Fewer meals and more child marriages
19/06/2008
In Zambia, future prospects are looking bleak. Up to 50,000 people in Zambia will need food aid to see them through the next harvest season. Due to increased food prices, families in Zambia are finding it increasingly difficult to provide adequate supplies for their children and themselves.
For Zambian people, especially those living in rural areas, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain an adequate and balanced nutrition due to increased food prices. Children from poor families are particularly affected and are prone to malnutrition. HIV/AIDS affected persons are running the risk of endangering their already weakened immune system if they do not eat a balanced diet.
So far, there has been an overall increase in the cost of maize meal, one of the main staple foods for Zambians, other cereals, cooking oil, milk and dairy products, table salt, sugar, and other processed food products. Maize meal is the main ingredient for the mealie meal that is a traditional southern African meal, which has a similar taste and texture to polenta and is usually eaten with meat, beans, vegetables or fish. The cost of Maize meal has increased from 34.5 ZMK in December 2007 to 43 ZMK in May 2008 per 25 kilogram. However, in May 2008 there has been a slight decrease in the cost of vegetables, fish, dried kapenta (Tanganyika sardine), meat, eggs dried beans, tubers and shelled groundnuts.
Arranged marriages and wild roots
In order to cope with the increased food prices, people are eating less and fewer meals per day. There is also a change in what people live on. People are buying cheaper goods, and more vegetables instead of meat.
Children are the first ones to suffer and the effects go beyond health issues. In order to reduce the number of family members they need to feed, in some regions in Zambia families are reacting by marrying off their daughters at a very young age. The girls, who are urged into arranged matrimony without giving their consent, are taken out of school early, and thus, cannot complete their education. According to the local newspaper, The Post, divorces and abortions among such marriages are high.
Other families who cannot afford to buy food have resorted to eating wild roots.
Impact on SOS Children's Villages
According to Florence Phiri, national director of SOS Children in Zambia, for the moment, the SOS families are managing to get by with their budget. However, if the recent developments continue, and at the moment it is very likely that people will have to face even more price increases, this will have a major impact on the families.
The staff at the SOS school has noticed that most of the children who attend the school, are not able to carry packed lunches, as their parents cannot afford it any longer.
More and more families are applying to the SOS Family Strengthening Programmes (FSP) to be included for various reasons, food being one of them. Poor families without stable incomes are finding it difficult to meet the daily food requirements for their families.
Grandmother Aissa is looking after eleven orphaned grandchildren. She engages in petty trading as a source of income and makes a profit of about $1 or $2 per day, which is not enough to feed all the children. The FSP provides a monthly food ration of a 25 kilogram bag of mealie meal, a bottle of cooking oil, beans and fish. This is still not enough and the family has to reduce the quantity of food and has even started skipping breakfast. In general the beneficiaries of the programme are badly affected as they are already low income earners.
SOS Children is responding to the crisis by providing monthly food rations to some needy homes e.g those who have terminally ill people, child headed homes and the elderly who may not be able to generate income to buy food. Some money has been allocated to food assistance, although it may not be enough to provide food to all families on the programme. However, if the food prices continue to rise, it will be difficult to maintain the programmes.
Additional hardship
The rise of food prices in Zambia is coming at a time when most parts of the country are just recovering from the effects of floods. During the 2007/2008 farming season, Zambia experienced heavy rainfall, particularly in the southern, western and some parts of the eastern provinces. The floods left great devastation behind, washed away bridges and culverts and left cultivated fields in ruins. In the southern province, which was the hardest hit in Zambia, about 70 percent of the food crops were washed away.
The aftermaths of the floods have led to the increase in food prices, particularly of maize and other essential vegetables, to an extent that, although markets generally have plenty of food, large numbers of people simply cannot afford to buy it. The soaring food prices are leading to increased poverty.
The recent increases in oil prices on the world market and their spiral effect on the country have also pushed the cost of food upwards. Zambia is also experiencing an energy shortage as a result of old electricity generation infrastructure that urgently requires modernisation. The people have to live with frequent power blackouts that have increased the cost of food production. This has also contributed to the increase in food prices.
In addition the government had reduced subsidies for the agricultural sector and the financing of social security in the 2008 National Budget.
Zambia's agricultural production is facing serious problems for the next season (2008/2009) as the harvest is expected to be very humble. As a result of this low food production in the next season, food prices are expected to rise even more and food imports will increase in the following period.
According to experts, there is a danger that the increasing food prices in Zambia may lead to social unrest as seen in other African countries.
The increasing food prices will result in the vulnerable not being able to feed their children and themselves and the country being dependant on external food aid. Up to 50,000 people will need food aid this year in order to see them through to the next farming season.
Relevant Countries: Zambia.