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Kenya: Starvation Stalks the Poor
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The East African (Nairobi)
15 June 2008
Posted to the web 16 June 2008
Philip Ngunjiri
Nairobi
Waiyua Mwongeli, a vegetable vendor in Nairobi's Kibera slum, is yet to understand why her business is doing so badly, her strategic position notwithstanding.
"No one is buying, including my routine customers," says the 40-year-old. "Something is wrong, but I don't know what."
The previous day, she had to throw away a sack of rotten tomatoes. Her fellow vendors are undergoing the same nightmare.
At home, she cooks less food than before for her children, and sometimes her family of five goes hungry.
Like other slum dwellers, she no longer eats enough. Once important dietary staples like meat, beans and sugar have suddenly become luxuries.
The sprawling village, with a population of close to 900,000 people, is among the slums in Kenya that are hardest hit by rising food prices.
Most people who live on less than a dollar a day are now struggling to survive and the spikes in food prices mean they must eat less or sometimes not at all.
Mwongeli's case is an example of what experts are referring to as the "new face of hunger," a situation in which shops and markets have plenty of food, but not enough customers who can pay for it.
Kenyans first saw food prices rise in the wake of the post-election violence that killed 1,200 people early this year, with at least 350,000 others being displaced from their homes
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, annual inflation had risen to 31.5 per cent last month from 26.6 per cent in April.
This is the steepest increase since the early 1990s, when increased spending in the run-up to the 1992 general election put it at 31 per cent.
The situation does not only afflict the slums alone. The majority of Nairobi motorists are now relying on public transport rather than spending money on fuel.
Food prices are shooting up, but incomes remain static. If the situation persists, people will starve, warns experts.
The current food crisis amounts to a gross violation of human rights and could fuel a global catastrophe, as many of the world's poorest countries, particularly those in the import-dependency category, struggle to feed their people, warn international development agencies, including ActionAid.
"It is an outrage that poor people are paying for decades of policy mistakes such as the lack of investment in agriculture and the dismantling of support for smallholder farmers," says Magdalena Kropiwnicka, policy analyst with ActionAid.
This year, the food import bill for developing countries is expected to rise by 40 per cent; in cases such as Burundi, Eritrea and Haiti the impact is catastrophic because of their high reliance on food and fuel imports as well as high existing levels of undernourishment.
Many families in these poor countries are already spending well over three-quarters of their income on food. They are unable to cope as prices continue to rise.
As part of its HungerFree campaign, ActionAid is demanding that governments act decisively to address the food crisis.
Decisions must be taken that will allow states to act immediately to fund increased social protection and boost the purchasing power of the poor, provide support for farmers, particularly women, and to boost production through access to seeds, water, credit and other inputs.
Decisions on longer-term solutions are equally essential, including the need for investment in small scale sustainable agriculture and strategies to increase access to land for small farmers, especially women.
Essentially, world leaders must finance these solutions with bold and serious commitments to increase aid to agriculture, debt relief and trade reforms that will benefit poor import-dependent countries, added Ms Kropiwnicka.
The World Bank, in its report, Global Economic Prospects for 2008 indicates that food prices have risen by 75 per cent since 2000.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 37 countries are facing a crisis and require external assistance - 21 of them in Africa, 10 in Asia, five in Latin America and one in Europe.
In 2007, the world's grains harvest - 2.1 billion tonnes - was a new record, 5 per cent more than the previous year.
However, only 1.01 billion tonnes of the harvest is likely to be used to feed people. An important proportion will be used to feed animals -760 million tonnes - and around 100 million tonnes will be used to produce biofuels.
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Although there is enough food for everyone, recently there has been a substantial increase in the demand for cereals, led by a growing food demand in Asia as well as demand for biofuels, bringing global reserves to their lowest level in 25 years.
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