<h2>‘The Crisis Could Be With Us For The Unforeseeable Future’</h2>
The tear-inducing image of a young boy washed up on a beach in Turkey last year dominated headlines for weeks. His small, lifeless body had finally presented the true picture of the greatest crisis of our times. His death became a metaphor of the desolation and helplessness faced by the millions forcibly displaced.
The boy was later reported to have been on a boat with his family from his hometown Kobani in northern Syria, a country torn apart by war for years. He was one of 11,000 children reported as displaced every day, the victims of forced migration.
His father would later explain to reporters that their boat suddenly capsized as they were making a final and desperate attempt to escape the conflict-ridden state by sea.
This illustration is but one of many that has continued to grab headlines over the years. The refugee crisis is real and the biggest casualties are children.
Antonio Guterres, the former United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), highlights in the UNHCR Global Trends 2014 report: “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.”
Children form an overwhelming majority, at least about half, of the world’s total refugee population upwards of 60 million.
Chaos has long descended on the world but the lack of political will by global leaders is robbing children of their childhood, families and identity.
On a recent visit to Johannesburg, British politician, activist and author, Professor Peter Hain, the Lord Hain of Neath, said the refugee crisis is a calamity for women and children.
“This global phenomenon capitalizes on the shortcomings of states, adequate political standards need to be established in order to create change,” he told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
While governments are not as willing to initiate processes to mitigate the rising numbers of refugees, particularly children, Amnesty International earlier this year conducted the Refugees Welcome Index; the global survey revealed that government refugee policies and citizens are on opposite ends, with the important call to integrate the refugees into economies.
The fight continues for children, though. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation in unfamiliar, often crowded conditions they have no control over.
Mosa Moremi, national child rights and advocacy advisor of SOS Children’s Villages South Africa, tells us processes to integrate children into society are very difficult.
“In my experience, sometimes children are brought into the country by parents who have migrated and then they are later abandoned. They are left with nothing.”
She highlights that giving these abandoned or unaccompanied children adequate care becomes challenging and the system is riddled with layers of red tape.
Professor Hain echoes this sentiment, stating that the crisis which manifests in “a seemingly impotent international system led by the United Nations could be with us for the unforeseeable future”.
It’s no comforting thought that one estimate suggests that 80% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries and yet less than 9% are hosted by six of the world’s richest nations. And, the rise of right-wing populism ideas, as Professor Hain stresses.
This means that many will continue to face racism, xenophobia and discrimination, imposing an unprecedented new burden on children who often have little understanding of the social, political and economic discourse of a society.
In the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA speaks to three young migrants in South Africa, who now live in a limbo, hurt and homeless.
<h2>Sarah (16) and Kudzai (15) Mathe</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32018 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-059-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
One night in 2009 when Sarah and Kudzai Mathe, nine and eight respectively, were asleep after another long day selling tomatoes, onions and fruit, their stepfather returned home drunk as he did everyday but this time, he attempted to rape them.
Sarah was able to break free from his grip. She grabbed all her courage, and the money she had saved on the day with Kudzai, and together, they ran, not knowing where they were headed.
As they ran, Kudzai looked back. In the blackness of the night, she could see the house their mother raised them in fade into the distance, never to see it again. The girls had spent their early years with their parents in a small town in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Our parents got divorced when we were still young. Our stepfather didn’t even hide that he didn’t love us,” they say.
Shortly after their mother’s new union, they stopped attending school.
“He told us he didn’t have money to pay for school fees and that’s when we started selling fruit and vegetables on the street.”
Whilst other children walked to school or waited for the bus in the mornings, Sarah and Kudzai would set up their stall.
“The other kids would laugh at us because we wore rags and sometimes had no shoes.”
Things got worse when their mother fell ill and passed away in 2009.
“There was no longer place for us in that house. Our stepfather just brought in different wives every night and spent most of the money we would make.”
The day after they ran away from home, as they wandered the streets, Kudzai suggested they go to South Africa.
“I heard about it and thought we could get on the bus and just go.”
They arrived at a bus station and spoke with one of the drivers who directed them to the bus that would take them to South Africa.
“When we got onto the bus, the driver asked us how much we had and I pulled out all of our savings and he grabbed it and said we should find seats,” Sarah says.
“We were so hungry and the lady we sat next to on the bus gave us an apple each. We ate them like we’d never eaten before.
“After a few hours, the bus made a stop at Beitbridge; the driver told us to get off and that he would be back for us.”
They waited for the bus driver for two weeks. He didn’t come back for them. And they were only nine and eight years old.
When it dawned on them that the bus driver was not going to be back for them, they found work handing out flyers to travelers passing by the border bridge. They were paid R30 ($2) each a week and saved that up to pay malaicha, which Sarah explains means carriers. The malaicha would help them get to South Africa.
“We paid the R200 ($15) we’d saved and we were on our way.”
With Sarah and Kudzai were five other men.
“As we walked through the forest and then the Limpopo river, what scared us the most was that any one of the men could rape us, we were the only girls and the night our father almost raped us was fresh in our memory,” recalls Sarah.
Kudzai does not say much apart from a nod or a sigh throughout the interview. But she says now: “We really thought South Africa was so far.”
After over 12 hours of walking, they found themselves in Messina, the northernmost town of Limpopo.
“We looked for work but no one would hire us.”
In time, they found an old woman who paid them R50 ($3.6) a month to clean and do the laundry. “It wasn’t that hard for us because we were used to working.”
They used the money to pay for a lorry ride to Johannesburg in September 2009. They were two of the lucky ones. When they got to Johannesburg, they were directed to the Methodist church in Braamfontein. They have since been moved and “life is good”.
“We are back in school and I love maths but I’m not that good at it,” Kudzai giggles.
“We also have each other and that’s what matters,” says Sarah, her smile brightening up a face hardened by experience.
<h2>Maqhawe Garikayi (17)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32019 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-132-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
When Maqhawe Garikayi was arrested by border security for attempting to illegally cross over into South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2012, he was not discouraged. Shortly after he was released, he tried again, and succeeded. He was 13.
Four years on, Garikayi barely looks up as he tells his story.
“I never knew my birth mother and I don’t know if I have any siblings. All I had was a stepmother who saw me as her worker, not her child. She just didn’t love me.”
Garikayi couldn’t get along with his her. At the age of 13, he was questioning his existence and toying with the idea of running away from home. Thoughts of where he would run away to and how he would survive were secondary as survival instincts compelled him to get away from what he describes “a toxic environment”.
As a young boy who was not attending school and knew no stability, he was left with little choice.
“I left home with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I had no money. I had no documents. I heard about South Africa and how it was the land of milk and honey so that was where I was going to go.”
The second time he tried to cross the border illegally, he was able to sneak past security.
“After [hitch-hiking], I walked through a forest and then through the forceful waves of the Limpopo river. I just followed other groups of people I assumed were also on their way to South Africa.”
Trouble awaited young boys like Garikayi in Messina, where he was robbed of his clothes, and beaten. He had to cover his nudity with a discarded blue overall he found.
“I cried, I thought I was going to die.”
Garikayi mustered strength and made his way to a filling station in Messina. He spent the night there and the following morning, wandered into a suburb and knocked on doors for food and some clothes. Eventually, he was handed a pair of blue shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. After a few days, he was able to make his way to Johannesburg, in a pick-up truck.
Garikayi remembers spending almost eight months on the streets, surviving on whatever he could find in trash bins.
“It was funny the way I always found KFC in the bins, a lot of people wasted that,” he says with a hint of a smile.
Garikayi has since been taken in by an organization that is currently sending him to school, clothing him, feeding him and ensuring he has a warm bed to sleep in every night.
His dreams of being an accountant and having a family of his own have a fighting chance but he sobs and whispers: “My greatest wish is for a mother, I don’t know why God gave me this life.”
&nbsp;
<h2>Wasithanda Hadziperidzega (21)</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-32020 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-681x1024.jpg" alt="" width="681" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591.jpg 681w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Refugee-child-0591-200x300.jpg 200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 681px) 100vw, 681px" />
On April 28, 2014, Wasithanda Hadziperidzega decided to leave home in pursuit of a better life, a life he thought he would find in South Africa.
But sadly, the journey and destination were a far cry from his dreams.
Originally from Ghana, Hadziperidzega moved to Zimbabwe to live with his mother, a single parent raising four young children, a common scenario in the African narrative.
His mother worked in the public sector and could not afford a decent living.
Many, if not all public service employees, were left for weeks and even months at a time without income, left to live at the mercy of a government mired in turmoil.
“My mother would never tell us that she was struggling financially but I could see; I can see things.”
One day, at the age of 18, Hadziperidzega left home as he did every day for soccer practice. After the game, he listened to his peers talk about how tough life was in Zimbabwe.
He made up his mind.
“… The grounds [were] the only place we could talk about the country’s situation and Mugabe. It was safe. After we talked, I decided then that I was going to leave. All I needed was $53 for a passport and $30 for the bus,” says Hadziperidzega.
He never returned home.
Hadziperidzega remembers it took him no longer than five minutes to decide his new fate. The task was now to make the money.
He had heard about how he could collect a small fortune in Mashonaland West, another province in Zimbabwe. The opportunity presented itself in the form of an illegal gold mining job. The word out on the street was that it was lucrative. After months of struggling to infiltrate a mine called Toppers, he was finally in.
“All I needed was a hammer, a short chisel and that torch you put around your head; it’s dark in those mines, there’s no sun,” he laughs, but there’s pain in his eyes.
After months of hard and treacherous work in the depths of Zimbabwe’s gold pits, he was able to save up $120.
He applied for his passport and used the rest to buy a bus ticket to South Africa.
“I arrived in South Africa at around 11PM at Park Station. Have you ever been to Park Station?” he asks. “There is a huge waiting area and I just sat there and pretended to be waiting for someone.”
People came and went fetching their relatives who had come through from different parts of the continent but no one came for Hadziperidzega. And it was the dead of night.
He hides his sorrow with a nervous chuckle, saying: “I knew no one was coming for me but I was just being silly and hoped someone would fetch me but I knew no one, I didn’t even understand where I was, all I knew was that I was in South Africa.”
For days, Hadziperidzega wandered the streets of Johannesburg looking for some validation that he had found in South Africa the social and economic salvation he couldn’t find in his home country, anything to convince him that he had made the right decision.
All he would encounter were other young foreigners collecting rubbish, “looking horrible”.
Nothing was easy to come by, not even scraps of food.
“I would eat anything just to make my tummy happy but not my tongue,” he shrugs.
Over the past two years, he has moved jobs trying to earn a decent living.
He says he has survived police harassment and several death threats because of his nationality.
But Hadziperidzega has not stopped dreaming.
His mind in still in the football fields of Zimbabwe; and he hopes to one day become a soccer star.
“I definitely don’t want to further my education, my whole family is educated and look at them, they are all poor and they will die poor. When you have money everything is easy and that’s all I want,” he says in conclusion.

refugee-child-015

A Lonely  Planet For The  Child  Refugee

Once an epitome of slums, chaos and erosion, Lagos is now home to a new breed of entrepreneurs, creative netizens and socially responsive leaders. They’re dealing with the demons of development, placing their bets on the commercial magic of the city and fomenting plans to benefit from the spasms of a city in search of its soul and a smart future.
With roughly 20 million people, Lagos is Africa’s most congested city, and the gateway to the continent’s biggest economy. Arguably one of the reasons why Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, the city and its environs represent the most economically significant aspects of life in Nigeria. According to the UN, Lagos will be the world’s third largest city by 2025, with 25 million people, and will need to provide shelter for 77 million by the end of the century.
Its excruciating population, coastal location and complex political economy, makes it a perfect melting pot, a bazaar of pain and pleasure, an investor’s haven. For a city which welcomes a new arrival almost every minute, Lagos is literally a pressure cooker, an addiction, a habitat for struggling software gurus and literary Lilliputians, a testament to human resilience and surely, its proclivity for concocting fame, fortune, disaster, adventure and adversity.
“Lagos is without a doubt the engine of Nigeria’s economy,” says Niji Adelagun, CEO of IQ Systems Solutions. “The place has always been driven and defined by its constantly evolving demographics, ambition and the quest for identity.”
Lagos is largely responsible for the nation’s burgeoning “lifestyle economy”: the proliferation of leisure and entertainment establishments, art galleries, music dens like Fela Kuti’s Africa Shrine, and Freedom Park, once a colonial jail house and now an open space where art and literary cognoscenti converge for shows, recitals and festivals.
&nbsp;
The gods of the marketplace also like Lagos. Its fabled open-air markets (in Badagry, Balogun, Oke-Arin, Oyingbo and Mile 12) continue to receive bargain hunters from as far as Bouaké in Côte d’Ivoire, Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, Banjul in Gambia and Bamako in Mali. Telecoms operators Airtel, Etisalat, Glo, MTN and new entrant NTel all have their head offices in Lagos. The Lagos-based Nigerian Stock Exchange and the activities of financial institutions fuel commerce, manufacturing and job security nationwide.
Among the array of enterprising citizens in this space are Olaide Agboola and Obinna Onunkwo, two ex-bankers who quit their comfy jobs a few years ago to set up Purple Capital Partners Ltd, an investment, private equity and real estate firm. Still in their thirties, they are by no means the wealthiest or most prominent players in their field. They however represent an emerging class of risk taking, empire-building citizenry; a potent can-do spirit so abundant in Lagos.
The Purple Capital duo are helping to reshape the state’s retail, entertainment and lifestyle sectors: financing and developing a boutique hotel, bespoke residential apartments and malls across the state, in the process creating new jobs and rejuvenating the state’s agro-allied, construction, information technology, out-of-home advertising and logistics industries.
Partnering with Stanbic IBTC Bank and AXA Mansard Investments, their flagship project, the Maryland Mall, located in the Maryland district of the state will open later this year. Built at a cost of about $25 million, the development will possibly be the largest investment in retail infrastructure in Lagos by a private firm after Nigeria’s 2015 general elections.
Maryland Mall will have the largest outdoor LED screen in West Africa, cementing the mall’s status as a landmark with a remarkable outdoor character and atmosphere in tandem with world-renowned locations like Times Square in New York, and Piccadilly Circus in London.
Official government data shows that Nigeria attracted over $1.3 billion in investments into its formal retail sector over the last four years. Yet modern malls represent only around 3% of Nigeria’s retail space. As Lagosians welcome the stress-free shopping experience that modern markets represent, affinity to traditional African open-air markets, a cultural inertia to the glitz and glamour of shopping malls, remains strong.
Private, public sector partnerships, improved public administration of state resources and efficient tax administration has given Lagos a healthy balance sheet. It generates up to 67% of its income from within, with monthly revenues growing from $4 million in 1999 to more than $100 million presently.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4902" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/shutterstock_244994926-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The state has the best record for internally generated revenue and is also the largest debtor among Nigeria’s 36 states, with total domestic obligations of N268 billion (about $1.3 billion) as at December 2014, according to the Debt Management Office.
Citizens benefit from this deft management of public resources. A better lit, neater, better managed, safer and friendlier Lagos is emerging. Crime in Lagos in 2015 dropped with police recording 220 murders, 44 armed robbery and 25 kidnap cases. In 2012, state authorities set up Lagos Traffic Radio, Nigeria’s first radio station dedicated to traffic management.
The pervading poverty in the land however competes for space with an urban jungle of mansions, private jets, yacht clubs and an ever-growing presence of sleek automobiles. This contrasting visage is mostly visible in the Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki peninsula areas of the state.
In the foreseeable future, new urban landscapes will rise out of the bowels of the old city. A new airport, petroleum refinery and port will bring life to the Lekki Free Trade Zone in the east of Lagos. And the Eko Atlantic Economic City, a Dubai-style development on land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean, will become a reality – concrete evidence of the state’s mega-city status.
With a new marina and 10 million square meters of prime real estate, Lagos’ position as West Africa’s financial capital is secure.
<h1>Barcelona to kick off in lagos?</h1>
In a bid to jumpstart local innovation and boost the productivity of citizens, the Lagos State authorities plan to provide loans to artisans, young entrepreneurs and start-ups via an Employment Trust Fund worth N25 billion (about $125 million).
The city hosted its first marathon in 30 years last February and soon Spain’s Barcelona FC will open a youth academy in Lagos.
“These developments showcase a paradigm shift in the governance of the state. Investors and the entire world are taking note,” says Steve Ayorinde, the state’s Commissioner for Information and Strategy.  He says Lagos State governor Akinwunmi Ambode’s priorities include “expanding the waterways to move more people, working on completing the light rail projects, and engaging the youths through the arts, entertainment, tourism and sports”.
“Lagos has a vibe, you just can’t put your finger on it, imagine I’m still in heavy traffic at 10PM!” says Peju Adebajo, CEO of Lafarge Africa’s cement subsidiary. “It’s everything from the attitude of Lagosians to entrepreneurs, to the unpredictability of the place and the succession of improving governance also means that more and more goods and services are attracted to Lagos despite the high cost, so housing and infrastructure has to develop around it.”
LafargeHolcim, parent company of Lafarge Africa, is working with government agencies and real estate developers to roll out mass housing schemes on the outskirts of Lagos, which technically are in nearby Ogun State. The authorities in Ogun State are keen to leverage their proximity to Lagos, using the New York-New Jersey model as its reference.
“We can’t continue to do mass housing on a bespoke basis anymore, we need to build modern, structured communities; that’s the only way we will begin to plug the huge gap in the housing sector,” says Adebajo.

Where Commerce,  Concrete  And  Culture Collide

Almost half of Kenya’s population has no access to clean water, according to the World Bank.
Waterborne diseases, such as cholera, typhoid, and hepatitis A, can ravage poorer communities; with women and children most at risk.
Three companies, Jaguar Land Rover, ClimateCare and Vestergaard, are trying to eradicate this problem by supplying schools, in Bungoma County, an agricultural region in Western Kenya, with water filters. The hope is that the children will not get sick if they drink safe water. They’ll then not miss school, be more likely to get good grades and increase their chance of seeing a brighter future.
It’s one of the most underdeveloped areas of Western Kenya. Infrastructure is almost non-existent. The buildings I entered had no plumbing or electricity. The houses and schools were made of mud, wooden poles and corrugated iron. They are dark and humid, like an oven baking in the sun.
The heat inside each classroom is stifling, each small desk is shared by three children – they barely have enough space to write. Many of their uniforms hang from their slight bodies. Parents are forced to buy uniforms that are too large so the children will grow into them. They need to last for years.
Bungoma is an agricultural region. People are reliant on water from nearby streams or boreholes. Both sources are often contaminated by pit latrines.
The harsh elements in Bungoma contradict its natural beauty. The land is green, with small hills rolling as far as the eye can see. Large boulders are littered everywhere. The soil is red and rich in nutrients, making it easier to grow crops. Almost every house has maize, beans or bananas growing around it.
Poverty is rife, buildings are basic or falling apart, and although the main road is tarred and in decent condition, the rest are muddy and inaccessible by car.
Cars are rare anyway. Motorbikes and bicycles are the main form of transport. All are fitted with cushioned seats above the rear wheel to transport passengers. The makeshift taxis swarm along the roads. It seemed chaotic to me but they understand how the system works, and despite my fear, I never saw an accident.
Chicken and goats roam along the sides of the road, past the many spaza shops, cellphone airtime and data vendors, and bike repair shops. These are the most popular businesses for a community that relies on entrepreneurship to survive.
While delivering a water filter to one of the schools, a handful of us walked down a slippery and steep muddy road to a spring at the bottom. We passed women tending their crops, crushing maize or making bricks in large homemade clay ovens. Some are less enterprising though.
A 24-year-old man, spotting us walking through his neighborhood, was intrigued enough to leave his group of friends and the quarts of beer they were glugging. His intrigue soon turned to incredulity when told the filters were for the school and not his home. The fact that his four children would benefit from the filter did not placate him. He told us he needed one because he was poor. His lack of income, though, wouldn’t stop him from having more kids. He said he hoped to have three or four more.
Life is hard in Bungoma and any help is appreciated.
“My biggest hope is to be educated so that I can pass my exams and go to university and look for a job. My biggest challenge will be money, it may be the reason I will not achieve my dream,” says Vivienne Wafula, a shy nine-year-old schoolgirl.
Sharon Cherubet Chepkwemoi, the head girl at her school, dreams of becoming a doctor.
“I want to fix the many challenges that people here face,” she says.
She’ll need to go to university to achieve this.
“My parents are farmers, but they are not that rich, so it will be a challenge.”
Both girls are smart, ambitious and resourceful. Sadly, neither Wafula nor Chepkwemoi are likely to escape the grip of poverty in a part of Africa forgotten by the rest of the world.

DSC_0181

Beauty And Boulders  In Bungoma

Poor access to food and malnutrition remain widespread and deep-seated in Africa’s second largest economy. The South African National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows 25% of South Africans – 13 million people – are hungry. Another 28% of the population is at risk of being hungry. Put simply: more than half of the Rainbow Nation’s population has to worry about where their next meal comes from.
The hallways at Alpine Primary School in Mitchell’s Plain, a township 35 kilometers from Cape Town, are filled with shrieks and bursts of laughter as the boys and girls make their way to the exit. Sixty to eighty youngsters will remain behind for another two to three hours, to participate in the aftercare program organized by Run4Schools. Founded 10 years ago by Dutch athlete Leslie Pangemanan, the organization provides a safe space for children at four primary schools in Mitchell’s Plain. Gang violence is common here, and children often get caught in the crossfire.
“Criminals are constantly trying to recruit kids as drug dealers and new gang members,” says general manager Frank Steyn, a past beneficiary of Run4Schools.
Run4Schools wants to prevent this by offering better alternatives: sports and food.
“We give the kids a sandwich, some juice, and a piece of fruit,” Steyn explains. “&#8230;For many of them, this is the last thing they will eat until they return to school the next day. The other schools we work with have feeding schemes. Many children rely on those school meals. We want to give them something extra. Some will go for a second helping, to give to a sibling at home. Hunger is a fact of life in Mitchell’s Plain, because of poverty.”
The most recent Child Gauge, released in 2014 by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, estimates that 2.5 million South African children (aged 0 – 17) live in households where hunger is part of day to day life. Child hunger is most problematic in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, where respectively 20% and 16% of children are living in households where there is not enough food.
Chronic hunger can have severe and potentially fatal implications. One of them is stunting, where a child is too short for their age.
“Over 25 percent of South African children under the age of three are stunted. This is a direct result of undernourishment in terms of energy and micronutrient intake,” says David Sanders, founding director of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape.
Stunting is not just a matter of height. According to the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF), it is associated with an under-developed brain, which can have long-lasting harmful consequences. These include a diminished mental ability and learning capacity, poor school performance in childhood, and increased risks of nutrition related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
Vitamin A and iron deficiencies are some of the most common nutritional shortcomings in South Africa.
“Data suggests that 44% of children under five years old are vitamin A deficient. This compromises their immune systems, and makes them extra susceptible to potentially fatal infections,” says Sanders.
The most alarming statistic, says Sanders, is that 64% of deaths of children under the age of five in South Africa can be attributed to malnutrition.
The situation is not a result of inadequate food production.
“South Africa can feed itself with what it produces… The main problems here are inadequate distribution, affordability, and access to good food. A large section of South Africa’s poor has to survive on cheap, unhealthy diets which largely consist of refined starches, refined carbohydrates, a lot of sugar, very little good protein, very little dairy, and very few micronutrients. Some of the poor can’t even afford that,” says Sanders.
The promotion of unhealthy foods, such as fast food and sugary beverages, is not helping. Sanders is concerned about the aggressive marketing of soft drinks.
“Township businesses are often offered a Coca-Cola sign with their shop’s name on it. When you visit any given township in South Africa, you will see those red and white signs everywhere,” he says. “The data we have shows us that South Africans consume three times the global average intake of Coca-Cola. It is often cheaper than milk.”
A stone’s throw from Cape Town International Airport and stuck in between highways, runways, a cemetery, and Coca-Cola signs in surrounding townships, lies Freedom Farm. Like most informal settlements in South Africa, this place – home to 600 families – is anything but what the name suggests.
Clean water, adequate sanitation, and social services such as healthcare and waste management are nothing but a pipe dream. In the meantime, hunger and malnutrition are ripping though this community like a knife through table cloth.
Every first Sunday of the month, a temporary faint light appears at the end of the tunnel. That is when Stephanie Benjamin and her soup kitchen team, known as Ladles of Love, pull in.
“We feed between 300 and 500 people that day. Children eat first,” she says. “I would like to do more but I am largely financing this out of my own pocket. Luckily, a local supermarket is helping me out. They give me food that is edible, but can’t be sold. Bread that has been pressed too hard, for instance, which would have been thrown away.”
Throwing away edible food seems surreal in a country where half the population doesn’t have the security of regular meals. It is however a harsh reality.
“We rescue 400,000 tons of food per year worth R100 million ($7.1 million) from partner retailers and wholesalers,” says Andy Du Plessis, Managing Director of Foodbank SA.
“This food, after it’s been checked and made sure it is fit for human consumption, is distributed among 450 community organizations across South Africa. They in turn pass it on to 110,000 beneficiaries. The food we rescue, translates into 12.7 million meals per year.”
These staggering figures are the tip of South Africa’s food waste iceberg.
“It is estimated that we landfill R60 billion ($4.2 billion) worth of food every year,” says Du Plessis.
Based on this figure and the Foodbank SA’s stats, one can conclude that South Africa throws away 7.62 billion meals per year, or 20.82 million meals per day. This is enough to provide each of the 13 million hungry South Africans a meal and a half per day for an entire year.
“These are alarming statistics, but what makes it even more alarming is that this situation can be avoided, as a large portion of this food is dumped before it even reaches the stores,” Du Plessis says, pointing fingers at supply chain issues such as overproduction, incorrect labelling, and damaged packaging.
Another way to alleviate South Africa’s levels of food insecurity is to change the country’s food security and agriculture policies; for instance, enabling South Africans to grow their own food and assisting small farmers, says Sanders.
According to the UN, only 2% of South African households are involved in agriculture for their personal use. In Malawi and Zambia, this is respectively 90% and 60%.
“Generally speaking, South Africans purchase most of the food they consume. In many other African countries, however, people tend to survive on what they produce on the land,” Sanders says. “I would say that many of those counties, at least those I know, have more programmes in place to support small farmers. In South Africa, there is very little of that. Here, small farmers are completely neglected. An added problem is that government has done inadequately in terms of land reform.”
As the food wastes away, so do the frames of the country’s hungry.

Hunger Yet $4.2 Billion In The Bin

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is immensely rich in resources but past conflict has held back the realization of this wealth, leaving its people amongst the poorest in Africa. The country is expected to be home to the world’s eleventh largest populationa by 2050. Raw mineral deposits are estimated to be worth in excess of $24 trillion but lay idle as fighting plagues the country.
It has seen at least four million people killed and another three million displaced.
Government forces continue to fight the rebel group M23 in the east, and recent peace talks have been suspended. Rene Abandi, leader of the M23 delegation, was quoted saying that negotiations are meaningless.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1826" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/dreamstime_l_26062670-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
This could jeopardize the economic foundations that have already been laid. Eustache Ouayoro, country director at the World Bank, says that over the past few years, the DRC has been able to make significant progress to restore security across most of the territory, political reconciliation and economic recovery with the support of international partners, including the World Bank. So the world waits with bated breath.
Experts look to the country’s vast untapped wealth to pave the way to economic freedom, but say the road to this is likely to be a long one. Ouayoro says that positive signs are there, albeit tentative. The DRC may be emerging from instability and taking its first steps towards a new development era.
The country’s citizens suffer from poor healthcare, limited education and poverty. According to the World Bank, the DRC ranks last among the 187 countries in the Human Development Index. Poverty is widespread, with 71% of the population living on $1.25 a day.
The DRC, however, has been making steady strides in economic growth. Inflation was under control and in single figures in 2012, compared to 500% in 2001, and the World Bank says that with economic growth of 7.2% in 2012, and 8.2% expected in 2013, the DRC is among the countries experiencing some of the fastest levels of growth in the world at a time when it is non-existent in Europe.
Debt relief has helped. DRC was granted an estimated $16 billion debt relief under the World Bank and IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The write down has helped improve the country’s fiscal position and has allowed it to invest its debt savings in to development opportunities.
The World Bank reports that only a mere 10% of the DRC’s huge tracts of arable land are farmed, and only 13,000 hectares are irrigated. The country has four million hectares, but is currently importing at least 30% of its food. The World Bank believes its land could feed a billion people.
Ouayoro says that for the country to realize its full potential, there needs to be: improvement to the business climate; progress on anti-corruption measures; economic governance and stronger government institutions. It will also have to address the large infrastructure gap and prioritize food production and agriculture.
“We must promote inclusive growth in the DRC by making its economy more irresistibly competitive and helping to spur the creation of new, well-paying jobs, especially for the country’s growing ranks of young people,” Ouayoro says.

Tag: Population

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

A Lonely Planet For The Child Refugee

Where Commerce, Concrete And Culture Collide

Beauty And Boulders In Bungoma

Hunger Yet $4.2 Billion In The Bin

The Poor Rich Country