Hunger

Britain and the United States have reportedly launched a programme to rescue at least 650 000 Zimbabwean hunger victims, with the two countries pledging to provide up to US$43m for food aid.

This came as the World Food Programme (WFP) says in August that around 1.5 million Zimbabweans were expected to go hungry this year after a dramatic fall in maize production.

Paul Polman, in an article titled, ‘MDG [Millennium Development Goals] Success - Accelerating Action and Partnering for Impact’, says in the year 2000, members of the United Nations General Assembly made an historic commitment - to halve poverty by 2015.

Polman, who is the chief executive officer of Unilever, states that, “We have made good progress in many areas, of which we can be proud,” adding that millions of lives have been saved and millions of families now have access to clean water.

As the global community prepares to embrace a new global development framework christened the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is vital that lessons be drawn from the shortcomings of the predecessor framework, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which is coming to a close at the end of this year. 
 

“Poverty has become part of me,” Jeffrey Moyo quotes Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year old from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kabangele, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, points out that, “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

According to the United Nations (UN), just $160 (R1 990) per year for each person living in extreme poverty would eradicate world hunger by 2030, recommending the money should be delivered through both cash transfers and ‘pro-poor’ investments.
 
Eliminating hunger is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the new objectives which will be finalised in September 2015 to replace the eight expiring the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
 

Poor childhood nutrition costs Malawi's economy nearly US$600 million, 10 percent of its gross domestic products, annually because of increased healthcare expenses and low workforce productivity.

According to a joint United Nations – government study, years of stunting among children who did not get enough vitamins and minerals in the first two years of life affects about 4.5 million working-age Malawians, who were unable to reach their full potential.

A programme funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU) has helped small-scale farmers in dry areas of Zimbabwe ward off hunger and generate income by commercialising indigenous plants.

The programme, which is designed to teach harvesting and production skills and to link collectors or farmers to buyers and markets, has already benefitted 8 000 small-scale farmers.