Kenyan anti-poverty campaigners have launched the Piga Debe for Women Rights Campaign at a well-attended concert held at the Carnivore grounds in Nairobi as part of mobilisation for International Women’s Day. The Piga Debe concert was organised by the United Nations Millennium Campaign Africa Office, Kijiji Records and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (Kenya) and started a month-long awareness campaign seeking to draw attention of African governments to the outrageous fact that thousands of women continue to die needlessly during child birth. Millennium Development Goals will not be realised unless and until women’s empowerment, rights and development are achieved. Addressing inequalities based on gender greatly reduces poverty and increases levels of well-being for the entire population.
Poverty and health
Adequate rainfall in the last three months of 2006 improved food security in the parts of Kenya affected by the severe drought that hit the Horn of Africa last year, a famine warning agency reported. However, in some areas, outbreaks of diseases related to floods, as well as high HIV/AIDS prevalence, reversed the gains of a good harvest and pasture regeneration.
Despite guarantees to the right to adequate food in its current Constitution and ratification of several international covenants that expressly recognise this right, the Kenyan government has failed its people in this regard, writes the author of this article. The current food crisis is marred by reports of surplus crops rotting in granaries due to lack of markets or means of transportation to ready markets, while there have been allegations of theft of relief food by government officials. The government has admitted that it does not have sufficient infrastructure to distribute relief food and is relying on local and international relief agencies to do the job. Poor distribution of relief food has been exacerbated by government’s failure to map the drought zones properly, the author argues. Controversy has also raged regarding the safety of genetically modified maize being imported into the country, with the public bio-safety regulatory authority admitting incapacity to conduct the required tests. It is on record that the government ignored the adverse weather forecast from the Kenya Meteorological Department and the local chapter of the International Committee for the Red Cross, failing to plan ahead. Poor government policies that fail to incentivise maize production - the country’s staple food - have also been blamed for declining maize yields, year on year. The author calls on government for effective measures to end the cycle of famines.
According to Vision 2030, the Kenyan government’s strategic plan on how to boost growth and development in Kenya, there are an estimated five million out of an estimated eight million households who depend directly on agriculture, despite the fact that agriculture continues to be one of the most under-budgeted ministries. Under the current financial year, agriculture has only been awarded a meagre 3.6% of the national budget, which a long way off the 10% mark that the government had committed to set aside for the agricultural sector. With an overdependence on agriculture for both subsistence and commercial purposes, a large number of the population is in dire need of food aid. Aid organisations such as the World Food Programme say an estimated 1.6 million Kenyans face starvation. The situation has deteriorated due to drastic climatic changes, whereby the rains are no longer reliable and most Kenyans are yet to adapt to innovative and sustainable means of trapping rainwater. According to the Kenya Food Security Meeting - the main co-ordinating body that brings together food security actors in a forum to map out various strategies to improve food security - while there has been a notable improvement of short rains in severely drought-affected pastoral areas, there have been a general rain failure in the country since 2007, which has resulted in the deterioration in food security. It is against this background that researchers have intensified research on crops that can grow in most parts of the country and that can be used to alleviate food insecurity. This research has led many Kenyans to accommodate traditional vegetables that in past years were dismissed in favour of Western vegetables, including highly nutritious and easy-to-grow indigenous crops like African eggplant, nightshades and cow peas. According to this article, most Western vegetables are unaffordable to poor people, who account for an estimated 60% of the rural population.
This study determined knowledge, perceptions and practices as regards to malaria, climate change, livelihoods and food insecurity in a rural farming community in central Tanzania. Using a cross-sectional design, heads of households were interviewed on their knowledge and perceptions on malaria transmission, symptoms and prevention and knowledge and practices as regards to climate change and food security. A total of 399 individuals (mean age = 39.8 ± 15.5 years) were interviewed. Nearly all (94.7%) knew that malaria is acquired through a mosquito bite. Three quarters (73%) reported that most people get sick from malaria during the rainy season. About 50% of the respondents felt that malaria had decreased during the last 10 years. The household coverage of insecticide treated mosquito nets was high (95.5%). Ninety-six percent reported to have slept under a mosquito net the previous night. Only one in four understood the official Kiswahili term (Mabadiliko ya Tabia Nchi) for climate change. However, there was a general understanding that the rain patterns have changed in the past 10 years. Sixty-two percent believed that the temperature has increased during the same period. Three quarters of the respondents reported that they had no sufficient production from their own farms to guarantee food security in their household for the year. Three quarters (73.0%) reported to having food shortages in the past five years. About half said they most often experienced severe food shortage during the rainy season. The authors concluded that farming communities in Kilosa District have little knowledge on climate change and its impact on malaria burden, but that food insecurity. They recommend integrating control of malaria and food insecurity interventions.
Lack of access to health care is a persistent condition for most African indigents, to which the common technical approach of targeting initiatives is an insufficient antidote. To overcome the standstill, an integrated technical and political approach is needed. Such policy shift is dependent on political support, and on alignment of international and national actors. The authors explore if the analytical framework of social exclusion can contribute to the latter. The authors produce a critical and evaluative account of the literature on three themes: social exclusion, development policy, and indigence in Africa–and their interface. First, the authors trace the concept of social exclusion as it evolved over time and space in policy circles. They then discuss the relevance of a social exclusion perspective in developing countries. Finally, this perspective is applied to Africa, its indigents, and their lack of access to health care. The concept of social exclusion as an underlying process of structural inequalities has needed two decades to find acceptance in international policy circles. Initial scepticism about the relevance of the concept in developing countries is now giving way to recognition of its universality. For a variety of reasons however, the uptake of a social exclusion perspective in Africa has been limited. Nevertheless, social exclusion as a driver of poverty and inequity in Africa is evident, and manifestly so in the case of the African indigents. The concept of social exclusion provides a useful framework for improved understanding of origins and persistence of the access problem that African indigents face, and for generating political space for an integrated approach.
The new wave of land deals in agriculture has had a negative impact on the poor in developing countries, according to this paper by Oxfam. Oxfam’s research has revealed that residents regularly lose out to local elites and domestic or foreign investors because they lack the power to claim their rights effectively and to defend and advance their interests. Oxfam makes a number of key recommendations. First, the rights of the communities affected by these deals must be respected and their grievances addressed, and those who are profiting from the international deals must help to ensure this happens. Second, the balance of power must be shifted in favour of local rights-holders and communities. Governments should adopt strong, internationally applicable standards on good governance relating to land tenure and management of natural resources. Third, host governments should respect and protect all existing land use rights, and ensure that the principle of free, prior and informed consent is followed and that women have equal rights to access and control over land. Fourth, investors should respect all existing land use rights. Fifth, financiers and buyers should accept full supply-chain responsibility. Sixth, home country governments should require companies investing overseas to fully disclose their activities, and ensure that standards and safeguards are implemented to protect small-scale food producers and local populations.
In this paper, the author argues that trade agreements need to respect and promote human rights, not drive a process of globalisation that privileges commercial interests and tramples on public interests. She looks at the problem of land grabs, namely large-scale purchases or leases of agricultural or forested land on terms that violate the rights of the people who live on or near that land. She proposes four linked policy shifts to create a more stable and transparent international food system. 1. Reformed trade rules should ensure export restrictions in times of crisis are subject to transparency and predictability requirements and that allow all countries policy space for food security policies. 2. Publicly-managed grain reserves should be established to dampen the effects of supply shocks. 3. Governments should provide readily accessible funding for the poorest food importers, which would be triggered automatically when prices increase sharply in international markets. 4. Governments should develop strong national and international laws to govern investment in land, respecting the principles and guidelines set out in the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure. Tanzania’s recently announced limits on how much land foreign and domestic investors can lease sets a good example for the rest of the developing world, the author argues.
In this paper the author proposes policy options to ensure that poor Zambian families do not lose their land rights in the face of trade policies. The proposals focus on addressing the obstacles that poor families face in accessing and obtaining legal title to land. Strengthening national land policy, the legal framework and investment guidelines would help to protect the land rights of poor families. A comprehensive pro-poor land policy needs to be developed to guide the review of legislation for land administration. For these proposals to work, local communities need to register as legal entities or trusts to legally own land.
Concerns over the food security situation in sub-Saharan Africa are reflected in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the number of food insecure by half by 2015. Given that land plays an important role in the livelihoods of the majority of Africans, food security and poverty reduction cannot be achieved unless issues of access to land, security of tenure and the capacity to use land productively and in a sustainable manner are addressed. Recognizing the importance of a better understanding of these linkages, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) undertook a study in 2002/2003 on the Impacts of Land Tenure on Food Security and Sustainable Development.