Chef from Ghana Creates Food for All Africa

Elijah Amoo Addo was the head chef at a restaurant in Accra, Ghana. It was here he saw a homeless, mentally challenged man shuffling through the dumpster to find food to feed himself, and friends, living on the street. After witnessing the man looking for food, Addo decided that the unused food from his restaurant would no longer be thrown away, but rather be used to feed people in need. This was just the beginning of what was to become Food For All Africa.

Researching Solutions

The first step Addo took in acting out his vision was starting an advocacy group to research the issues surrounding food insecurity in Ghana. Furthermore, he created a social intervention program.

Through this research, Addo learned that the Ghanaian government prioritized the ‘building [of] a sustainable food system’. In Ghana, one of West Africa’s most developed countries, nearly one-third of the population is living on less than $1.25 a day. As a result of the low income, many do not obtain the proper amount of food.

Launching Food for All Africa

After seeing the results of his research, Addo quit his job, opting to apply to the West Africa Regional Leadership Center. With the leadership knowledge and business skills Addo developed, he launched Food for All Africa. Its mission statement is “To create sustainable means of nutrition for the vulnerable in society.”

Addo and his team at Food for All Africa aim to reduce food waste. They create efficient nutrition systems for low-income communities by redistributing leftover food from restaurants. Additionally, they work with rural farmers to use their produce at urban hospitality companies.

The Food for All Africa organization also facilitates discussions regarding the food supply chain. It considers areas which need to be improved as well as creating a more sustainable food supply chain throughout Africa.

The Far-Reaching Impact of Food for All Africa

Currently, the organization gets $5,700 worth of food from businesses within the food supply chain, each month to contribute to the food bank. Food For All Africa provides about 48,000 meals to people annually.

Food for All Africa is hoping to reach and impact 1 million low-income people by 2020. To help achieve this goal, the organization is working with orphanages, schools as well as vulnerable communities.

– Chloe Turner

Photo: Flickr

Hunger in Kenya: Organizations that are Helping

More than 600,000 Kenyans are in urgent need of food aid after the region was hit by a drought, which started in February when most farmers were preparing for planting season. The weather has dried up waterholes and rivers leading to crop failure.

The Kenyan government has promised to release 50 million Kenya shillings, or $5 million, to be used to purchase food aid, but the government has yet to release the funds. West Pokot deputy governor Titus Lotee said, “We have started distributing food but the 4,000 bags of maize is not enough,” and called on humanitarian organizations to help fight the hunger in Kenya.

Action Against Hunger has implemented a strategy for 2015–2017 in Kenya in order to address two main pillars: ending the drought emergency and addressing all forms of malnutrition.

Action Against Hunger has strengthened its approach to addressing health problems in Kenya by implementing programs in nutrition, food security, water, sanitation and hygiene. Thus far, 275,552 people have received nutritional support and 25,060 people have accessed safe water and sanitation.

Another charity, Feed the Children, provides access to food, water and schooling in four of Kenya’s counties. The organization focuses on the most vulnerable: malnourished children under the age of five, pregnant and lactating women, and people living with HIV/AIDS.

Feed the Children has built water pans and rainwater harvesting systems, which can hold water for up to seven months after the rain stops for the year. The Australian government assisted Feed the Children in building 35 latrines in six schools and supplied 8,000-cubic-meter water tanks to seven schools.

The Feed Hungry Children in Kenya project is providing health clinics, where children are weighed and measured and given food supplements. Poor families are given a food ration of beans and maize each month.

In addition to the two organizations, the World Food Programme works with Feed the Children to serve regular meals to children in 170 schools throughout Kenya in hopes of mitigating the crisis.

These humanitarian organizations will work to tackle starvation and hunger in Kenya until the country’s food availability problem improves.

– Jackie Venuti

Photo: Flickr

Urgent Need for Food Aid Compounds Poverty in Madagascar

As the weather changes from the 2015–2016 El Niño, its impact is still felt around the globe. For already drought-prone Madagascar, this means continued crop failure and a widespread need for emergency food aid. As rain has failed and market prices have risen, 1.1 million Malagasy have lost their food source, compounding the hardships already felt by many as a result of enduring poverty in Madagascar.

While residents of Madagascar have faced significant periods of drought over the years, failing crops and widespread malnutrition, accompany one of their worst droughts in recent history. By some estimates, over 80 percent of the country has lost a source of steady food supply as a result of those crop failures. The subsequent rising of market prices has compounded the problem.

Food scarcity and market fluctuations in Madagascar mean increased hunger for one of the most impoverished nations in the world. Already, 70 percent of Malagasy people suffer from malnutrition, and the average inhabitant earns $1 a day.

Of those Malagasy people suffering from malnutrition, approximately one million are children. Children under the age of five are quite vulnerable to stunted growth as a result. Due to poverty in Madagascar, such stunting occurs there at one of the five highest rates in the world.

Compounding the many issues related to poverty in Madagascar is the lack of aid they receive. Its isolation as an island nation causes some to argue that inhabitants’ needs are frequently overlooked. The urgency of the crisis can also cause the aid which does arrive to be less effective. For example, for the starving residents of one Southern Madagascar town, when their crops failed they were sent seeds from USAID and the World Food Programme. However, their situation had been rendered so desperate that they were unable to wait to plant and harvest the crops, and instead ate the seeds themselves.

The crisis has been ongoing, with the past three years being marked by rising temperatures and irregular rainfall. Harvest projections predict continued food scarcity through September 2016, and potential crisis exacerbation through to March 2017.

In the face of augmented urgency in Madagascar, the need for emergency food aid is increasingly dire. Dina Esposito, Deputy Assistant Adminstrator to the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (USAID) has announced that the U.S. will provide $8 million in aid to Madagascar as they face the current crisis and disconcerting projections of upcoming harvests.

The current 2016 rainy season has been the worst in the past 35 years in Madagascar, leading to the declaration of a national disaster in the country. However, despite the dire circumstances, hope for aid continues. For some inhabitants in especially hard-hit areas, relief comes in the form of a single daily meal, prepared and offered by nuns.

More broadly, relief and hope are drawn from international aid like that announced by USAID, as well as that already received from the United Nations World Food Programme and other organizations. Through contributions from organizations like these, Madagascar receives food aid, help with cultivation efforts and the opportunity to trade services for food.

– Charlotte Bellomy

Photo: World Food Programme

How to Outsmart the Drought in Ethiopia

From July to September of this year there’s been just one day of rain per month where “it should have been raining every other day,” Mr. Yasin, a local farmer in Ethiopia, told reporter Jacy Fortin of NY Times. His crops have since failed as this year’s drought in Ethiopia erodes away his land and his stability.

Reportedly caused by this year’s potent El Niño, the drought is beginning to take its toll on this country where 80 percent of the population works in agricultural productivity. Because of this, 40 percent of the country’s economic output is from the agriculture, which makes for a bad mix.

This drought is estimated to put 8.2 million people in need of food assistance; that nearly doubles the count before the drought began which was 4.55 million.

This year, however, is not the first time this country has faced a massive drought; in 2002, the GDP of Ethiopia dropped 2.2 percent as a result of widespread crop failure from a drought. Once before then the country had fallen to drought since there was a drastic famine that spurred massive aid to the area as a result.

Ethiopia’s government plans to outsmart the drought this year and has come up with ingenious precautions and early action initiatives to supplement its food aid assistance. In doing so, it hopes to establish a source to cling to throughout the drought’s duration.

Since July, the parliament has allotted $192 million in food aid, water transport and animal feed with the hopes of sustaining a viable option even with the effects of the drought. This plan was adopted because early warning systems in Ethiopia are capable of providing large windows of time before possible droughts occur.

Despite this domestic solution, more is needed to successfully pull through the crippling natural disaster. The conditions have forced the government to raise international funding requests by $164 million in order to fully assist all those in need.

Only about 43 percent of the total $596 million request has been met, but international aid does take time to fully take effect, so Ethiopian officials are expecting more soon. They also claim that the drought could last up to a year and estimate a staggering 15 million could be in need of food assistance in 2016.

For now the Ethiopian government must stress the importance of rationing food, and individuals must find new ways of providing monetarily and nutritionally for their families.

– Emilio Rivera

Sources: NY Times, University of Notre Dame
Photo: Flickr

Changes to US Food for Peace to Increase Sustainability

Sixty years after being put into effect, the Food for Peace program faces congressional reform that will lower costs and provide sustainable support for those living in conflict-ridden countries. Currently, law requires that food aid be grown in and shipped from the U.S. – a mandate that increases costs 25-50 percent more than they would be on the current market. Advocates for reform criticize the program for its inefficiency and helping American shipping and farming businesses profit from such programs.

Shipping firms, farms and some NGOs form an “iron triangle of special interests” that have benefited from international aid and attracted criticism from politicians in both parties. Between 2004 and 2013, 88 percent of USAID funding was used to harvest and ship food- a huge cost that decreased the amount of food the organization was able to provide by 64 percent.

A system designed this way is not only inefficient in properly allocating resources, but also counterproductive in affecting any kind of change in the countries that need it most. Daniel Maxwell, professor and research director at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, commented, “We need to support local agricultural producers and markets, or at a minimum, not undermine them.” Reformers advocate for changing the system to implement locally grown and shipped food resources rather than those from the U.S.

Senators Corker and Coons, who are cosponsoring the reform of the bill, have estimated that such changes could expand the program’s reach by 12 million people and free up $440 million through local, sustainable production. Providing support for local growers and shippers will strengthen local economies rather than keeping them reliant on international resources, empower and employ more people, and create a more sustainable rebuilding of communities.

Eric Munoz at Oxfam America says that a program created 60 years ago is not useful or appropriate for current times. Indeed, when 60 million people per year are in need of food aid, expansion of resources and lowering costs is more greatly needed than ever. Many farmers believe they have a right to profit from food aid programs and would suffer from reforms, but experts estimate such programs amount to only 1 percent of agribusiness profits.

For policy changes that would so greatly impact those in need, lessening the profits of huge farming businesses in the U.S. seems trivial. Worrying about this profit loss is “an inappropriate way of viewing the rationale of providing emergency assistance and foreign assistance, particularly assistance that is meant to address food insecurity in complex crises like Syria or South Sudan,” says Munoz.

Corker and Coon’s reform bill will see congressional debate in September.

– Jenny Wheeler

Sources: IRIN 1, IRIN 2
Photo: Flickr