SWAZILAND: The future looks better but the need is now

Photo: James Hall/IRIN

Counting the days until harvest

MBABANE, 2 February 2009 (IRIN) – Goods rain, after years of drought, promises a better harvest for Swaziland in the next few months, but right now urban Swazis are struggling with soaring food prices in the shops.

“It’s one step forward, but one step backward,” said Amy Dlamini, a food aid worker at a briefing of humanitarian officials last week by the Swaziland Vulnerability Assessment Committee.

The committee’s preliminary results suggest better crop yields will strike tens of thousands off the food aid register, but this will be counterbalanced by the worsening nutritional security of the urban poor due to higher food prices.

“When the worst of the drought was killing off crops two years ago, the people who purchased their staple food at the shops were not immediately affected, unlike the rural residents. But last year food prices shot up, in some cases doubling, and now those people who are poor or just scraping by are in jeopardy,” said Dlamini, who assists World Vision with food distribution in the central Manzini Region.

The price of the staple starch, maize-meal, rose 25 percent from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, enough to push the borderline vulnerable into making hard choices.

“They usually opt to do without a meal,” said Abdoulaye Balde, country representative for the World Food Programme (WFP). “Families that used to have two meals a day are having one.”

WFP and the UN Children’s Agency, UNICEF, have announced shifts in aid distribution to target not just vulnerable children, who for several years have been fed at schools and neighbourhood care points, but also their families: in the past they had not always qualified for food relief.

Thresholds

According to the vulnerability survey, the number of people whose food consumption was characterised as “poor” dropped from 5 percent in 2007 to 3 percent in 2008 in the Hhohho Region, where the capital, Mbabane, is located. These were mainly rural subsistence farming households, able to take advantage of a better agricultural season in 2008.

By contrast, the number of those at risk in Hhohho, whose food consumption was catalogued as “borderline”, doubled from 13 percent to 26 percent; typically these were urban or peri-urban households, who bought rather than grew their food.

The same split was discernable in the central Manzini Region, where the number of people affected by food shortages remained stable at 5 percent in 2007 and 2008, but those assessed as “borderline” rose from 11 percent to 15 percent.

Worst hit were residents of the perennially dry southern Shiselweni Region, where poor food consumption jumped from 6 percent to 18 percent, while borderline cases rose from 19 percent to 36 percent.

Those most threatened by rising food prices are people living with HIV and AIDS, which affects about 26 percent of Swazi adults aged 15 to 49.

Good news

One bright spot in the vulnerability data is evidence that the tradition of families helping relatives in need continues. All four of the country’s regions registered an increase in the amount of food consumed by households that was not home-grown or purchased, but provided by relatives.

In the drought-prone Lubombo Region, food “transfers” increased to 26 percent of households’ food consumption in 2008, compared to 21 percent the year before. In the southern Shiselweni Region, food transfers more than doubled, from 11 percent to 25 percent.

Dependence on food transfers has grown more acute in urban areas: in Manzini, food transfers tripled from 8 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2008, and increased fivefold in the Hhohho Region, from 5 percent to 26 percent of food consumed by households.

“But there is a limit to what relatives can do for one another as food prices get higher and supplies get scarcer,” said food aid worker Dlamini. Currently, 238,625 Swazis – one quarter of the population – require food aid.

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LIBERIA: Trading weapons for makeup brushes – but still no jobs

Photo: Glenna Gordon/IRIN

Tony Clarke has trained to be a cosmetologist under the UN’s post-conflict rehabilitation programme

MONROVIA, 2 February 2009 (IRIN) – Tony Clarke traded two grenades for a set of combs, makeup brushes, nail varnish and a short course in cosmetology.

“They help me beautify myself,” said the 32-year-old who sports a carefully trimmed goatee and wears a flashy knock-off designer watch. “As a cosmetologist, you have to groom yourself before you can groom anyone else.”

Clarke, who fought in the country’s civil war, is set to graduate from his training in March. But given skyrocketing unemployment and poorly developed private industry in Liberia, he might end up like many other trained ex-combatants – unable to find a job.

Clarke was one of hundreds of thousands of Liberians, many of them children at the time, who fought in the war, which left over 330,000 displaced, tens of thousands of injured and an unknown number dead.

He is also one of 101,000 former fighters to take part in a UN-led disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) process following the end of the war six years ago.

Through the DDRR scheme – funded by the governments of Norway, the US and the UK among others, and executed by the UN and NGOs – ex-combatants hand in their weapons in exchange for cash and in some cases vocational training in mechanics, carpentry, agriculture, cosmetology or other trade.

Clarke and his friends prefer to be called beneficiaries rather than ex-combatants according to Kpangbala Sengbe, a programme manager for the government-run National Commission for DDRR, who says the shift in terminology represents a positive attitude change.

No jobs

But for now it is not clear how far the benefits will go, as many trainees who participated in the programme still have no jobs. Liberia’s unemployment rate stands at 70 percent, according to Ministry of Labour statistics.

“The private sector was not developed so the people [who did vocational training] were not employed,” said an official from the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) who preferred not to be named. “People need money yesterday.”

Clarke is looking forward to setting up his own beauty salon, but to afford to do so and support his family he would have to leave the capital Monrovia for somewhere where the cost of living is lower. In April – when the DDRR programme is set to shut down – he will lose the US$30 monthly allowance the UN paid him to help him cover transport and supply costs.

Photo: Glenna Gordon/IRIN

Beauty school in Monrovia

Agriculture overlooked

More jobs would have been created had training schemes emphasised agriculture, the national DDRR commission’s Sengbe said.

Just four percent of Liberia’s lowlands are currently irrigated, according to the Agriculture Minister Chris Toe, leaving the country highly dependent on imported food to get by. Liberians import 90 percent of their rice from Asia and the United States, making the country vulnerable to price fluctuations.

UNMIL offered agricultural training but – despite the fact that two-thirds of Liberians live rurally – only four percent of trainees chose to focus on agriculture, according to UNMIL.

Though a return to the land brings job opportunities, many ex-combatants are not interested.

Matthew Karr, 31, comes from Nimba County where his mother cultivates rice, but he does not plan to return. “I came here [to the capital] to hustle on my own. If I had a choice, I’d become an accountant.”

DDRR to finish

Despite the DDRR scheme’s flaws, many are worried about the consequences when it shuts down. Even with few jobs going, the UN’s US$30 monthly training allowance helps people get by, according to Clarke.

An UNMIL official who preferred not to be named said other kinds of employment schemes such as the UN-funded and Liberian government-run emergency employment programme – which started in 2006 – have been more effective than UNMIL’s training.

This programme used labour-intensive methods to repair roads, dig ditches, and build up infrastructure destroyed by the war, employing 60,000 people for six weeks, and paying them with a combination of food and money.

Donors should look to these work-creation projects in the future, to try to stimulate the economy, build up infrastructure and give people jobs, Sengbe said.

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MAURITANIA: New identity cards for repatriated refugees

Photo: Seyid Seyid/IRIN

Returnee Benta Yoro Sow, second adult from left, outside her late father’s home in Rosso, Mauritania

ROSSO, 2 February 2009 (IRIN) – One year after the first convoy of Mauritanian refugees departed Senegal for Mauritania more than 7,000 people have returned, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), but many still lack citizenship papers.

Mauritania’s post-coup government has pledged to speed up identity card distribution, which began in November.

Government officials recently estimated that it would finish distribution to returnees by the end of 2008, but head of the governmental Human Rights Commission Lemine Dadde – appointed after the 6 August coup – told IRIN on 2 February that the process is ongoing.

A tripartite agreement signed by Senegal, Mauritania and UNHCR in November 2007 stated that repatriated Mauritanians should have their citizenship papers within three months of their arrival. Returnees have told IRIN that without their papers they are unable to leave their tent communities with ease.

Returnee Benta Yero Sow, 37, living on the outskirts of Rosso, a town on the Senegalese border, told IRIN she was relieved to receive her identity papers in December.

“I do not regret coming back to raise my children in their father’s land. Now, I have no problem.”

But her neighbour and fellow returnee Alien Yero Diallo told IRIN his wait has not ended. “Four members of my family registered and applied on 13 March [2008] and we are still waiting for our papers, without which we cannot travel. We have only receipts that confirm our applications.”

The head of the government’s National Agency to Assist and Integrate Refugees (ANAIR), Madine Ba, told IRIN the agency is trying to accelerate distribution by sending staff to each of the 37 returnee sites. “We can do it better and we are trying to decentralise and speed up the process.”

Samba Alien Diallo told IRIN paperwork and housing are his main worries. “I have no place to live. The government told me land could only be given to a family of four persons. We are three people [and we have] no shelter at all. My child, my wife and I have to spend the day in a friend’s room and the night in another friend’s cottage.”

But ANAIR’s Ba dismissed Diallo’s account and told IRIN that each returning family, regardless of size, is given 400sqm of land and support from UNHCR to get settled. “In the coming months, in addition, the government will begin land distribution, based on family size, to those wishing to plant for the next harvest.”

The Human Rights Commission, which oversees ANAIR, has submitted to the military government a budget of US$8 million for 2009, which includes agro-pastoral support for 2,000 families, director Dadde told IRIN.

The UNHCR-assisted return is scheduled to end on 30 June. ANAIR director Ba told IRIN the agency expects some 11,000 more refugees to return by that time, bringing the total to 18,000 returnees.

In the late 1980s, a deadly border ethnic conflict forced out tens of thousands of mostly black Mauritanians, most of whom resettled in tent communities in neighbouring Senegal. The now-deposed President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi had made it a campaign promise to bring home the refugees.

Nine months after his first day in office the first UN-led convoy of returnees arrived.

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BENIN: Why some harvests never reach the table

Photo: Phuong Tran/IRIN

Government officials are trying to improve both market access and markets for producers’ goods in Benin. Girl in Cotonou’s largest market (file photo)

COTONOU, 2 February 2009 (IRIN) – In Benin poor roads and lack of markets compound problems faced by farmers, who harvested less in 2008 than in recent years, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Producers harvested some six million metric tons of food in 2008 – nearly 200,000 metric tons less than in 2007 and some one million metric tons less than in 2005, according to the government.

But infrastructure is as critical to food security as tonnage, Benin farmers and agriculture experts say.

“Everyone is focused on production, but there is so much else that needs to be reformed,” said Jean Prosper Koyo, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative for Benin.

Roads

A manioc farmer, Adam Mamoudou, said: “It is hard to get products out of our village to the market [30km away] because of the awful state of roads.” He lives in Banikoara, 600km north of the economic capital Cotonou. “It takes me three hours on bicycle or one hour by car…We are stuck.”

In its March 2008 national food security plan for Benin, FAO noted that the majority of Benin’s agricultural production zones become inaccessible during the rainy season. “Interventions are needed if we want to assure food security [in these areas] and wipe out poverty.”

Almost 40 percent of under-five children studied by the Benin government in 2006 had stunted growth and 23 percent were underweight. The UN is working with the government to finalise new data on food security.

Forty-two of Benin’s 77 communes, home to about three million residents, lack market-worthy roads, according to FAO.

As part of a US$2-billion agricultural revitalisation project launched in 2008, the government has targeted more than 2,000km of rural paths for repair and identified cultivable areas that need new roads.

The Minister of Agriculture, Roger Dovonou, told IRIN planned road renovations are scheduled to be completed by 2015.

Markets

Even when food makes it to the market, regional commerce is poorly regulated and can be disadvantageous to farmers, said FAO’s Koyo. “The largest market for producers from Benin and [neighbouring] Nigeria is informal.”

“The naira [Nigerian currency] is not convertible in Benin and poses problems during sales,” Koyo said. “The entire market needs to be organised differently to assure [Benin] producers a fair market for their goods.”

The market is not much better within Benin, he said. One of the biggest purchasers of food is the government’s food security agency known as ONASA, which sets purchasing prices without negotiating with farmers, Koyo told IRIN.

He added that under this system, farmers did not benefit from the global increase in food prices starting in 2005. “It is like the serpent eating its tail,” Koyo said.

“On the one hand, the state spends millions to help farmers, but on the other hand, producers do not benefit from international price [rises] because the government has fixed too-low prices,” he added.

In addition to improving markets and market access, the government intends to modernise agricultural equipment, help organise producer groups to improve their bargaining power and create an international food price monitoring system, according to the text of its agriculture reform project.

The reforms would also include investing in products other than cotton, the main export and largest cash crop. In 2006, production of cotton had slumped due in part to cricket infestation and an increase in production costs.

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