Hunger spreads as shortages bite

Substantial volumes of maize imports to alleviate a severe food shortfall started rolling into Zambia this week, but analysts warned that another poor harvest and more shortages are likely next year. Private suppliers contracted by the government said the maize, a staple of Zambians' diets, started landing with an initial 1,000 mt on Monday. Hundreds of tonnes more were expected to arrive in the country during the week. The maize import arrivals coincide with reports of growing hunger in rural areas and escalating maize meal prices in urban centres, as the country heads towards general elections at the weekend. Local media reports said villagers in badly hit areas across the country were feeding on wild fruits and plants. Meanwhile, electoral monitors said desperate people in parts of the country were bartering their voter cards for food. "In Musanga and Dilika wards [of Eastern Province], political parties are buying voter cards at 10,000 Kwacha from hunger-stricken voters. Some residents revealed voter cards were being bartered with maize and fertiliser," Anti-Voter Apathy Project executive director Bonnie Tembo told IRIN on Thursday after touring the province on an electoral awareness campaign. Electoral monitors reported voter card buying rackets in Lusaka and Southern provinces as well. They said unscrupulous politicians were buying the cards to try and rig the 27 December elections. Meanwhile, the price of maize meal in the worst-hit urban areas peaked at 60,000 Kwacha (about US $15) per 25 kg bag last week, from around 15,000 Kwacha only weeks ago. The government has undertaken to import some 150,000 mt of maize and has asked for international food aid to meet the shortfall. However, slow delivery of the emergency grain may see thousands of people across the country going hungry for some time to come. For example, North Western Province Permanent Secretary Maybin Mubanga told reporters last week that the government had been unable to dispatch a 250-bag consignment of relief maize to the remote Solwezi West district because the roads leading there were waterlogged. Meanwhile, the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) warned this week that congestion on the import delivery routes, which has seen competition between maize and fertiliser transporters, would delay the arrival of both essential products. "Commercial farmers have been told to wait for (fertiliser) stocks in transit, which are unlikely soon. With the congestion on the import route and the competition for maize versus fertiliser imports, a possibility of temporary shortage of commercial fertiliser at the critical time is likely," ZNFU economist Alfred Mwila told IRIN. "The question is, what would the transporters prefer to haul – maize and fertiliser? The sensitivity of maize makes it have an advantage over fertiliser," he added. Mwila said the situation had been worsened by the failure of the government's Food Reserve Agency to order fertiliser imports in good time. Meanwhile, a significant cut in credit supply to farmers has meant that many of them would be forced to scale down on production in the current season. "Most farmers do not obtain credit from commercial banks because of the prohibitive interest rates, but now rely on input credit such as for seed, agro-chemicals, fertiliser, and so on, from service providers. Unfortunately, direct input credit has also slowed down. This will result in reduction of the areas planted to maize," Mwila said. "These two points ... can be used as a measure for an anticipated maize shortfall next year," he added. Meanwhile, in the run-up to the elections, the maize crisis has become a major campaign issue. President Frederick Chiluba, who is leading the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) electoral campaign, recently charged that hoarders bent on turning the electorate against the party deliberately caused the shortage. Opposition party leaders and some election monitoring groups have, meanwhile, suggested that the government had deliberately withheld food aid for distribution at a strategic time during the ruling party's campaign. Others suggest that the shortage is a result of administrative lapses. "President Chiluba keeps on changing his agriculture ministers. How could the ministry work properly when its heads are always being changed? The agriculture ministry has had nine different ministers for all the farming seasons under MMD rule," Chiluba's former commerce minister, Dipak Patel, said.