Government must move fast to mitigate the drought that is very likely to hit the country. The Meteorological Services Department has already said the rainy season has ended prematurely with very little rain expected throughout the country before the onset of the dry season.
NewsDay comment
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa has admitted there is going to be a serious shortage of food and government was already doing something to mitigate this.
His counterpart at the Agriculture ministry Joseph Made recently said an Agriculture Research and Extension Services team was on the ground carrying out a rapid assessment programme which would bring out the real food needs ward by ward.
The worst-hit provinces will naturally be the southern and south-western ones which include Masvingo, Matabeleland South and Matabeleland North.
Manicaland in the east is also very vulnerable. Reports indicate crops in these regions were already wilting. The staple maize which was already tasselling is said to be particularly hard hit by the lack of rain. The Mashonalnd provinces seem to be doing fine, but they cannot feed the whole country.
The country requires 1 384 000 tonnes of grain for human consumption and 350 000 tonnes for livestock and other uses and has to import if the harvest is below these requirements.
Mnangagwa should push government to move fast to ensure all processes including logistics are in place for a massive food importation programme.
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The social consequences of food shortages are far-reaching. They hit hardest the children in vulnerable communities. Already reports indicate thousands of pupils have dropped out of school. Most of these will most certainly be girls.
According to a 2013 Education Management System report, 130 000 primary and secondary schoolchildren dropped out of school in 2013 mainly due to early child marriages. When a community is hit by hunger it tends to sacrifice the girl child who is forced into early marriage to save the rest of the family. This is why the majority of school dropouts are always girls. These amounted to 52% in 2013.
But the percentage of male dropouts is also worrying. Poor harvests also mean families have no excess produce to sell to get school fees for the children.
A drought this season means the country has experienced two consecutive poor harvests. The consequences are too ghastly to contemplate.
In the past the rate of school dropouts has been stemmed by the donor-funded Basic Education Assistance Module (Beam), but reduced funding resulted in 165 000 pupils failing to access the fund last year.
When government looks at mitigating the effects of the current drought, it should, therefore, look at it holistically. Not only should it provide food handouts, but it should also look at how best to keep the children in school. Serious efforts should, therefore, be made to ensure programmes such as Beam are properly funded.
The major cause of the failure of Beam seems to have been government’s retrogressive relationship with the donor community. It is not a secret Beam was funded mainly by Western donors, but these have been insulted at every turn and accused of having nefarious agendas in funding vulnerable children. Another reason for its failure has been bureaucratic bungling. Donors are always finicky about how their money is handled and, therefore, demand a great deal of probity.
Good leadership, therefore, should be in place to lead the process of mitigating hunger and all its consequencies.
