• By Godwin atser

Global leaders and experts need to integrate biofortification and other available options to fight the menace of vitamin and mineral deficiencies that is afflicting the poor, says the Director-General of HarvestPlus, Dr. Howarth Bouis.

 Currently, the most common interventions being used in fighting vitamin and mineral deficiencies include dietary diversity, fortification of staples such as flour and sugar, and supplementation. While increasing dietary diversity is an ideal longer-term solution; that requires increases in income. Fortification and supplementation on the other hand are relatively expensive, with supplementation with vitamin and mineral capsules alone receiving an estimated $5 billion per year.

 “Biofortification therefore provides a more cost-effective, cheaper, and easier access to these nutrients, and integrating it in current crop improvement efforts could have more impact,” says Bouis in a meeting with the Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Dr. Nteranya Sanginga.

 Generally, in the developing countries, vitamin A deficiency, for instance, remains a major bottleneck to improved nutrition with approximately 250,000 to 500,000 malnourished children going blind each year, and half of whom die within a year of becoming blind.

 InNigeria, vitamin A deficiency afflicts almost 20% of pregnant women and about 30% of children under five. Apart from lowering immunity, vitamin A deficiency results in economic losses in gross domestic product of about $1.5 billion, according to the Nigerian government estimates.

 Bouis says, “Unless we are willing to change the way we play the game, we cannot win the battle against malnutrition.”

 Last year, the Nigerian Varietal Release Committee released three provitamin A cassava varieties that are yellowish in color to help fight vitamin A deficiency.

The development of the varieties was led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture using conventional breeding methods with funding support from HarvestPlus. The National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike was the Nigerian partner.

 “The efforts in developing the varieties were fantastic and I congratulate IITA,” Bouis says.

 In his remarks, Sanginga says IITA will continue to support efforts that will lead to better nutrition globally, stressing that the competence and presence of IITA across several parts ofAfricaprovide unique opportunities for research and dissemination of improved technologies.

 Over 100 million people inNigeriadepend on cassava for their daily calorie, the majority of whom are poor and live on less than $2 per day.

HarvestPlus hopes that the new varieties will provide the vulnerable groups with more vitamin A in their daily diets.

 Farmers who participated in the pre-varietal release trials across the country said they liked the yellow cassava varieties and already there is a big demand for them.

Multiplication of the varieties is ongoing in four states inNigeria, namely, Akwa Ibom, Oyo,Benueand Imo.

 Paul Ilona, HarvestPlus Manager forNigeriasays, “It will take some time before we have enough quantities to give out.”

 In 2013, when sufficient certified stems are available, HarvestPlus and its partners will then distribute these to about 50,000 farming households initially.

 Farmers will be able to grow these new vitamin A varieties and feed them to their families. They can also multiply and share cuttings with others in their community, amplifying the nutritional benefits. After the mid-2014 harvest, more than 150,000 household members are expected to be eating vitamin A-enriched cassava.

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About IITA:
IITA is an international non-profit R4D organization established in 1967, governed by a Board of Trustees, and supported primarily by the CGIAR. We work with partners in Africa and beyond to reduce producer and consumer risks, enhance crop quality and productivity, and generate wealth from agriculture. We develop agricultural solutions with our partners to tackle hunger and poverty. Our award winning research for development (R4D) is based on focused, authoritative thinking anchored on the development needs of tropical countries.

End

• By Mkhululi, South Africa

Johannesburg- A top aide and administrator of former ousted SA president Thabo Mbeki recently confirmed to API that the former SA leader played a vital role in rigging Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections after they had no trust in MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai as they perceived him to be ‘unAfrican’. This resulted in the formation of coalition government pioneered by Mbeki after MDC pulled out of the run-off elections citing violence aimed at is faithful supporters by Zanu (PF) which had actual lost first round of elections to Morgan Tsvangirai who led by 49% after the former got 41%.
He further alleges that the former ousted leader helped in splitting the then powerful and unstoppable Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an opposition party in Zimbabwe. This follows claims by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in his book ‘At the Deep End’ that former SA president Thabo Mbeki helped in dismantling his unstoppable and powerful movement (MDC) in 2005 and denying him victory to state house. According to the book, Prime Minister Tsvangirai, clearly laments Thabo Mbeki’s contribution to the split and fall of his party in 2005 and Welshman Ncube also mentioned at fault for the split in the MDC, and Tsvangirai himself surfaces as a miscalculated man. Ncube, for example, blundered for the split in the MDC, and Tsvangirai himself emerges merely as a misjudged man.

Tsvangirai clearly countersign  Thabo Mbeki’s contribution to, and understanding of, the Zimbabwean situation. Mbeki, if ever he wrote his own version of events would ndoubtedly return the favour. There grew a lukewarm accord between the two men, and there was no chemistry between them. This much is acceptable, but Tsvangirai never seeks to interrogate the chemistry that did develop between Mbeki and Mugabe.” The Prime Minister Tsvangirai further sensationally reveal that President Robert Mugabe was ready to hand over power to him after the 2008 elections a move confirmed by the SA official.

“The then State Security minister, Nicholas Goche approached my party with proposals from Mugabe on transfer of power where the 87-year-old was reportedly pleading for concessions,” the book states. In an exclusive interview with AIP, the official speaking on condition of anonymity fearing for his life, he alleges that former president Mbeki never trusted Tsvangirai whom they suspected of working with the British and Americans. He highlights that the intact and powerful MDC posed a threat to Africa.  ”MDC was too powerful and posed as a danger to African society. Unfortunately, our administration never trusted Tsvangirai. We knew very well that he was working with Western countries. If allowed to take over power in Zimbabwe then it was going to spell disaster to our continent as he was dealing with wrong people.

We had put him under counter-surveillance and we knew of all about his movements,” he said. Questioned on the necessity of surveillance, the official highlighted that the prime minister was not trusted with power as he was undermining the African agenda by working with western countries. He further agreed that Prime Minister Tsvangirai won the 2008 elections but they made sure that he doesn’t get into power as he didn’t represent African society.
“Tsvangirai was working with the whites; our intelligence always worked on him and we had our proof of that and we didn’t want to invite trouble in our region and we saw it necessary to have a coalition government in Zimbabwe for the time being as we were waiting for him to reform. In 2008 he absolutely won the election but it wasn’t the right time for him to take over the country as he was working with the wrong people,” he said.
The former senior official also claimed that they had arranged for President Robert Mugabe to resign after losing the elections to Tsvangirai- a move his henchmen and uniformed commanders refused. He further alleges that Mugabe was to spend the remaining part of his life either in Namibia after an arrangement with retired president Sam Nujoma or Guinea Bissau.

 Cde Mugabe had conceded as he agreed to retire to either Namibia or Guinea but his henchmen and boorish uniformed commanders persuaded him to stay on. Tsvangirai was not an option to take them forward and that is when we settled for a government of national unity which saw both men agreeing to share power,” he added.

End

MAO,  – With drought conditions chronic in the Sahel, many farmers give up trying to grow crops and head to towns and cities to find work.

In Chad many go to the south or to Lake Chad where irrigation from the fast-shrinking lake is used to farm. But some agro-ecologists say governments, donors and farmers should not abandon agriculture in the Sahel, and despite being “very difficult”, with the right approaches, there is “huge potential” in natural regeneration, traditional irrigation methods, and simple alternatives such as crop diversification.
 
“The Sahel has enormous potential – this is a very marginal food-growing environment, so we are forced to learn how this natural system works. All we’re doing is looking for the clues in nature,” said Tony Rinauld, a research and development adviser on natural resources to World Vision Australia who worked in the Sahel for 19 years, practicing agro-forestry, a traditional land-use system that combines trees or other woody perennials with crop and animal production.
 
The Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal regions in western Chad are chronically food insecure, and periodically experience acute malnutrition rates above the emergency threshold. According to NGOs, rates reached 19 percent in Kanem earlier in 2012 and many families have already run out of food and are down to one or two goats.
 
Both regions are dotted with fertile oases, known as ‘wadis’, that have for years been left by their traditional ‘owners’ – the aristocrats, or ‘Sultanate’, and village chiefs – to grow little more than date palms, lemon and mango trees. Vegetables are systematically grown in just 100 of Kanem’s 500 wadis, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which runs a project with the European Union (EU) humanitarian funder, ECHO, to help the poorest families grow vegetables in 120 oases across Kanem and Bahr el Ghazal.
 
“Here [in Kanem] one crisis just flows into the next one… but we are trying to keep people here and to see how we can enlarge the wadis further,” said Abdul Karim, FAO’s food security head in Mao, the capital of Kanem.
 
Sultanates and village chiefs lend the oases to separate producer committees of men and women for 5 to 10 years, while FAO helps build a water point and provides the pump, gives farmers seeds and tools and trains them in market gardening.
 
Minder Mohamed Ali was guarding fields of lettuces, carrots, aubergines and onions in Aloum 2 wadi, 8km from Mao. “We eat some, we sell some of the vegetables – many farmers weren’t able to do much before this, as they have had no production this year,” he told IRIN.
 
“Now we see vegetables in the market every day,” the representative of the Sultanate in Mao, ni Alifeh Mahadi Alifey Mahlabtra, told IRIN. “It is also a motivation for people to do something… we will [probably] renew the contract in five years – we want people to get enough food,” he said. “Before, people here grew rice, now we are completely dependent on our wadis.”
 
With the right level of investment and the right approach, anything is possible, said Augustin Ilunga, head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Mao, which has for decades been helping to keep severely malnourished children alive. “In a desert landscape like this, with climate change, it will take a lot of work to change… but with the right attitude it’s possible. Otherwise we’ll be here giving Plumpy’Nut [a highly nutritious foodstuff given to malnourished people] forever,” he told IRIN.
 
Ultimately, this project has worked only because land was made available to the very poorest groups, who ordinarily would not have had access to it, said Remy Courcier, Emergency coordinator at the FAO in the capital, N’djamena. “Land ownership and land rights are central to improving prospects in the Sahel.”
 
Courcier told IRIN that investors in Chad should follow other Sahelian examples. “Here in Chad not much has been done over the past 30 years, but in Niger there is lots of research into improved seed varieties, traditional irrigation, environmental protection such as controling sandy dunes - we could use more of this.”
 
Learning from Niger
 
Niger too is prone to drought and food insecurity, and parts of the country have high malnutrition rates, but there has been some success since 1985 in re-greening parts of its desert landscape – an estimated five million hectares – which environmental writer Mark Hersgaard has called “one of the great success stories in the field of climate change and agriculture”.
 
NGO World Vision was part of the project, helping farmers move away from destructive slash-and-burn farming techniques in the south-central Maradi region to agro-forestry.
 
Preserving trees protects sandy soil from erosion caused by the strong Harmattan winds that blow across the Sahara, as well as heavy downpours in the rainy season; while also restoring soil fertility by producing biomass, says the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
 
The results have been impressive. Farmers who shifted from growing only millet to agro-forestry are collectively producing an additional 500,000 tons of cereals each year, which can help feed 2.5 million people, according to some assessments. Rinauld says participating farmers more or less doubled their income from $200 to $400 per year.
 

Photo: Anna Jefferys/IRIN

A “wadi” or oasis in the desert

For years Rinauld worked with farmers who “almost entirely relied on millet in an environment that almost ensured the crop would fail”, he said. Now, if millet fails in a drought, “you have trees to rely on – you can sell the wood, or at least you can get some fodder so livestock can still produce meat,” he said.
 
World Vision and other organizations have encouraged farmers to diversify their crops by rotating millet with cassava and sorghum, and use natural mulch as fertilizer. They have also identified trees and bushes that act as natural fertilizers to save farmers the expense of buying it at market prices.
 
Other methods of regenerating land in arid Sahelian regions include simple irrigation systems such as zaï’ planting pits – small pits used to grow crops and catch water – and half-moon water catchments, according to the Sahel Working Group’s report, Pathways to Resilience in the Sahel.
 
The way forward
 
More experimentation with such methods needs to be done across the Sahel, Courcier said. Sahelian zones also need far more investment. “The government’s priority is the south where most people live. They can irrigate there, mechanize, intensify – that’s logical, but it’s a problem for the more difficult zones,” he told IRIN.
 
The FAO project has had a significant impact on children’s malnutrition – a 2011 evaluation of FAO’s Bahr et Ghazal wadi scheme noted that acute malnutrition levels dropped by 10 percent among children whose families were involved – but Courcier said it was still “small-scale”.
 
The government has not ruled out investing in the Sahel zone. The Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, Djimet Adoum, told IRIN in March that after visiting the FAO wadi scheme and agreeing that it should be enlarged, it planned to invest in more irrigation schemes, with significant investment in small-scale farmers.
 
Some 8 percent of the government’s annual budget targets agriculture – just 2 percent shy of the Maputo Agreement, which African states signed to boost agricultural production – but the south is the “bread-basket” (although some four out of 10 households in the region are still food insecure) and the bulk of investment goes into improving rice yields in the south, the minister said.
 
Once governments see the results of investment in agriculture in arid areas, they will engage more deeply said Rinauld. World Vision’s agro-forestry and natural regeneration schemes are now running in eight countries, including Chad, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Uganda and Ethiopia, and hopes to open in other East African countries soon, he said.
 
The Kenyan government recently passed a regulation that farmland must have 10 percent tree cover; while the Ethiopian government said it wishes to replicated World Vision’s project on 15 million hectares of land.
 
The energy and commitment of farmers can also help such projects to flourish – in Niger the acreage that has been ‘re-greened’ far exceeds the amount supported by World Vision. The Africa Re-greening Initiative and IFAD are both investing heavily in agro-forestry.  “I’m very encouraged,” said Rinauld.
 
The Sahel “will never be a region where it is easy to live – the population has grown, the capacity will always be relatively small, and solutions will always be limited,” said Courcier, but that doesn’t mean people should give up on it.
 
aj/he
source www.irinnews.org

Photo: Nils Elzenga/IRIN

Houley Dia from Houdallah village in Brackna region, ran out of food a month ago

KAEDI,  – Hunger has come again to the Sahel. “Since yesterday I have only drunk water,” said Houley Dia, 60, a widow who lives in Houdallah, a village of the Fula ethnic group in southern Mauritania on the border with Senegal. “I have lived through hard times before – no rain, animal diseases, locust swarms – but this year is worse than ever,” she told IRIN.

After a devastating drought and crop failure led to food insecurity and malnutrition for many children in 2005, 2008 and 2010, this time hunger is affecting about 10 million people and threatening to put more than one million children into a state of severe malnourishment, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Hungry tripled

Mauritanians are used to going hungry – the country is structurally food insecure and drought-prone – but this year 700,000 Mauritanians are facing hunger, which is triple the number in 2010, or one in four people in rural areas, according to the government Commissariat de la Sécurité Alimentaire and the World Food Programme (WFP) (December 2011).

The highest food insecurity rates are in the southeast and east of the country, including Gorgol, Guidmagha and Hodh Echargui, where percentages range from 29 to 37.

Across the region, in parts of Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, people are beginning to run out of food. In some villages in southern Mauritania there is already nothing left to eat, and the driest months of the year are only just approaching. Women in Houdallah told IRIN they feared they could starve in the weeks before help arrived, this time from international aid organization Oxfam, which is distributing US$50 monthly to 191 vulnerable families until the rainy season comes in the autumn.

Oxfam gives cash rather than food because markets are still functioning, but they will evaluate the programme in mid-May to see if the situation has changed, said Oxfam team leader Aly Gueye.

Fatimata Abdurahman Sow, 47, whose name is on the list to receive cash support, told IRIN: “I only eat a little rice each day, that’s all there’s left. And there are many like me. We can’t even feed our goats anymore.”

No water for crops

On the edge of the village, Houdallah’s only agricultural initiative – marked with signs from the aid agency, World Vision, and the Mauritanian government – has been abandoned and the soil is as dry as the surrounding desert. “We tried to grow crops but we couldn’t afford enough water,” says Hapsatou Modi Ba, 40, a villager. “Water from village wells costs 5 ourguiya (a little over $0,01) per 20 litres.”

Photo: Nils Elzenga/IRIN

Children in Darhkhadra village in the Borghé district of Brackna region

In Darkhadra, a village peopled by ethnic Moors, about an hour’s drive from Houdallah, the women’s collective has planted a small vegetable garden to help them get through the lean season. “But these few carrots and onions don’t even suffice to feed a tenth of our people,” says Youma Mintmohamed, 50, the leader the collective. “Our children are sick of need.”

One of the gardeners, Oma Mintely, 30, shows us her baby. Pus has glued one of her eyes shut and she has a hacking cough. “A lack of vitamins, I suppose,” says Mintely shyly. The baby of her friend, Ize Mintyouba, 38, caked in dirt, doesn’t seem to register anything happening around it. Several other children are equally apathetic. Medicines are hard to get in such villages and Mauritanians often have to walk up to two hours to reach the nearest health clinic.

The women respond with sad laughter to the question about possible food stocks. “There’s nothing left here but dust and sand,” said Mintmohamed, a mother of five.

With food for the poorest households having run out in February, many are already completely dependent on markets. Wages for daily labour, to which over half of the households turn to earn an income in the lean season, have dropped because so many are looking for work. Most people are now buying their food on credit, according to WFP.

Aid agencies are only able to reach a small number of those in need. Oxfam Regional Campaigns and Policy manager Stephen Cockburn is worried about the region-wide developments. “Oxfam is working hard, but alone will only be able to reach around 10 percent of affected people.”

Hugely underfunded

Thus far only $17 million has been made available for Mauritania, according to OCHA’s financial tracking system, which is nowhere near enough to meet the country’s needs: WFP alone requires $50 million to fund its response and thus far has received just one-quarter of that, according to WFP head Jacqueline Seeley. Even then, she said, it will only target 380,000 of the 700,000 food insecure.

Photo: Nils Elzenga/IRIN

Many villagers in Darkhadra village, southern Mauritania, cannot afford water to grow vegetables

Unless governments decide to reach all people affected and put the necessary funding into it, there will always be a gap [in Mauritania],” she told IRIN. WFP emergency food distributions are planned to start in April, though it has reached 50,000 since November 2011. as part of an ngoing programme.

The response by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to the Malian refugees in Mauritania is 20 percent funded, and its overall response to feed malnourished children, just under one-third. The organization has nutrition stocks for a further six weeks

No joint aid agency fundraising appeal for Mauritania has been launched to date, according to OCHA, although UN and NGO partners are discussing whether or not to launch one.

The Mauritanian government called for international help in December 2011, together with other Sahelian governments, saying it needed $167 million to build up food stocks for people and animals, for cereal distributions and food subsidies, and to set up food-for-work programmes. It has done food distributions in some areas, and there are some village and national cereal stocks in place, but nowhere near the 15,000 tons needed. One aid agency representative told IRIN that no government officials have visited the villages of Houdallah and Darkhadra.

The government has little capacity to address malnutrition issues said head of UNICEF in Mauritania, Lucia Elmi, while there are too-few NGOs (just 15 for the whole country) able to give sufficient help.

“It isn’t normal, what is happening”

A thinly spread population (half the people in Manhattan occupy an area twice the size of France), little infrastructure, poor roads and no internal flights make operating in Mauritania very challenging and expensive, Elmi commented. It can take four days to reach some communities, but this should change with the introduction of WFP-led humanitarian flights starting in April.

Cyprien Fabre, West Africa head of ECHO, the humanitarian aid body of the European Union (EU) said they are providing $16 million for the Sahel, which includes existing regional funding plus an additional $6.6 million for the crisis, but it is still not known how much of this will go to each country, he said. It is now up to partners to come to them for money and he foresees funding coming through by the end of April.

Sahel-wide, the international aid response has been slow to materialize. Of the $925 million estimated by the European Commission (EC) to help all those threatened, $200 million has so far been donated; and another $200 million pledged. “Funding is usually low [in the Sahel], partly because it is still considered a chronic emergency. Yes, it’s chronic, but it isn’t normal, what is happening,” said Elmi.

A revamped early response mechanism is needed, she said, though this would require far more global commitment to the Sahel.

This crisis might deteriorate into a full-scale catastrophe if more is not done, said Oxfam’s Cockburn. “By the summer you could see these notorious images of skeletal children emerging again in the media. They will motivate the international community to donate. The only problem is, by that time it will be way too late.”

ne/aj/he
source www.irinnews.org