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Namibia: Food Price Hikes Compound Hardships
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New Era (Windhoek)
15 April 2008
Posted to the web 15 April 2008
Catherine Sasman
Windhoek
Namibia, like the rest of the world, is buckling under sharp food price increases, New Era reports.
"It is terrible, something must be done about the increase in food prices," said 61-year-old pensioner, Evelene Mafanga, after she has done her shopping and walks to look for a taxi back home.
She holds out her hand to show the change she has left after buying a loaf of brown bread - N$3.10.
"This is all I have left. As a pensioner I cannot cope without falling into debt and when the pension monies come in at the end of the month, everything goes out to service the debt."
Most pensioners, she said, are caught in this vicious financial circle and the staggering increase on food prices, particularly basic foodstuffs, has dunked this group even more into debt and poverty.
While one of her children helps her to pay her rent, she lives alone and struggles alone to keep her head above water, she says.
Her monthly shopping trolley has shrunk to five kilogrammes mealie-meal, five kilogrammes bread flour, cooking oil, a packet of Rooibos tea, two kilogrammes of brown sugar and meat consisting of some sausages, some beef, but mostly offal.
"I just cannot get that piece of chicken usually reserved for Sundays anymore," she said.
"See what I have bought for lunch," said Margareth Muyunda (53), opening her yellow plastic shopping bag to illustrate her point.
"I can only afford two brötchens (rolls). The price of food is just too high. We cannot afford commodities like macaroni or cooking oil anymore. One now has to buy butter instead."
Muyunda is a single mother of five children - three are still attending school and the two older ones are at tertiary institutions, so there is no supplementary salary to help out.
"I don't know where all these prices are going to end up," she said, adding that as a secretary at the High Court, she only takes home N$1000 per month.
"Inflation is so high, we cannot keep up," said another frustrated shopper, Luisa Bock. "Imagine what unemployed people must survive on. I cannot even say that I am surviving. I think it is so unfair; those with money get more, while those with none suffer more due to the increase of food prices."
If only the salaries can increase concomitantly, said Manfred Swartz, people may have a fighting chance to survive the new price hikes.
"It is not only the price of food that has increased; it is fuel, rent, inflation. The only thing that has not increased this year is our salary."
Waiting for customers, 31-year-old taxi driver Petrus Ashipala said his daily income has also shrunk considerably, but the sector is finding it difficult to increase their rates.
Taxi fares went up from N$6.50 to N$7 this year, the only increase for the year so far, but fuel prices have soared beyond all expectations.
"This means that I only take home something between N$180 and N$220 per day. Previously, I would at least take home between N$250 and N$300 per day," said Ashipala.
Last week, the Bank of Namibia (BoN) announced an annual increase in food prices of up to 15.6 percent in February this year, with food such as milk, cheese, eggs, oils and fats, vegetables and potatoes having gone up by 20 percent.
The reason for this increase - which is experienced on a worldwide scale - is said to be due to a confluence of three factors, said the Bank: the switch to planting crops for bio-fuel consumption, adverse climatic conditions and an increasing demand for protein in fast-growing economies such as China and India. In neighbouring South Africa - Namibia's main food supplier - an added element of a crippling electricity shortage has to be factored in to understand the rise in food prices in the region.
A Growing Global Crisis
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), food prices globally have increased by 48 percent since the end of 2006. The price of maize has doubled; world wheat prices have gone up by 70 percent; corn increased by 80 percent; and the price of rice, which is a staple food to thousands of millions, has increased by 75 percent.
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According to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, maize is the preferred staple food to more than 1.2 billion people in Africa and Latin America. Cassava provides one-third of the calorific requirements in sub-Sahara, and is the staple food to as many as 200 million poor people.
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