Day: October 4, 2022

WASHINGTON, October 4, 2022 — Global headwinds are slowing Africa’s economic growth as countries continue to contend with rising inflation, hindering progress on poverty reduction. The risk of stagflation comes at a time when high interest rates and debt are forcing African governments to make difficult choices as they try to protect people’s jobs, purchasing power and development gains.

According to the World Bank’s latest Africa’s Pulse, a biannual analysis of the near-term regional macroeconomic outlook, economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is set to decelerate from 4.1% in 2021 to 3.3% in 2022, a downward revision of 0.3 percentage points since April’s Pulse forecast, mainly as a result of a slowdown in global growth, including flagging demand from China for commodities produced in Africa. The war in Ukraine is exacerbating already high inflation and weighing on economic activity by depressing both business investments and household consumption. As of July 2022, 29 of 33 countries in SSA with available information had inflation rates over 5% while 17 countries had double-digit inflation.

“These trends compromise poverty reduction efforts that were already set back by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Andrew Dabalen, World Bank Chief Economist for Africa. “What is most worrisome is the impact of high food prices on people struggling to feed their families, threatening long-term human development. This calls for urgent action from policymakers to restore macro-economic stability and support the poorest households while reorienting their food and agriculture spending to achieve future resilience.”

Elevated food prices are causing hardships with severe consequences in one of the world’s most food-insecure regions. Hunger has sharply increased in SSA in recent years driven by economic shocks, violence and conflict, and extreme weather. More than one in five people in Africa suffer from hunger and an estimated 140 million people faced acute food insecurity in 2022, up from 120 million people in 2021, according to the Global Report on Food Crises 2022 Mid-Year Update.

The interconnected crises come at a time when the fiscal space required to mount effective government responses is all but gone. In many countries, public savings have been depleted by earlier programs to counter the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, though resource-rich countries in some cases have benefited from high commodity prices and managed to improve their balance sheet.

Debt is projected to stay elevated at 58.6% of GDP in 2022 in SSA. African governments spent 16.5% of their revenues servicing external debt in 2021, up from less than 5% in 2010. Eight out of 38 IDA-eligible countries in the region are in debt distress, and 14 are at high risk of joining them. At the same time, high commercial borrowing costs make it difficult for countries to borrow on national and international markets, while tightening global financial conditions are weakening currencies and increasing African countries’ external borrowing costs.

This challenging environment makes it essential to improve the efficiency of existing resources and to optimize taxes. In the agriculture and food sector, for example, governments have the opportunity to protect human capital and climate-proof food production by re-orienting their public spending away from poorly targeted subsidies toward nutrition-sensitive social protection programs, irrigation works, and research and development known to have high returns.

For example, one dollar invested in agricultural research yields, on average, benefits equivalent to $10, while gains from investments in irrigation are also potentially high in SSA. Such reprioritization maintains the level of spending in a critical sector, while raising productivity, building resilience to climate change, and achieving food security for all. Creating a better environment for agribusiness and facilitating intra-regional food trade could also increase long-term food security in a region that is highly dependent on food imports.

Source: World Bank

ADDIS ABABA— At the very height of Climate Change induced hazards, 32 African countries converged Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to set a roadmap for better understanding and inclusion of Agroecology as a means of forging the next best solution for Africa’s food problems.

The three-day conference is one of many endeavours by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) to offset the climate catastrophe through a major agroecology policy solution and curb the negative effects it has on Africans’ social, economic, and ecological well-being.

The conference (AFSA) was organized in conjunction with Consortium on Climate Change Ethiopia and Environment Protection Authority to foster the prioritization of agroecology as a means of transforming the agri-food system, building resilience, and enabling small-scale farmers, pastoralists and fishers to adapt to climate change.

Participants including farmers, Women Groups, Faith Based Organisations, Fisher folks and the media were drawn from 32 African countries including Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique among others.

AFSA General Coordinator, Million Belay said the purpose of the high-level engagement was to bring consensus among African Actors on climate, such as governments, civil society organizations, Academia, religious leaders and media among others.

He said it was important to bring this issue to COP 27 because that is a place where agriculture and adaptation are going to be discussed as it is high on the agenda.

“In our engagement with African group of negotiators, we could see that they do not have a believe or trust on Agroecology, so we just want to create a consensus amongst the civil society organisations to be transmitted to our various governments” explained Belay.

He mentioned that there is a need to meaningfully engage small-scale food producers and indigenous communities, including women and youth, in the COP27 negotiations and beyond as they are the ones who manage landscapes across Africa. 

He urged them to reject false solutions that threaten land, seeds and breeds and increase reliance on global agrochemical corporations. 

He cited refocusing climate financing on sustainable food systems.

“Direct climate finance to agroecology is a far-reaching and very practical solution. The time is now for an appropriate and deliberate increase in financing for small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and indigenous communities to deliver sustainable food systems through agroecology,” he added.

Dr. Balley said the consensus was not only aimed at COP 27 but on the way and beyond that. 

“What shall we do before COP 27, what shall we do at COP 27 and what shall we do post COP 27, so it is to refine our agenda at COP 27. To collaborate and unite our agenda for Africa. So, by bringing all these actors together, we are creating a broad base for advocacy to issues related to the subject matter to discuss, deliberate and advocate”.

He maintained that there was so much confusion about what kind of agriculture Africa should have, towards adapting to the climate crisis that is coming.

“Some of us advocate for agroecology, some say it is climate-smart agriculture while others say it is nature-based solution, so there is a lot of confusion, lots of agendas which emanate from outsiders”.

He noted that as a continent the agenda was not clear, “Africa traditionally has diverse food but increasingly we are losing our diversity mainly because of the kinds of policies that we are promoting”.

“So, we are trying to propose a policy both at the country and continent level which will be coherent amongst us all as often we have lots of policies negating against each other while also bringing food access from all over the world.”

In November 2022, Egypt will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, with a view to building on previous successes and paving the way for future ambition.

According to www.cop27.eg/, the event is “a golden opportunity for all stakeholders to rise to the occasion and tackle effectively the global challenge of climate change facilitated by Egypt on the African continent”.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

In Malawi, hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers held protests Tuesday over delays for promised cash assistance to buy food. Protesters told VOA they have waited almost four months for promised handouts and are struggling to feed their families.

During their protests, the refugees marched to the U.N. offices inside the Dzaleka refugee camp in Dowa district, north of the capital Lilongwe, where they burned tires to draw attention to their concerns and anger.

Muhamad Bashiri, who was among the protesters, said “we were complaining about the delay in receiving cash handouts we use to buy food. We received our last handouts four months ago.”

He said the lack of assistance has sometimes made his family of three children go days without food.

The U.N. World Food Program is responsible for providing cash for food assistance to over 50,000 refugees at the Dzaleka camp.

But recently the organization said it lacked the funds to meet the needs of all the refugees.

In February, the WFP halted food rations to nearly 700 “self-sustaining” refugee families, citing funding limitations.

Kenyi Emmanuel Lukajo, the associate external relations and reporting officer for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR in Malawi, told VOA Tuesday that the UNHCR is aware of the food shortage problems in Dzaleka, and that efforts have been made to update refugees on the situation.

“UNHCR works closely with WFP and camp management and also the refugee leaders. We always conduct meetings to inform the refugees about the challenges, and update them on when they are able to get their cash assistance.”

Paul Turnbull, country director for the WFP in Malawi, said the organization last made a cash handout in August and that the delay is because of financial constraints the organization has faced in recent years.

“Since May 2019 we have been doing a reduced food assistance ration between about 25% and 50% lower than the ideal ration,” he said. “Now we face risks of pipeline breaks for food assistance on several occasions and so this year we have encountered that.”

Turnbull said the refugees will resume getting cash handouts on October 10.

“We have now secured sufficient funding for the remaining months of the year,” he said. “So, for the remainder of 2022, we will be able to do the monthly distributions to the refugees.”

However, Turnbull said more financial assistance is still needed to ensure the refugees get regular cash for food payments next year.

Source: Voice of America

The Sahel-based branch of al-Qaida, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), has claimed an attack on a convoy in Burkina Faso that killed more than a dozen soldiers last month, the SITE Intelligence Group said Tuesday.

Islamist militants attacked a convoy taking supplies to a town in northern Burkina Faso on September 26, days before the West African country was hit by its second military takeover this year.

JNIM claimed credit for the ambush and said it “caused significant economic losses to the enemy and ‘led to a shakeup’ in the Burkinabe army ranks, culminating in the military coup,” the SITE statement said.

Eleven soldiers were found dead and about 50 civilians were reported missing after the attack, the previous government said.

But an internal security document seen by Reuters on Tuesday gave a death toll of 27 soldiers.

Source: Voice of America