Feeding Program
Millions of people in East Africa are experiencing chronic hunger and the threat of famine. Conflict, recurring severe drought, and high food prices are to blame. In addition, more than 800,000 people fled their homes due to violence in south Ethiopia in the first half of 2018.
"He who has a generous eye will be blessed, for he gives of his bread to the poor."
(Proverbs 22:9)
MMI aims to conduct feeding exercises periodically across the slums of Nairobi as an immediate intervention effort aimed at reducing the severity of food poverty. Apart from the urban areas, the Feeding Program incorporates relief efforts targeting drought-prone areas within Kenya and other poor nations in Africa and Latin America.
According to this measure, 226.7 million people are starving in Africa. The countries most affected by extreme poverty and hunger in Africa are mainly those located south of the Sahara. One in four people suffers from hunger there – which means that the share of the world's hungry is highest in sub-Saharan Africa.
Facts on Starvation in Africa:
- According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the U.N., some 153 million people (about 26 per cent of the adult population) suffered from severe food insecurity in 2014/15 in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Food insecurity exists when people do not have adequate access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their needs for an active and healthy life. The issue is thus not the existence of enough food, but access to food.
- There are several interrelated reasons why African states are vulnerable to food insecurity. Several countries in the region remain highly dependent on food imports to ensure adequate food supplies. Thus exposing them to unstable food markets and commodity prices. The African region also has the lowest per capita income in the world and the highest poverty levels. This means that large parts of the region’s populations are unable to cope with rising food prices.
- The majority of Africans are also directly dependent on subsistence farming on a continent that is prone to extreme natural disasters, including severe drought and floods. These natural disasters lead to failed crops, as well as insufficient pasture feed and water for livestock. The current El Nino drought has been one of the most intense and widespread in the past 100 years.
- The majority of African countries facing acute food insecurities are also experiencing internal conflict. This impedes both access to food and food production. The levels of political instability and corruption result in these states being unable to address food crises, whether caused by rising food prices or natural disasters.
- Food insecurity in South Sudan has reached extreme levels. Several parts of the country declared pockets of famine, and nearly 100,000 people face starvation. Limited humanitarian assistance has reached these regions because of recurrent fighting due to civil war.
- A famine can only be declared when certain measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger are met. Namely, at least 20 per cent of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope, acute malnutrition exceeds 30 per cent, and the death rate exceeds two per 10,000 people per day. The last famine in Africa was in Somalia in 2011, which killed an estimated 260,000 people.
- Apart from the three countries highlighted by the U.N., several other African countries are facing acute levels of food insecurity. The World Food Programme classified emergency situations in the Lake Chad Basin (Cameroon, Chad, Niger, including Nigeria) and Southern Africa (Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe).
- The Lake Chad Basin faces an acute humanitarian crisis caused by existing challenges of extreme poverty, underdevelopment and climate change. Boko Haram violence only aggravates these challenges. Some 7.1 million people need food assistance, and famine looms in the areas most affected by the crisis in northeast Nigeria. Malnutrition in the region is rising at alarming rates, and more than half a million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
- While the situation in southern Africa has stabilized somewhat in recent months, food insecurity remains widespread following two years of consecutive drought. Some 16 million people in the countries worst-hit by drought will need emergency humanitarian assistance throughout early 2017.