Produktionen og importen af fødevarer vil ikke kunne holde trit med den galopperende befolkningsvækst i lande som Uganda og Malawi – samtidig falder fødevarehjælpen til de afrikanske lande i disse år og indsatsen lægges om.
JOHANNESBURG, 26 July 2013 (IRIN): By the end of the next decade food security could worsen in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to a recent global forecast by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
By 2023 the number of food-insecure people is likely to increase by nearly 23 percent to 868 million (at a slightly faster rate than projected population growth of 16 percent), said USDA’s Economic Research Service.
The Service focused on 76 low- and middle-income countries classified by the World Bank as being on food aid, experiencing food insecurity, or as having experienced it.
In countries most likely to see a significant rise in the number of food-insecure people, such as Malawi and Uganda, the production and import of food will not be able to keep pace with population growth.
Despite improvements over the years, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to remain the most food-insecure region in the world.
In the past decade global food aid, including the amount making its way to sub-Saharan Africa, has been on a downward trend.
Only 2,5 million tons reached sub-Saharan Africa in 2011, whereas during the decade as a whole it ranged from just under three million tons to just over five million tons, according to USDA, citing World Food Programme (WFP) data.
From food aid to food assistance
The face of food aid has also begun to change.
In the past decade, “food aid” has begun to evolve into “food assistance”, which includes help provided in the form of cash and vouchers (til-gode-seddel til at købe mad for) for people in need. This can save millions of dollars in transportation and storage costs.
By 2015, WFP, the world’s largest food aid agency, expects almost a third of its assistance programmes to be delivered in the form of cash, vouchers and new kinds of “digital food” through smartcards and e-vouchers delivered by SMS.
Between 2008 and 2011, the number of WFP cash and voucher projects increased from five in 2008 to 51 in 2011. In that year WFP set aside 208 million US dollar for distributions using cash or vouchers, but still spent over one billion dollars on food.
IRIN asked some of the world’s leading experts to speculate on the future of food aid.
Crises that drive the need for food aid are either man-made (conflicts, economies in crisis) or natural events (droughts, floods, earthquakes) or a complex mix of both, which might test people’s resilience (modstandskraft) and make them chronically dependent on assistance.
People need different kinds of aid in different situations.
If food is not available in a flooded area, actual food supplies are the answer. In the case of chronic shortages, experts suggest cash or vouchers, integrated into a broader social protection system, might be the answer.
Threats over the coming decade
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98469/analysis-the-future-of-food-aid
