THE Southern African Development Community (SADC), region is experiencing an increasing levels of food insecurity that is compounded by recurrent climatic shocks, including the 2015/16 El Nino, which were the worst floods in the last 35 years.
Since 2010, the number of food insecure people has remained above 22.7 million per year. The rate of malnutrition remains high, with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Mozambique and Zambia recording exceptionally high stunting rates of above 40 per cent.
According to SADC's Regional Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis (RVAA), Programme report, poverty remains one of the greatest challenges in the SADC region, with approximately half of the population living on less than $1 a day (International Council on Social Welfare).
Most of the extremely poor are in rural areas, where farmers depend on rain-fed agriculture for their livelihoods. SADC member states' 13 out of 16 National Vulnerability Committees (VACs) were presented at the annual general meeting held in Dar es Salaam 2-6 March this year.
Among others looked at a couple of things including objective ways to review progress, what have been achieved as committees that are responsible for assisting vulnerability in all countries after looking at the progress reports.
Also the next meeting agenda, members looked was to develop the work plan for 2020-2021, which constitutes what the VACs will be doing to support governments and improving the assessment methodology as of understanding who is vulnerable, where are these people, how many are they and how the government can help them.
The meeting also used the opportunity to approve certain processes and documents that are to do with the programme, include how to approve the program theory of change on how member state put the process of assessing vulnerability to development agenda, which also is one of the council of ministers' March 18, 2020 video meeting agenda.
The delegates who took part at the meeting conducted under SADC secretariat in collaboration with World Food Programme (WFP), commended for the job well done so far, according to an interview with them.
Clement Kalonga, the Technical Services Manager of RVAA Programme, said they are happy that that they are doing well and now looking at both the impact in better identification of the vulnerable and at the ability of the government to support the process without requiring external support.
They said there are some countries that are doing well though the system has pretty much been supported by donors. "Most of the countries now have included some kind of support that is coming from the government, would actually highlight an example of Botswana where the government is now funding hundred percent of the course for the vulnerability assessment.
"It's a good model as the other member states have not reached that level yet, though counties like Tanzania are actually making progress to hopefully coming years to fully embrace the process of supporting the vulnerability assessments."
Kalonga noted that Tanzania is among the countries that have been doing well and he was optimist to be a fully government-driven feat.
"But all the member states have made progress from where there was zero contribution from government 10 years ago. In this programme we have analyzed, it is making more than ten percent contribution, hence the governments are taking most of it," he expressed.
He, however said that in country partners; the United Nations (UN) agencies in most of the member states, are also contributing.
"I think currently there's a huge response we all don't want to say, we're comparing which is more vulnerable because it's not simple to say Zimbabwe is more vulnerable than this country, but we're saying that this season there is a lot of people who are being supported in Zimbabwe and the Southern Africa region.
"Second would be DRC for different reasons and there's also good case of Angola in terms of the governments that responding to those who are food insecure. "It doesn't necessarily mean that one country is more vulnerable than the other, but market prices in the DRC, the situation of war, has limited ability of people to produce the food so the report gives this kind of analysis as to say which country has the highest number of people that it is supporting to address vulnerability."
Hodest Kassim, the Acting Director for National Food Security Department at the Ministry of Agriculture, emphasizes that Tanzania has been doing well in RVAA and has started taking it itself.
"The last National Vulnerability assessment survey shows that the government released a budget that was around 80 per cent of the cost covered by the government and hopefully this year we're going take it fully to a hundred percent, I want to commend the nation for that."
Kassim added: "We highly appreciate the support that we have been getting from the programme, especially in capacity building for our vulnerability assessment team which is MUCHALI. MUCHALI in Kiswahili ni Mfumo wa Ukusanyaji wa Taarifa za Uchambuzi wa Hali ya Chakula na Lishe.
This team comprises of the government side and the development partners, in the government side. According to Kassim, the team also comprises office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Health, FAO and WFP and other stake holders.
Stressing, he said MUCHALI team has been carrying out assessments every year to determine the food and nutrition situation in the country and the information that is coming from this service helps the Ministry of Agriculture and the Prime Minister's office to take decisions on the intervention that has to be made.
Kassim said: "For example for the year 2018-19, the country had experienced some kind of crop failure in some areas because of the rainfall was not good, so after the assessment we discovered that there are some areas that needed food support.
"The prices were too high, so from the output or the report that we got from the assessment team, then the Ministry of Agriculture responded by allowing the national food reserve agency to release some food and sell it at the price below the market price. That was one of the consumption products coming from the MUCHALI team, so this is a team that we rely upon."
Kassim further explained that food security right now is good because for the areas that get modal rainfall they'll be starting harvesting. He said that areas like Morogoro Region are harvesting, areas like the lake zones are also now harvesting, so the short falls that we experienced around November, October and December, have now disappeared and as a nation, we are sufficient and secure.
In retrospect, Alex Banda, the SADC Disaster Risk Reduction Unit (DRRU) at the SADC Secretariat, said that they have many responsibilities in making sure that member states are coordinated when dealing with issues of disaster.
"This is considering that since the thermo memorial, the region has been affected by a number of disasters, but this has worsened maybe from around 2015 to 2016, when we had the El Nino floods which has persisted up todate, we have seen more warming in the Indian ocean which has also increased the number of cyclones that are developing."
States that are ultimately affecting the region include heavy rains the region has received, because of the floods that have emanated from those rains, then because of that the floods combined with the cyclones and drought that has increased the number of people who are vulnerable and need assistance.
"So this is a meeting of a steering group which is supposed to make decisions on behalf of member states, in terms of how best we coordinate in ensuring that we are able to know how many people are vulnerable, what capacity we have to support them, but also in terms of how we can make sure we are able to do that on our own."
He said that currently most of what they are doing is supported by international cooperative partners whom they appreciate, but they are supposed by now to say how they can do this on their own.
Banda says climate predictions are supposed to become heavier, the frequency of disaster expected to increase, not just the frequency, but also the severity, in the past maybe it was one cyclone in a few decades, now just this year we have had over ten cyclones out of which three had devastating impacts.
"Lucky that out of ten only three had those impacts, we never know in the next year how many will have those impacts. So we need as a region to be ready. How do we make sure that we are ready ourselves, so this meeting had to do that exactly."
Sithembiso Gina, The SADC Senior Programme Officer added: "The core of sustainable development, and if you embrace the sustainable development in terms of its goals, the first thing that is mentioned is about food, hunger and poverty.
"And these are issues that are speaking to inequalities, when you merge food, security and inequalities, you are speaking to the issues of vulnerability and this particular programme has been with us for the past twenty years if I could say."
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She said that all it has been doing is strengthening the ability of the region to provide early warning information that influences policies and programmes, influences the strategic decisions as well as the information that feed into the programming aspects, as well as the projects in interventions.
"But this has been a long story of the food security when it did the household assessments, for this particular meeting in the third phase of this particular programme, of importance, it is graduating the programme to be part of the institution, the government institution, the national development institution.
"We have been growing vertically before, but now we want to establish those competences as a programme so that we inform the policies with the assessments that we do and over the years I think that we've got in this particular meeting.
"We got some evidence that now synthesis report has been with us and it is being utilized by a lot of people and if you could look at it, it was neither a the national level nor regional level; it was at local level," she added.
But more importantly, she said, is to influence the strategic issues around food security because we should be looking at food security in a development sector, but in our region we're still looking at it as a risk, as a disaster.
But, she added, when it comes to climate change adaptation and medication in food security, it will be influencing how food systems are spoken in terms of what input needs to be facilitated at strategic level. Andrew Odero, the Head of the RVAA technical support team who work for the walfare programme, emphasizes the issue of learning and hears from one another what is being done in different countries.
"And also share information on our thoughts on how we can work better in terms of early warning, how we can utilise forecast-based information to help us anticipate the needs long before they happen and also to identify the opportunities that we can work on multi sectoral interventions."
