This information was made known through a presentation to the stream-work of the climate change related discussions at the International Convention Centre, ICC in Durban, KwaZulu Natal in South Africa during the Comprehension for Africa's Agricultural Development Programme Partnership Platform during the 17-22 March 2014.
The platform was an opportuity to review CAADP's last ten years of performance, plan for the next decade and align the process to the Science Agenda for Agriculture in Africa to accelate the realization of CAADP's Framework outcomes which include increased food production and productivity, access to markets and trade, availability of food and sustainable use of nature resources. At the same time, participants who were mostly high level officials and agricultural scientists, policy makers, investors and farmers had to plan for the climate change adaptation and mitigation alongside the CAADP momentum.
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| Mr. Masozi Kachale from SADC's' RVAA Programme Management Unit addressing the climate change stream work members at the CAADP PP |
According to the Livelihood Information Management Specialist at the Regional Vulnerability Assessment Analysis, RVAA ( SADC), Masozi Kachale, 11 countries that underwent the assessement, Namibia is the country with most food insecure population as also confirmed in the statistics he shared with the participants. Out of Namibia's about 2.1 million people, over 778 thousand people were categorized to be food insecure, which is more than 37 percent of the total population. The survey was conducted mainly in rural areas.
During an annual organization meeting, which usually takes place in December, RVAA Programme mandates for the formulation of the national level and regional budgets. It coordinates annual assessment and analysis in member states during April to June, actually starting next month. And it holds the annual disemination forum in July.
Kachale informed the participants that the programme assessed household level food security focusing on food availabilty and access, hazards (prices, droughts and floods) affecting access to different souces of food and income, and monitoring expenditure patterns. It also provides information on early warning, such as the rainfall forcasting and rainfall performance, crop assessment and market assessments and price monitoring. It also monitors regional level crop - with regard to regional food balance sheet, livestock production, regional and prices, population at risk to food security and nutrition trends. It also offers specialised training as part of regional capacity building.
According to Kachale's presentation, SADC established the RVAA Progarmme Management Unit in 2006, The RVAA's mandate is to strengthen national and regional vulnerability analysis systems in order to inform policy formulation, development programmes and emergency interventions that lead to reduction of vulnerabilty in the country. Its objective is to keep abreast and encourage coordinated development in the field of vulnerability and livelihood assessment in the SADC region.
Kachale also shared the RVAA findings on the prevelance of malnutrition among the children of under five years of age in the region including stunting, a sign of chronic food and nutrition insecurity which he said still remained very high.
Factors that contribute to vulnerabilty and food insecure according to Kachale include, poor rainfal patterns, which include delayed on set of planning rains, erratic rainfall patterns, prolonged drought periods which were experience during the past 2-3 years in Namibia, Botswana and some southern part of Zimbabwe.
Other factors include reduced casual labour opportunities and high unemployment, outbreak of livestock diseases such as foot and mouth diseases, high food prices, high prevelence of poverty in the region affecting the population to cope with shocks. And although decreasing, HIV and AIDS prevelence remains high in across the region and the civil strife in the DRC.
The unit has however also provided recommendations as part of the intervention actions - on short, and medium to long term basis.
Short term interventions
Short term interventions continuation
Medium to long term interventions
Short term to long term recommendations continuation
Some of the programme achievements include the establishment of 12 National Vulnerability Centres in 12 member states, development of livelihood maps for 11 member states, baseline assessment done in 9 member states, capacity building strategies being implemented successfully, strengthening or research and innovation in the region by supporting academic institutions, governments, donors and stakeholders making use of the assessment findings to design orogrammes and policy interventions and reduced levels of food insecurity as of result of the availabilty of the information.
RVAA works closely with various tertiary/academic institutions in the region, which include the University of Namibia, UNAM on the GIS and profiling, building spatial data sets. The University of Zimbabwe deals with Climate Change, Harzards VAA: meteorological, disease and pests, fire and wind as well as tsunami. The University of KwaZulu Natal coordinates food and nutrition security and vulnerability, market access and smallholder farming as well as sustainable livelihood options. University of Malawi, Bunda College deals with poverty measurement and VAA, HIV and AIDS, and livelihoods nutrition.Chancellor College works on house hold economy approach and individual household model. The Sokoine University of Agriculture is responsible for the community nutrition assessment. All this information was contained in the powerpoint presentation of Kachale.
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| Mr. Kachale (in a shirt) speaking to a colleague after his interesitng presentation. |
Another expert, from the International Livestock Research Institute, ILRI, Regional Programme leader Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, CCNFS, Dr James Kinyangi also presented the related situation mainly from the Western and Eastern African part of the continent. I could however not obtain his presentation copy at the time of posting this content.
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| ILRI, Regional Programme leader Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, CCNFS, Dr James Kinyangi |
The vulnerability situations in the various parts of Africa were critical to proper planning of improved livelihoods of the continental citizenry - and more so to the alignment of the next ten years of CAADP Framework results.
The author of this post was one of the members of the CAADP PP, and values so much the information shared with the participants and as usual, she loves to share what she learnt with especially her colleagues and friends as well as the general public. Again information is power and can assist anyone in making informaed decision, that's why she makes it her duty to empower the followers of this blog and their connctions. Kindly share this information as wide as possible as it might just help improve an African's situation or any human being on the planet as we are all citizens of the globe, indeed for improved quality of life.
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| Mr. Kachale and the author of this post, Namibia's Ms Menesia Muinjo after a brief interview short after his presentation. |
Compiled by Menesia Muinjo - acknowleding the efforts made by Mr.Masozi Kachale - the author of the pressentation on which she based this post content.
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