BBC's Sport Relief raises £50 million for Slum Dwellers in Africa...

This is a fantastic effort by the British public.


But wouldn't it have been better if we had paid farmers a fair price for their crops, such as cocoa, coffee and cotton? Farming families would then have been able to stay on their land, instead of being forced to relocate into miserable slums.


But I guess that wouldn't have been so much fun...

Bill Gates calls for more funds for agricultural innovation

"Given the central role that food plays in human welfare and national stability, it is shocking—not to mention short-sighted and potentially dangerous—how little money is spent on agricultural research. In total, only $3 billion per year is spent on researching the seven most important crops. This includes $1.5 billion spent by countries, $1.2 billion by private companies, and $300 million by an agency called the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Even though the CGIAR money is only 10 percent of the spending, it is critical because it focuses on the needs of poor countries. Very little of the country and private spending goes toward the priorities of small farmers in Africa or South Asia."  Read more...

Africa's smallholder farmers living on the brink...

Decades of under-investment in small-scale food production is being blamed for up to 100, 000 unnecessary deaths from starvation in the Horn of Africa, in 2011.  2.4 billion dollars is being spent on trying to mitigate the impacts of this disaster rather than on developing rural livelihoods during the period before the drought.


Thirty international relief agencies are now calling on richer nations to pledge their support for the Charter to End Extreme Hunger which, among other things, urges G8 nations to 'fulfill urgently and rapidly the pledges made to the l'Aquila Food Security Initiative' in 2009. This initiative commits USD20 billion over three years for sustainable development and safety nets for vulnerable populations.


But what will these billions be spent on?  High tech research in international institutions or funding local Extension Workers to promote the wide range of simple best practices that already exist, to all small-scale farmers?


Best practices to mitigate the impacts of climate change for Africa's farmers include;

• the provision of OPVs that have good pest resistance, drought tolerance and storage qualities
• training farmers in the selection and storage of good seed
• adjusting soil pH by adding lime where necessary
• water harvesting by building ridges, contour bunds, pot holes and small earth dams
• planting winter thorn trees, Faidherbia albida, within arable lands to increase organic matter, improve soil fertility and feed livestock
• alley cropping with Gliricidium sepium to increase organic matter, promote vegetable production and provide goat fodder
• planting pigeon pea as a climate change tolerant, nutritious food crop
• planting indigenous fruit trees
• training farmers in record-keeping and linking them with markets

While it is clear that the amount needed to bring about sustainable development in Africa's rural areas would be a fraction of the cost of disaster relief - the unglamorous nature of the above interventions mean that international donors may prefer to wait until the next disaster...

AIDS-related deaths: How to get to Zero in Africa's rural areas

UNAIDS' latest report is upbeat about the future prospects for a world with zero new HIV infections and zero AIDS-related deaths. Such aspirations also imply 100% access to antiretroviral drug treatment (ART). Although Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 70% of all new HIV infections in 2010, there is said to be a decline in the regional rate of new infections. For example in countries with high exposure, such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, this rate has declined by more than 25% in the past 10 years. Nevertheless, more than 50% of Africans who are already HIV+ are unable to access treatment. Most of these unfortunate people reside in rural areas, where it is many hours’ walk to the nearest clinic. For example, research has shown that a vigorous treatment programme has led to the decline of HIV in Botswana’s urban areas, while prevalence in the rural areas has remained unchanged. It is estimated that the need for ART in Botswana will increase by 60% by 2016.

Men have proven to be the hardest group to reach, as far as providing successful treatment is concerned: Workers in Malawi have shown that men only go for treatment once they are ill. This means that their disease is often too advanced to benefit from successful treatment. And, whereas women, particularly mothers, are motivated to seek voluntary counselling and testing, men are much more reluctant to go, probably because of the stigma that they will attract. To make matters worse men are also more likely to migrate in search of work and this reduces their adherence to treatment, leading to higher mortality from AIDS.

UNAIDS recommends community-based, participatory learning approaches in order to challenge social gender norms that increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. 

Hundreds of rural communities, across Africa have already benefitted from ‘Positive Living’ participatory workshops, where women, men and young people learn how to reduce their vulnerability to HIV, ways to ensure a healthy diet and how to prevent diseases associated with poor hygiene and opportunistic infections. The training manual - How to Live Positively, which is used to facilitate these workshops was written by me and Fortunate Nyakanda; it increases treatment preparedness and carries a message of hope that reduces the fear that leads to stigma. The How to Live Positively training manual can be downloaded in English for free here, or obtained in French, Portuguese or English, from CTA.

World Food Day -- not a day to celebrate

FAO has designated the 16th October 'World Food Day'. This year's theme is “Food Prices—From Crisis to Stability”, highlighting the need to stabilise food prices in order to prevent more people from going hungry. According to the World Bank, in 2010-2011 rising food costs pushed nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty. Data compiled by IFPRI shows that the countries that are already suffering the highest levels of food insecurity are in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. However, the most hungry people can be found in Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea.

Many charities and development organisations were hoping that the European Union would play it's part in stabilising world food prices by reducing the amount of money that EU tax-payers give to their big farmers and food processors under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).  Research has shown that these huge EU subsidies are distorting Africa's economies and impoverishing her farmers.  The largest UK recipients of these subsidies include large multinational companies, such as Tate & Lyle, Nestle, Cadbury, Kraft and a host of manufacturers of bulk animal fats, sugars and refined starches.  In effect, these companies and being paid to export their products more cheaply to poorer countries, thereby undercutting local production.  Many of these companies are also destroying the world's remaining rain-forests in order to grow animal feed for factory farms.

Although the European Commission has proposed a 9% cut in these subsidies, €435 bn of tax-payers' money will still be paid to some of the most destructive corporations and richest individuals in Europe over the next 10 years.  Thereby stifling increased productivity by food producers in developing countries and encouraging more environmental damage world-wide.

These proposals are currently being discussed in the European Parliament, please make your voice heard by signing the European Food Declaration or writing to your local MEP.

Climate change is driving involuntary urbanisation in Africa

UN-HABITAT has predicted that half of Africa's population will live in urban areas by 2030. Poor infrastructure, lack of housing and jobs will confine 70% of these people to slums from which they are unlikely to escape.  The African cities which are expected to grow the most are Lagos and Kinshasa, whose populations are each expected to top 15 million by 2025.

Much of this involuntary urbanisation will be driven by climate change because of the increased frequency of El Niňo-Southern Ossilation events and the anticipated 2-4°C temperature rise, which will lengthen dry seasons and cause recurrent droughts and crop failures in Africa.

This year's severe drought in East Africa has already forced more than 1.7 million farmers off their lands, with 180, 000 of them migrating to the Dadaab refugee camp, bringing the population of this camp to 468,000 and making it the third largest city in Kenya.   These refugees will quickly become dependant on handouts, making their vital farming skills redundant.

If there is a 5°C increase throughout Africa, due to uncontrolled climate change, maize yields are predicted to fall by 20% and bean yields by more than 60%.    Crop production will be hopeless where air temperatures exceed 35°C.

Crop	Optimum flowering temperature
Wheat	15°C
Maize	18-22°C
Rice	23-26°C
Sorghum	25°C

USDA SAP 4.4, 2008.

It will be impossible to prevent involuntary migration or sustain Africa's burgeoning urban populations without addressing climate change and its devastating impacts on agriculture.

Let's hope that Brice Lalonde gets his way and agriculture is put firmly on centre stage at the next Rio summit on sustainable development...

Freeing African Trade

David Cameron is calling for a 'free trade area' in Africa to increase GDP across the continent by an estimated $62 billion a year.  He says that this can be achieved primarily by cutting red tape and reducing tariffs in African countries.  I recently did a survey of community-based, income-generating projects in Malawi and discovered that these worthy activities were not benefiting the participants financially because the potential customers were too poor to buy their products.  


Is there a danger that this could happen regionally?

South Africa is currently the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has a well-developed industrial sector, while all her neighbours depend on agriculture, a sector which is severely under-developed. This is despite the fact that investment in agriculture underpins a developing economy by creating jobs and producing food and raw materials.

A report by the Global Harvest Initiative, entitled Enhancing Private Sector Involvement in Agriculture and Rural Infrastructure Development, estimates the overall agriculture investment gap in developing countries at nearly $90 billion annually.

African producers continue to be constrained by unfair import tariffs that protect producers in Europe and the USA.

Support for a free trade area in Africa should not be a substitute for reforming the Common Agricultural Policy or reviving the Doha Round talks to rebalance world trade in favour of developing countries.