Why is southern Africa hungry?: the roots of southern Africa's food crisis

This paper, based on Christian Aid's submission to the House of Commons International Select Committee on International Development, takes an in-depth look at the causes of southern Africa's crisis and looks to ‘real’ solutions beyond the continuation of the humanitarian relief effort.

Issues addressed include:

• Chronic poverty - Food shortages are endemic among subsistence farmers during the few months before the next harvest is due. Families in Lesotho and Mozambique have been additionally hard hit by retrenchments in the mining industry and stricter immigration controls in South Africa.
• Poor governance - Political leaders and governments have failed to build southern Africans’ resistance to shocks. Resources earmarked to build infrastructure and support markets in remote areas have dwindled; in Malawi and Zimbabwe, the national strategic grain reserves have been mismanaged, and policies to boost the productive capacity of smallholders, especially those living with HIV/AIDS continue to receive low priority. Strong, accountable, well resourced, inclusive and transparent state institutions and governance systems are needed to regulate staple food markets and provide essential services such as health, education and agricultural marketing, and to store and distribute strategic grain reserves.
• Market failures - Reforms in Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe have left in their wake a collapse in staple food markets and the inability to balance supply and demand in remote rural areas. Private traders have not materialised to fill the vacuum leaving farmers with no market for their produce. The withdrawal of public subsidies and marketing support can leave remote producers without buyers, thus increasing their vulnerability and poverty.
• HIV/AIDS - Over the past decade, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has dramatically increased the vulnerability of small-scale farmers to production shocks. Many farming families have lost their most economically active members, including those who know best how to farm. To pay for funerals and medicine, families are forced to sell their assets; the task of caring for the sick means that women spend less time on the land.
• Little support for agriculture - In many countries the withdrawal of subsidised credit and inputs such as seeds, tools and fertilisers has combined with declining government extension services and public investment in rural marketing to spur a decline in rural livelihoods. Despite this, the much-hyped, donor-sponsored Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers prepared by the governments of Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Lesotho fall far short of addressing rural development.
• Lack of foreign exchange - Declining foreign exchange reserves, especially in Zimbabwe, have limited the ability of governments and private companies to import maize. At the same time, these governments, with the exception of Zimbabwe, continue to pay back old debts to international finance institutions.
• The legacy of conflict in Angola - Conflict in Angola has led to a political culture of unaccountability, with oil revenues from multinational company oil investments kept separate from the national budget. The percentage of the budget spent on social services is also well below the southern African average.
• Zimbabwe’s complex crisis - Government land reform and redistribution in Zimbabwe have contributed to a significant fall in agricultural production and whilst land reform remains necessary, who benefits, and the implications for agricultural productivity must be considered. A shrinking economy, political violence and intimidation and increasing curtailment of human rights are all contributing to a growing lack of government accountability and transparency.
• Donor policies - Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Lesotho are all highly dependent on donor funding. International financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank wield great influence through the conditions they attach to loans, the amount they contribute to the national budget, and their formal and informal involvement in policy formulation. Bilateral and multilateral donors often have similar influence for the same reasons. All advocate a reduction or elimination of the role of the state in food marketing or public services such as rural extension. Poverty and social impact assessments are not undertaken prior to the implementation of such policies. Despite their role and influence on national policies, donors have been unwilling to take responsibility for the impact of their policies. Donor responses to the current food emergency need to start with an acknowledgement of their responsibility, together with past and present southern African governments, for the increase in poverty and vulnerability in southern Africa. They must be willing to explore, together with southern African governments and citizens, pro-poor macroeconomic, debt relief and budgetary policies, even where these differ from orthodox beliefs. Without these two steps, Christian Aid fears, the ‘vicious cycle of vulnerability, crisis, and poverty’ in southern Africa will not be broken and another bout of erratic weather will trigger yet another crisis.

[adapted from authors summary]