Urban poor hard hit by food security crisis

Growing concern over the threat of urban food insecurity in Zambia has highlighted the need for a regional study on how food shortages and rising prices are adversely affecting poor townsfolk. The latest Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) emergency food security assessment report noted that "knowledge of urban food needs is lacking". The food aid needs of the urban poor needed to be assessed and addressed, especially in Zambia. "In Zambia, poor households in areas affected by drought face both physical food shortages and constrained access to food due to chronic poverty. There is growing concern over the threat of urban food insecurity," the SADC report noted. The evidence from Zambia indicated "a lack of knowledge on how urban households are being affected by the current crisis. Apart from Zambia, urban food security was not covered in the emergency assessments [of five other countries in the region]. The Zambia study estimated a total of 97,000 orphaned and vulnerable children in urban areas [were] in need of assistance. Recent studies in Zimbabwe indicate that 850,000 people in urban areas of the country are in need of food assistance," the report said. "There is now an urgent need to conduct emergency food needs assessments in urban areas in the region, to determine the extent of the problem and the required response," the SADC report suggested. Some 2.9 million people in Zambia will require an estimated 224,000 mt of emergency food aid through to March 2003. This was mainly due to several seasons of low rainfall, and poor soil in some areas of the country, that had resulted in very poor yields for maize, the main staple in Zambia. The SADC report showed that the cereal food gap in Zambia - the difference between consumption needs and stock reserves - was 147 percent higher than average. Zambia had so far received 43,000 mt in commercial imports and 16,000 mt in food aid, leaving a cereal gap of 625,000 mt. "Zambia has made the least progress [in closing the cereal food gap], having so far filled less than 9 percent of its cereal gap. All other countries have filled between 22 percent and 27 percent of the gap," the SADC report noted. The Zambian newspaper, The Post, reported that Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana has had to assure people in the country's Southern Province that by turning away genetically modified (GM) relief food, the government was not leaving them to starve. This followed an incident in which headmen in the area had threatened to stage a sit-in at the district administrator's office until they were assured that relief food would be delivered to their villages, the newspaper said. The government has put a hold on the distribution of maize provided by the US government until they are able to assure themselves that there will be no negative effects from the consumption of GM food.