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In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in five people were already hungry even before COVID-19 hit, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Image: EWN.
ROME / JOHANNESBURG – Since South Africa closed four weeks ago to curb the spread of the coronavirus, hairdresser Nasreen Pillay has had no income. Without an employment contract, you also cannot apply for government help.
“If my mother and father-in-law did not help me, I would be hungry,” Pillay, a 28-year-old mother of two from Johannesburg, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
He also fears that the economic crisis is generating more crime. The thieves broke into her mother’s house two weeks ago, taking speakers, headphones, and other items.
“People are desperate,” he said.
Such despair could worsen as job losses increase and incomes fall due to a coronavirus-induced recession, with countries in sub-Saharan Africa particularly at risk of spikes in poverty and hunger, experts warned.
The world is “on the verge of a hunger pandemic,” David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Program, told the UN Security Council this week.
Globally, 135 million people face an acute food shortage, and the coronavirus could increase this by another 130 million by the end of the year, he said.
“In the worst case, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries,” he added.
Riots and protests have already erupted in Cape Town and Johannesburg municipalities over promised food packages that never came, according to local media.
Africa as a whole currently has more than 27,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with more than 1,300 deaths, according to the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A possible global loss of GDP of 5% this year could increase poverty levels worldwide by 20%, pushing another 147 million people into extreme poverty, according to recent estimates by the International Institute for Food Policy Research ( IFPRI).
More than half of those at risk, 79 million people, are in sub-Saharan Africa, with another 42 million in South Asia, said David Laborde Debucquet, principal investigator for the Washington-based think tank.
“We are talking about (people) making less than $ 1.90 a day … where their life is basically in danger because when they are in this kind of poverty and cannot eat, they will die,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“This will affect the urban poor much more. In the past two decades, we have seen very rapid urbanization in these two regions. “
In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in five people were already hungry even before COVID-19 hit, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
In the Ghanaian capital Accra and the surrounding area, where Elijah Amoo Addo runs a food bank, the past three weeks have been “filled with despair and anxiety: people wondering what will kill them first, famine or COVID-19” , said.
His organization, Food For All Africa, went from feeding about 150 people a day to preparing 3,500 hot meals a day, he said, and 75% of people who depend on them are newcomers who have been affected by the virus, he added. .
Hunger looms
According to the most recent World Bank estimates, 10% of the world population, some 730 million people, lived in extreme poverty in 2015.
The combination of COVID-19 and a drop in oil prices could increase this number by 60 million, he said, a much lower figure than IFPRI’s projections.
Laborde Debucquet, however, said IFPRI’s calculations took into account numerous factors, including how the main sources of income for African countries (remittances, foreign aid, oil and minerals and tourism) were affected by the crisis. .
Also, unlike the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, no part of the world has been affected by the pandemic, he said.
Africa’s high levels of poverty, lack of social safety nets and dependence on low-skilled labor in the informal sectors in urban areas made it particularly vulnerable, she said.
Aid agencies are already warning of impending hunger in many countries around the world, but particularly in Africa.
Rising prices mean that the amount of food that poor people can buy has been reduced, while the difficulty in accessing quality seeds and fertilizers, as well as the closing of markets, are hurting farmers and traders, they say.
In Zimbabwe, where 7.7 million people already struggle to eat on a daily basis, corn prices rose by a third in February, according to the charity Action Aid.
In Burkina Faso, the cost of a liter of cooking oil has almost doubled and millet is almost 20% more expensive, said a group of non-governmental organizations, calling on governments to help farmers and vulnerable communities.
Shepherds are also struggling because closing borders and curfews restrict their movements and their ability to feed their animals, increasing the risk of conflict with farmers, said the group, which includes Oxfam and Action Against Hungry.
NIGERIA, HARDEST SOUTH AFRICA
IFPRI and FAO experts have said that basic grain production is stable, but warned that logistical obstacles and social distancing measures are putting pressure on food supply chains, particularly in cities where there is little land to grow food. .
“About 80% of urban Africans obtain their food through informal food markets. So even if it leaves the farm and leaves the factories, if you can’t buy it, it’s as good as it doesn’t exist, “said James Thurlow, IFPRI principal investigator.
Thurlow’s team has been conducting studies in Africa and Asia and identified South Africa and Nigeria as the countries that could be most affected by the economic slowdown.
Their estimates showed that the GDP of both could be reduced by up to a third in the first quarter of 2020, particularly if Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa, extends and expands its blockade, he said.
A four-week blockade in Nigeria could put an additional 8 million Nigerians, 5% of the population, below the poverty line, he said.
Nigerian tech entrepreneur Jide Rotilu said he is preparing for more difficult times after witnessing business running out for local companies that provide travel, catering and photography services.
It is cutting its own spending and the entire country expects “a drastic reduction in income potential for both individuals and organizations,” Rotilu said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
South Africa, classified as one of the world’s most unequal countries by the World Bank, had an unemployment rate of 29% before closing. Even among employees, 18% – 3 million people – work in the informal sector, according to government statistics.
Tyron Naidoo, 51, who runs a three-decade logistics company with 25 workers, said he has had no business since closing and cannot pay his employees.
She applied for financial assistance from the government a month ago to be able to pay them, but has received nothing yet.
“I hope I can give my staff something so they can survive,” he said.
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