, says José Luis Fernandez, regional emergency coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO): “That’s the lesson we learnt in Somalia. We don’t have time to lose. We need to mobilise support now.”

It costs 10 to 20 times more to airlift food into an affected area than to ship it. Equally, it costs 80 dollars a day to treat a malnourished child, while it would cost only one dollar a day to prevent the child’s malnutrition if the money was invested in development programmes in advance.

The problem in the Sahel is that exactly such long-term development programmes are barely existent. The region suffers from cyclic droughts that have led to low resilience among the population. Even in a “normal” year, half of all children under five, the most vulnerable, suffer chronic malnutrition. That means the step to reaching a full-blown hunger crisis is small.

Climate change combined with population growth, acute poverty, poor access to basic services, changing migration patterns and weak governance, competition over scarce resources and conflict potential have intensified in a region where the majority is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and livestock for survival.

That is why development experts stress the fact that emergency aid can only help the Sahel in the short-term, while long-term, structural programmes are needed to assist the region in creating resilience to recurring droughts. “Such programmes should include investments in agricultural development, health and social protection services, water and sanitation as well as adaptation to climate change,” says Johannes Schoors, country director of international aid organisation CARE in Niger, where more and more people go hungry due to the drought.

Even if all the needed funds were pledged, providing humanitarian aid will be difficult and complex. The Sahel is a vast, sprawling region, with many villages in remote and inaccessible places, making it a logistical nightmare to distribute food and other supplies.

“Because people live very scattered, logistics are complicated and expensive. Distances to reach affected people are enormous, roads very bad and sometimes non-existent,” notes Schoors.

What makes the situation even worse is the recent upsurge of violence in the region. In January, fighting erupted between Mali’s army and nomadic Tuareg rebels seeking a sovereign homeland, while Nigeria experiences violence perpetrated by Islamist sect Boko Haram, combined with ongoing operations by a regional Al-Qaeda group, Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.

According to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which tries to get life-saving aid to severely malnourished children in the region, first supply trucks have been prevented from reaching food insecure areas in Niger, which borders on northern Nigeria.

“It is becoming more and more difficult to reach people in need. We face similar difficulties in northern Mali. We foresee a period of great instability in the region,” worries UNICEF regional nutrition advisor for West and Central Africa Felicité Tchibindat.

The conflicts have caused many to flee their homes. At least 22,000 refugees had flooded into Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Niger by early February, crossing the border into the most food insecure areas in those countries.

“Having to deal with displaced people in areas where residents already suffer causes additional difficulties in reaching them with aid, as well as social tensions and conflict potential,” says Fernandez.

The quadruple burden of drought, structural problems, violence and refugees begs for a swift response, he adds. But for now, many aid agencies cannot scale up their efforts until they receive the necessary funds.

(END/2012)

From the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, we must learn to be honest about the nature of a fundamentally flawed global food system

Olivier De Schutter, Monday 30 January 2012

www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/jan/30/famine-predictable-result-broken-system

Drought and famine are not extreme events. They are not anomalies. They are merely the sharp end of a global food system that is built on inequality, imbalances and – ultimately – fragility. And they are the regular upshot of a climate that is increasingly hostile and problematic for food production across huge swathes of the developing world.

For the third time in seven years, the Sahel region of west Africa is facing a toxic combination of drought, poor harvests and soaring food prices. In Niger, 6m people are now significantly at risk, together with 2.9m in Mali and 700,000 in Mauritania.

An immediate response is needed in order to avert a devastating food and nutrition crisis. In responding, however, we must also redefine the vocabulary of food crisis. It is our global food system that is in crisis. Last year’s famine in the Horn of Africa, and the current woes in the Sahel, are the surface cracks of a broken system. These regional outbreaks of hunger are not, as such, extreme events.

Beyond semantics, this is a crucial distinction. In viewing these events as extreme and unexpected, we fail to acknowledge the regularity and predictability of hunger. This flaw is fatal, for it means failing to acknowledge that the food system itself is broken. It means failing to build readiness for persistent famine into international development and humanitarian policy. And it means waiting until people starve before doing anything.

The worst hunger crisis in a century hit Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti last year, affecting 13 million people and taking thousands of lives. International aid came thick and fast from mid-2011 onwards, by which point mass displacement, malnutrition and death had already taken hold.

Yet, according to a damning report from Oxfam and Save the Children, early warning systems flagged up the crisis as early as August 2010. A full response came only after decision-makers could see evidence on the ground of the failed harvests and starvation that had been accurately predicted.

Poor local governance is part of the story. Governments in the Horn of Africa – with the help of international relief and development agencies – should have set up comprehensive anti-drought plans in advance, and should have sounded the alarm earlier. Signs are already more promising in the Sahel. Aside from Senegal and Burkina Faso, all affected governments have been quick to declare an emergency, devise plans, and call in international aid.

But the international community must also ensure that its crisis response tools are fit for purpose. Food aid is often counter-cyclical: donors are more generous when prices are low due to significant harvests, which tends to be when needs are lower. So standing regional food reserves should be set up to enhance access to affordable stocks as soon as needs begin to rise. This would allow emergency stocks to be pre-positioned in risk-prone regions, so that – when local purchases are not possible – humanitarian agencies have access to food stocks below the market rate.

The problem is not just about governance shortcomings in Africa, and it is not just about the modalities of delivering food aid. It is also a problem of principle. For decades, we have taken the wrong approach to feeding the world. In many poor countries, investment in agriculture has focused on a limited range of export crops. Too little has been done to support smallholders, who produce food for their local communities. Yet, by supporting these poor farmers, we could enable them to move out of poverty, and enable local food production to meet local needs.

Diverse farming systems, agroforestry and reservoirs to capture rainfall are sorely needed in drought-prone areas such as the Sahel. This requires a real commitment to local food systems, and an acknowledgement that trade and aid cannot provide all the answers, especially when international grain prices are so high.

The solution is therefore twofold: we must plan adequately for the food crises that emerge within our broken food system, and we must finally acknowledge how broken it is. Only when we are honest about hunger will the world’s most vulnerable populations receive the short-term aid and long-term support that they need.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jean Blaylock

UK Food Group

e: jean@ukfg.org.uk

t: +44 (0)7540 833659

+44 (0)207 837 2382

s: jblaylock

w: www.ukfg.org.uk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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via ACCAPAREMENT DES TERRES EN AFRIQUE: l’Afrique serait-il à Vendre ? : AFRIQUE, Objectif Développement !.

ACCAPAREMENT DES TERRES EN AFRIQUE: l’Afrique serait-il à Vendre ?

‘While more needs to be spent on generating better technology for farmers in the developing world … efforts to implement new solutions must focus not only on constraints to delivery but also those to uptake.’ View full details

Source: Overseas Development Institute

Published: 2012-01-26 00:00:00 GMT

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via Estudo sugere que é viável, em termos ambientais, alimentar … – Notícias – Naturlink.

via Estudo sugere que é viável, em termos ambientais, alimentar … – Notícias – Naturlink.

A Guiné-Bissau, Angola e Moçambique registaram melhorias no combate à fome, refere o relatório de 2011 do Instituto Internacional de Pesquisa sobre alimentação (IFPRI), disponível no «site» da instituição.

De acordo com o documento, a Guiné-Bissau surge como o País Africano de Língua Portuguesa (PALOP) melhor classificado no Índice Global da Fome (GHI), cotado no nível «grave» com 19,5, depois de ter abandonado o nível «alarmante» onde se encontrava em 2001 (22,8).

Angola, por seu turno, passou da situação de «extremamente alarmante» para «alarmante», tendo descido de 33,4 para 24,2, um pouco mais do que o índice atribuído a Moçambique (22,7), que em 2001 era de 28,4.

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