Nigeria's Food Inflation

 For many people, feeding their families has become a daily challenge. With inflation rising around the world as the global economy recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, soaring prices are having dramatic consequences in countries like Nigeria.

The number of people living in poverty in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation with 210 million inhabitants – was already among the highest in the world. Even before the pandemic and the surge in food costs, Nigeria’s nutrition figures were alarming: One in three Nigerian children suffered stunted growth due to a bad diet. As a result, close to 17 million children in Nigeria are undernourished, giving the country the highest level of malnutrition in Africa and the second-highest in the world.

 Nigeria has been battered by the double economic effect of low global oil prices and the pandemic, the World Bank estimates the country’s soaring inflation and food prices pushed another seven million people into poverty in 2021. Food prices have increased more than 22 percent since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

“Every day, during consultations, there are five or seven children that suffer from malnutrition,” says Emiolo Ogunsola, head of the nutrition department at Massey Street children’s hospital in a poor district in Lagos Island. “I bet in a few months or a year, more children will be malnourished.”

Nigerian families struggle to survive as food prices soar | Nigeria News | Al Jazeera

Niger Suffering

 Conflict, displacement, food insecurity, malnutrition, recurrent disease epidemics and outbreaks, cyclical floods and droughts in Niger have put more than 3.8 million people, including 2.1 million children, in need of humanitarian assistance, a 30 percent increase compared to 2020.

Insecurity is spreading at a rapid pace in Niger. Attacks along the borders with Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria have led to significant displacements in the country and continue to wreak havoc on the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.

"Children’s lives have been torn apart. It is hard to believe that children should live in permanent fear of such attacks. This doesn’t have to be their reality" UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Marie-Pierre Poirier.  warned. "The protection of children’s rights, including children in displacement, is fundamental, be it the right to food, health, education, water or the right to be protected from violence. They need shelter, food, drinking water, medical care and education".

Attacks in the Lake Chad region have prevented nearly 269,000 people in Diffa (eastern Niger) from returning home. More than 195,000 people are now displaced in the regions of Tillabery and Tahoua, in western Niger. Over 77,000 people who have fled inter-communal violence in northern Nigeria are currently living in Maradi region (central Niger), together with more than 21,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). As of the end of March 2021, Niger hosted a total of 313,000 IDPs, 235,000 refugees and 36,000 returnees. The number of schools forced to close due to insecurity in conflict-affected areas has increased from 312 to 377 over recent months in Niger. 

Suffering in Silence: More than 2.1 million children need humanitarian help in Niger - Niger | ReliefWeb

Tigray Deteriorates

  Fighting in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has resulted in a famine that is now affecting more than 400,000 people. 33,000 children were severely malnourished.

A further 1.8m people were on the brink of famine.

 Ramesh Rajasingham, the UN's acting humanitarian aid chief told members of the Security Council at a meeting in New York that the situation in Tigray had deteriorated dramatically in recent weeks.

The region was experiencing "the worst famine situation we have seen in decades", he said. "Close to 5.2 million people still require humanitarian assistance - the great majority of them women and children."

The UN political affairs chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the meeting that "There is potential for more confrontations and a swift deterioration in the security situation which is extremely concerning." 

Ethiopia Tigray conflict: Famine hits 400,000, UN warns - BBC News

What Pandemic Relief?

 When government leaders across Africa began to impose lockdowns to curtail the spread of the coronavirus last year, many Africans, who were not covered by any form of social protection, began to panic.  A mix of high unemployment, poverty and corruption exacerbated the suffering of vulnerable populations during lockdowns across Africa.

Fewer than 18 percent of Africa’s people are covered by at least one form of social protection, compared to 84.1 percent in Europe and Central Asia. 

 In Nigeria and South Africa, the limited supply of aid was tainted by diversion of relief supplies, theft of food parcels, and — ahead of presidential elections in Uganda — politically-motivated arrests of those who dared to give food packages to families.

In South Africa, too, government officials have been accused of corruption and diverting food parcels. In some communities, destitute residents were asked to pay R5 ($0.31) in order to receive food supplies. 

Kavisha Pillay, head of stakeholder relations and campaigns at Corruption Watch, a local anti-corruption NGO, said that the theft of food parcels was a problem from the start. Pillay’s organization tapped radio programs and community media, and created a system for people to report diversion of supplies.

Similar concerns about diversion of relief packages are common in Nigeria. In the Lugbe suburb of  Nigeria’s capital Abuja, a tailor and a barber said food distribution in their area in April 2020 resulted in bedlam. “The government officials came with a truck and a Hilux van full of noodles, rice, garri and eggs and when they came people queued up neatly, with men on one side and women on the other side,” a tailor said. “But the officials started saying most of us in the queue don’t look poor and people got angry and there was total chaos.” The officials began to share the food items based on “your tribe” and “your religion,”  referring to ethnic origin.  “They were picking out people from the queue and segregating based on religion and it spoiled everything,” the barber said. Ultimately, most of the food packages were destroyed by angry youths and the government officials had to flee for their safety, he said.

Africa’s Hidden Victims: Pandemic Triggered Hunger, as Food Aid Fell Prey to Power Politics and Corruption - iAfrica

 In Uganda, the distribution of aid quickly took on a political dimension as the January 2021 presidential elections approached. While government deliveries of food aid lagged, President Yoweri Mouseveni outlawed food distribution by opposition politicians or sympathetic citizens. Those who went ahead and distributed food were arrested and charged with attempted murder. The government had argued that unauthorized distributions risked drawing crowds, and spreading the virus. Critics, however, decried the measures as a bid by Mouseveni to dominate the pre-election landscape and shut down political rivals. Among those arrested for providing emergency food was Francis Zaake, a 29-year-old opposition politician. Zaake was held in detention for ten days. He faced repeated torture, with guards telling him to either quit politics or join the ruling National Resistance Movement party, he said. He was denied visitors, including a lawyer, and denied medication he needed, he said.

In Uganda, top officials are facing prosecution for throwing contracts to companies that overcharged for emergency food supplies, while those who received the aid said it was poor quality and would only last a few days for a large family.  The corruption allegedly cost the government around 2 billion Ugandan shillings ($544,200). 

Citizens were left to grapple with starvation largely on their own, further eroding their trust in government. Pre-pandemic austerity measures, combined with weak administrative structures, slowed the expansion of social safety nets to reach the majority of the people affected by confinement measures, she said. 

Samuel Gbaruko, who runs a small barbershop in the Yaba district of Lagos, said he struggled to survive during the lockdowns.

“Sometimes it was just one meal per day and nothing more,” said Gbaruko, who is 25. “It was very, very hard for me.” Gbaruku said that when food packages arrived in his area of Yaba, a suburb of Lagos, they were mainly shared among older people. “They gave older people one loaf of bread, rice, beans and cooking oil and it was shared in such a way that only one older person per household received something, regardless of whether there are two older people in there,” he complained.

In Gulu, northern Uganda, 35-year-old Amina Yot, a widow, lost the odd jobs she relied on to feed her family.  “Since corona started, life is really very hard,” she said.  Yot said her family had received just 12 pounds (5 kg.) of maize flour from the government between March and September 2020. It was enough for just three or four days, she said.

In Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, 60-year-old Alice Opisa, who hawked cooked beans before the pandemic, said her family sometimes went to bed hungry or begged neighbours for food during the lockdowns. 

“I heard them announcing on the radio, I went to register but I have not received that support,” lamented Opisa, who lives in the Dandora slum.

The 'Lean Season' Arrives

 In the Sahel – the semi-arid region of West Africa that borders the Sahara Desert in the north and tropical savannas in the south – the number of people at risk of food insecurity has tripled in just two years, bringing the figure to more than 29 million.

 Families are bracing themselves as they enter what’s known as the lean season, or the period after stored food has run out and before the next harvest begins.

 An estimated 811,000 people face emergency levels of hunger and require urgent assistance, a nearly eightfold increase since 2019.

"Compared to previous food shortages, this year is different and much more serious,” warns Mamadou Diop, Action Against Hunger’s regional representative in West Africa. “Today, the people who have reached this lean season are already very weakened physically and mentally, because they did not get necessary routine healthcare services due to the pandemic."

 Food insecurity continues to grow.

 "How can families prepare for the lean season when the prior months have been marked by constant increases in food prices?" says Paloma Martín de Miguel, Action Against Hunger’s regional director for the Sahel. Inflation in the region is now estimated at more than 10% compared to the average of the last five years. Martín de Miguel points out: "Analyses show that more than half of households in the Sahel have difficulty accessing or cannot access affordable nutritious food." 

This challenge points to the need for more sustainable and hazard-resilient food systems, in particular through locally-led environmentally sustainable agriculture practices (known as agroecology), which can help ensure the availability of nutritious, diverse, healthy foods while preserving biodiversity.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is compounded by increased violence and insecurity, which has brought the current number of internally displaced persons and refugees in the region to 5.3 million. Violence is causing immense challenges of access. Communities cannot safely access basic services including healthcare, education, water, food, and sanitation infrastructure while, at the same time, humanitarian actors cannot always safely reach vulnerable communities to provide emergency assistance.

With the onset of the hunger season, the Sahel faces an emergency that endangers the lives of the most vulnerable people, especially women, children under five years old, and the elderly. Without urgent action and assistance, the more than 13 million people already suffering from severe food insecurity will be driven further into crisis. More people will go to bed hungry, and more than 1.6 million severely malnourished children will go untreated. Many of them could die or suffer irreversible, lifelong mental and physical consequences.

Hunger season arrives in the Sahel - Burkina Faso | ReliefWeb

Lest we forget

 Obituary from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow comrades, we in the World Socialism Movement Uganda Group, bring to you the bad news of the death of comrade Mutungi. Comrade Mutungi Benon died on Saturday 7 May, a week after having sustained neck spine injuries in a motor accident.

I knew Benon Mutungi as early as at the age of eleven when we were in primary three(1974). At that young age his character was already formed. He was outrightly courageous, brilliant, honest and a generous pupil. This has been his character all through his life. We later joined the same secondary school and later joined the same university – Makerere University. In 1986 in the year he joined university, he fell sick. He could not continue his studies for a period of seven years. After this break he went back to University to pursue his studies and finished his course (Bachelor of Arts, Geography) excellently. He was called back and did a masters degree.

Comrade Mutungi joined the WSM Uganda in 2000 after having been reading socialist literature for several years. He was an active comrade in most of our activities. He started the “socialist phone-in programme’ on the FM Radio in this town of Kabale, writing to the main two Uganda’s leading  newspapers, advertising in the papers the case for socialism, lending out socialist literature and distributing leaflets, debates and many forms of activities. On return from Ireland for a second masters degree, he was requested to work as Assistant Secretary of the WSM Uganda group, a job he took over enthusiastically.

Benon died at the age of 41. He leaves a widow and four children aged 9,7,4 and nine months respectively. In his own words at his death bed Mutungi had this to say: “I don’t think the Uganda government I know has ever made it a priority to invest in medical equipment to sustain the lives of Mutungi cases. Unless such equipment has been brought into the country a few days ago. What worries me is leaving the world still insane and worst of all leaving my very young children in such an insane world”.

Mugyenzi Ishmael.

Secretary WSM Uganda Group.

The Victims of Boko Haram

 The UN Development Programme (UNDP) in a new study on the 12-year-old conflict in northeast Nigeria estimates, directly and indirectly, the deaths of some 350,000 people, the vast majority of which are children below the age of five. The death toll is ten times higher than previous estimates.

 “With another decade of conflict, that could grow to more than 1.1 million,” it said.

Of nearly 350,000 deaths from the conflict, it estimated 314,000 to have resulted from indirect causes. Insecurity has led to declines in agricultural production and trade, reducing access to food and threatening the many households that depend on agriculture for their livelihood, the UN said. Thousands of displaced people lack access to food, health facilities, shelter and clean water, with children more vulnerable, the report added.

Children younger than five accounts for some 324,000 deaths, more than nine out of 10 of those killed, with 170 dying every day.

“In northeast Nigeria alone, 13.1 million people live in areas affected by conflict, out of whom 8.7 million are in need of immediate assistance,” the UN said.

Boko Haram launched an uprising in 2009 displacing more than two million from their homes and spawning one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions of people dependent on aid. The conflict shows little sign of ending. Nigeria’s Boko Haram group split into two in 2016 with its rival ISIL (ISIS)-allied faction ISWAP becoming the dominant threat. Despite ongoing military operations, the groups have continued to launch attacks, spreading violence to parts of neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

In the Lake Chad region, the UN said more than “3.2 million individuals are displaced, with 5.3 million food-insecure people at crisis and emergency levels”.

The situation is worse in Nigeria’s northeastern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, it said. The security forces appear overwhelmed as they battle other security challenges, including herder-farmer clashes in the centre of the country, kidnapping and banditry in the northwest and separatist agitations in the south.

Northeast Nigeria conflict killed more than 300,000 children: UN | Armed Groups News | Al Jazeera

Pandemic Bad News

 The World Health Organization has made a new appeal for vaccines for Africa, saying a “fast-surging” third wave of Covid-19 is outpacing efforts to protect populations, “leaving more and more dangerously exposed”.

“The third wave is picking up speed, spreading faster, hitting harder. This is incredibly worrying. With rapidly rising case numbers and increasing reports of serious illness, the latest surge threatens to be Africa’s worst yet,” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, said.

African countries have recorded more than 5m cases and almost 140,000 deaths, though the true numbers are thought to be much higher. The crisis has been worsened by slow vaccination progress across the continent, owing to limited availability after western countries bought them all, and administrative failures. Just over one in 100 people across Africa have been vaccinated. Eight African countries have used all the stocks supplied to them by Covax, the UN-backed vaccine-sharing facility, and another 18 are close to exhausting their stocks. Dozens more have less than half remaining. Out of 2.7bn doses administered globally, just under 1.5% have been administered in Africa.

John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said the continent was not winning its battle against the virus.

“The third wave has come with the severity that most countries were not prepared for. So the third wave is extremely brutal,” Nkengasong said . “It does not really matter to me whether the vaccines are from Covax or anywhere. All we need is rapid access to vaccines.”

 South Africa, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the countries where the surge appears most severe and health systems are close to being overwhelmed.

In South Africa’s Gauteng province, the most populous and economically productive part of the country, Covid patients are waiting for days on stretchers in accident and emergency wards before being found a bed, officials at hospitals in Johannesburg have said. There have also been problems sourcing sufficient oxygen.

“We are struggling. We are under extreme pressure. The pandemic is everywhere,” the Gauteng premier, David Makhura, said.

African Union special envoy Strive Masiyiwa accused rich nations of deliberately failing to provide enough Covid-19 vaccines to the continent. Masiyiwa, the union’s special envoy to the African vaccine acquisition task team, said the Covax scheme had failed to keep its promise to secure production of 700m doses of vaccines in time for delivery by December 2021.

“It’s not a question of if this was a moral failure, it was deliberate. Those with the resources pushed their way to the front of the queue and took control of their production assets,” Masiyiwa explained.

Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said that Africa was facing “an economic calamity”, with growth this year forecast to be half of the 6% expected globally.

“The warning signs are clear: a two-track pandemic is leading to a two-track recovery. Africa is already falling behind in terms of growth prospects.”

Africans ‘dangerously exposed’ by lack of Covid jabs, says WHO | Africa | The Guardian

The Economic Cost of the Pandemic

 The African Development Bank (AfDB) at its annual meeting held in Accra, Ghana expressed deep concern that the 30 million Africans had been pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. 

President of African Development  Bank  Group Akinwumi Adesina said an estimated 39 million people could fall into poverty by the end of 2021.

Africa’s cumulative Gross Domestic Product,(GDP) losses are estimated between $145 billion and $190 billion. 

Africa will need a lot of resources to support its recovery. Low-income sub-Saharan African countries alone will need $245billion by 2030, while all of the sub-Saharan African countries alone will need $425billion by 2030.

AfDB leads charge to restore Africa’s economies as pandemic pushes 30m into extreme poverty | International Centre for Investigative Reporting (icirnigeria.org)