Malawi, riding high on recent cereal surpluses, is hedging its bets against inclement weather disrupting its good fortune by using a financial derivative to offset agricultural risk.

Unlike insurance, weather derivatives are financial contracts based on an underlying weather index; in the case of Malawi the index will use a model that estimates maize production based on rainfall data.

The thresholds underlying the rainfall index are based on a national maize yield assessment model used by the Malawi Meteorological Office since 1992 for forecasting maize production in the country.

David Rohrbach, a senior economist at World Bank's Malawi office, told IRIN the goal was to reduce vulnerability to weather shocks in the context of strengthening food security.

"First, it is important to note that this is not a formal insurance policy, as might be transacted through an insurance company, with a payout when a problem is judged by the company to have occurred; this is a contract on the international weather derivatives market," he said, because the contract was based on rainfall levels.

Rohrbach said the index captured the impact of the timing, amount and distribution of rainfall during the growing season. This allowed the model to determine the impact of early-, mid- or late-season drought on the maize harvest. Daily rainfall data is collected from about 20 rainfall stations used to supply data for the model.

"In simple terms, if the rainfall level is above a given threshold there is no payout. If rainfall drops below the threshold, a payout occurs. The payout grows as the severity of drought increases up to a maximum level. In effect, there is no need to confirm that the country or any particular farmer actually suffered a loss," Rohrbach said.

In June the World Bank agreed to create a new weather derivatives product, allowing Malawi to use the financial markets to offset risks from drought. The weather derivative market began in the US in 1997 and has rapidly grown into a multibillion-dollar industry used by investors ranging from agricultural industries to sporting events organisers.

Malawi introduced a fertiliser subsidy programme in the aftermath of the 2005 drought, which left nearly five million people in need of food aid, and has since become increasingly food secure.

The government estimated the 2007 maize crop at 73 percent higher than the average for the past five years. Around two million tonnes of maize are required annually to feed the population of about 12 million, but the country has harvested a surplus of about 1.5 million tonnes.

Pilot project

According to the World Bank, Malawi's weather derivatives transaction will test the market with a small contract that is expected to pay out a maximum of about US$3 million if severe weather conditions prevail. The premium for the initiative will be paid by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID).

A similar transaction was completed in Ethiopia in 2006 under the auspices of the World Food Programme. "In that case no payout was made because Ethiopia experienced favourable rainfall," Rohrbach said.
The World Bank Treasury will act as an intermediary on behalf of Malawi to facilitate the country's access to the international weather derivatives market, thereby reducing transaction costs. Malawi will pay the World Bank Treasury for the costs of the transaction and receive any payout generated.

As the international weather derivatives market becomes accustomed to these transactions, the World Bank expects the Malawian government - and other governments - to begin pursuing such transactions independently.

"In sum, if there is significant drought in the country, the government will get a payout whose level is determined by the size of the premium paid and the severity of the drought. This payout may be used to help purchase grain to resolve supply shortfalls or to distribute grain from national strategic grain stocks," Rohrbach said.

"One caveat: payouts are most likely if drought is severe. If drought is restricted to a small part of the country, or is not severe, there may only be a partial payout or none at all."

IRIN 

The Government of Malawi and the International Development Association (IDA) today signed a US$25 million grant to improve water supply and sanitation services in towns, market centres and rural areas of Malawi. The funding builds on an already operational US$50 million Second National Water Development Project (NWDP II) financed by IDA that commenced in 2007.

The new funding is from the Africa Catalytic Growth Fund (ACGF), which is a multi-donor trust fund that seeks to scale up funding for promising interventions in Africa. The fund focuses on countries that have an opportunity to make significant progress in showing improved development results toward growth and hard to reach Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The ACGF is administered by IDA.

The funding agreement was signed by the World Bank’s Country Manager for Malawi Mr. Timothy Gilboand Malawi’s Minister of Finance, Honourable Goodall Gondwe.
“This new funding from the Africa Catalytic Growth Fund will be instrumental in helping Malawi meet the important MDG target of water and sanitation. That the Catalytic Fund has chosen to support Malawi demonstrates that progress is being made in implementing the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy,” said Mr. Gilbo.
In Malawi, the ACGF financing is focusing on MDG 7 – Ensuring Environmental Sustainability with the specific target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
 
The new project will expand water supply and sanitation services to the towns of Chitipa, Chilumba, Rumphi, Nkhata Bay, Chintheche, and Ekwendeni. The towns that are already targeted under NWDPII are Mzuzu, Zomba, Kasungu, Mzimba, Mangochi, Mponela, and Likuni.
 
The new project will also strengthen the operational efficiency of the Southern, Central and Northern Regional Water Boards in the planning and delivery of water supply and sanitation services to the following towns, market centres and rural areas: Bunda, Natural Resources College, Chitedze, Dedza, Ntcheu, Salima, Likuni, Senga Bay, Chipoka, Ntchisi, Dowa, Madisi, Mchinji-Kochilira, Dwangwa, Mitundu, Linthipe, Liwonde, Balaka, Ngabu, Lirangwe, Songwe, Misewu Folo – Chikwawa, and Likoma and Chizumulu Islands.
 
It is expected that at the end of the project, 500,000 people will have new or improved water supply and 250,000 will have improved sanitation. There will be about 3,700 new water connections in rural areas and 4,040 rehabilitated connections. About 1,700 new community water points will be installed while 2,700 will be rehabilitated. One hundred and forty schools will have access to adequate sanitation facilities. In towns and market centres 2,500 new connections are planned, while 5,000 connections will be rehabilitated. 
 
Both the ACGF and NWPDII are contributing to a five year (2007-2012) national water development program developed by the Malawi Government whose estimated investment requirement is about US$300 million. The other financing institutions for the water plan include UNICEF, CIDA, EU/EIB, AfDB, JICA, OPEC Fund, UNDP, and Water Aid.

A billboard showing traditional and religious leaders holding hands in the fight against AIDS is a common feature in Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, but overzealous church leaders claiming to cure HIV with prayer are now causing more harm than good.

A pastor in southern Malawi recently hit the headlines when he told five HIV-positive people in his church to stop taking antiretroviral (ARV) medication because they had been treated by prayer. Dodgy traditional healers touting their "cures" for AIDS are also proliferating. The government has drawn up legislation, currently before parliament, to muzzle anyone claiming they can cure AIDS.

"As government we cannot tolerate people who are deliberately spreading lies about a cure for AIDS, which is not there. All we want is to regulate information going out to the public, which is misleading at the moment and may result in problems on the part of innocent people," said Dr Mary Shawa, secretary for Nutrition, HIV/AIDS in the President's office.

Keeping the faith

Joyce Chimenya, a faithful churchgoer at the Assemblies of God Church in Kanjedza township, one of Blantyre's middle-class suburbs, believes prayer can heal any ailment.

"If you believe in God you can be healed of any disease, including HIV and AIDS. I have been part of a lot of healing sessions in my church and I believe that our Lord Jesus never fails," Chimenya told IRIN/PlusNews.

Televangelism has also become increasingly popular in the conservative country. Churches such as the Living Waters and Calvary Family regularly broadcast programmes on Television Malawi (TVM), and their pastors spend much of their time preaching messages of hope, with the emphasis on healing miracles and how millions have been saved from abject poverty.

Most of the pastors are cautious about saying they can cure AIDS, but openly say to viewers: "All those that are sick should touch their television sets and, using the other hand, touch where they are feeling unwell."

Fatsani (last name withheld), a congregant of the Living Waters Church, commented, "In our church we believe in divine intervention when we are faced with any problem, be it AIDS or poverty. Yes, antiretroviral drugs are important for AIDS patients, but people need Jesus most.

"We have seen people here getting healed and test HIV negative afterwards because of the power of prayer; people who do not get deliverance after being prayed for, lack faith."

United against stigma

Bishop Joseph Bvumbwe, chairman of the Malawi Council of Churches, condemned recent claims by church leaders that they could cure HIV-positive people and said the church's stand on people living with HIV was unchanged.

"AIDS patients need our support. It is unbiblical to mislead people on HIV and AIDS when many have already succumbed to the disease. As church we encourage support and treatment for all those that have been affected," he said.

"AIDS is not an issue that is new in the church. We are telling people that they should not throw stones at those that are living with the virus, we have all fallen short of God's glory and AIDS patients or HIV-positive people are not sinners."

Justin Malewezi, Malawi's former vice-president, now chairman of the parliamentary committee on health and of the Malawi HIV and AIDS Partnership Forum, which works with UNAIDS, said the issue of suffering and pain, "and the culture of blame that is evident in faith communities" should be addressed.

"I hear so many churchmen talk about HIV and AIDS as a punishment from God. This is wrong, and contrary to the teaching of every religion. Although AIDS is something relatively new in the experience of humanity, it is not a curse sent by God and it is not a punishment on the world for evil or for promiscuity."

He said the church should acknowledge the weakness of its clergy and lay members. "It should acknowledge that members of the faith community may be HIV infected, but that is the reason for service and compassion, and never reason for condemnation."

Dr Lazarus Chakwera, of the Evangelical Association of Malawi, said talking openly about AIDS would be the only way to ensure that people were told the truth about it, as well as issues pertaining to prevention and treatment.

The country's HIV prevalence is about 14 percent, and the government has estimated that over 100,000 Malawians are now on ARVs.

Despite a bumper harvest last season, there are signs of maize shortages in some parts of Malawi, but deputy minister of agriculture Bintony Kutsaira has maintained that stocks of the staple grain are sufficient.

Spot-checks of outlets run by the state grain marketer, the Agriculture Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC), in major towns revealed that people have been forced to buy less than the minimum quantity of 50kg of maize. In some instances a 50kg bag of maize was shared among three or four people.

Vitus Dzoole-Mwale, chairman of parliament's Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said parts of the country were suffering shortages despite a 3.5 million tonnes maize harvest in 2007. The country requires around two million tonnes annually to feed its population of over 12 million.

In late 2007, the committee found a number of households with no maize reserve to carry them through the lean season from December until the next harvest in April 2008. "As a committee we toured several districts throughout the country to assess the food situation and we discovered that a considerable number of people in many districts are already experiencing hunger," Dzoole-Mwale said. "The situation will need urgent government intervention."

However, agriculture deputy minister Kutsaira told IRIN that the country "has more than enough maize in stock", and talk of food shortages was incorrect. He said weather conditions had made it difficult for government to collect maize from the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) silos and distribute it to selling points throughout the country, causing a shortage of maize in ADMARC depots.

Charles Matabwa, general manager of ADMARC, agreed that the country had enough maize and said it would be available at all outlets where stocks have run low; allegations that the country was facing hunger were a lie. "Let us not wish to have hunger here. There is no hunger in Malawi, for we have enough maize that will be in our stock for many months."

Kutsaira said, "We have more than adequate stock of maize in our silos. For instance, the silos in Mangochi, in the south, have more than 15,000 metric tonnes while in Lilongwe [the capital] there is more than 80,000 metric tonnes [available]. "Our requirement as a country between now and April when people are expected to harvest their crop is around 30,000 metric tonnes."

A political tiff over exports?

The government's decision to export more than 300,000 tonnes of maize to Zimbabwe in 2007 has added fuel to the debate over food shortages. "We warned them not to sell maize wholesale to Zimbabwe, but they would not listen," said Hophmally Makande, deputy secretary-general of the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF). Malawi also donated 10,000 mt of maize to drought-hit Lesotho and Swaziland in 2007.

Makande rubbished the government's claims that it has been unable to transport maize to all the ADMARC outlets because of bad weather, and said the road between Blantyre, the commercial hub, and Lilongwe, where government has the largest number of maize silos, was in perfect condition.

"If you go around the townships in Blantyre you will see long queues of people desperately waiting to buy grain. They are not allowed to buy a 50kg bag, but only a mere 25kg - it is hardly enough for a family of two."

The USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS-NET) noted in its latest regional cross-border trade update that the price of maize had risen since Malawi had started exporting: prices were higher between April and December 2007 than in the previous season.

The average price of a 50kg bag is 1,500 kwacha (about US$11), but in areas reportedly experiencing maize shortages it cost K2,000 (about $14) - the price reached during the drought in 2005, when five million people were left in need of food aid.

Malawi is riding high on the success of its fertiliser subsidy programme and has become a regional exporter hoping to profit from booming food prices, but analysts are a bit more wary.

Globally food prices have shot up by nearly 75 percent within a decade and will continue to do so, according to the World Bank's annual Global Economic Prospects 2008.

"We are looking to expand our exports regionally, at least; the high food prices have come as an added incentive. It is a good opportunity for our farmers - we have to invest in agriculture," said Patrick Kabambe, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Malawi's National Food Reserve Agency officially exported 286,589 tonnes of maize to Zimbabwe by the end of December 2007, according to the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS-NET). The World Food Programme also sent 32,363 tonnes of Malawian maize to Zimbabwe, bringing the total official exports from Malawi to 321,406 tonnes. The country also donated maize to drought-hit Lesotho and Swaziland.

World prices have risen sharply partly because of the "stepped-up" use of food crops for biofuels and partly because of other factors like rapid income growth in developing countries, high fertiliser prices, low stocks, and droughts, the World Bank said.

In 2007, the ministry of agriculture recorded a "big jump" in the number of farmers growing maize, said Kabambe. "We are still compiling the data."

According to the last situation report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), cereal-based food staples like bread, pasta and tortillas became more expensive in countries across the world, as did milk and meat.

"Prices have been contained for now but continue to remain high at the beginning of 2008," said Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the FAO-Intergovernmental Group on Grain. "The price of wheat and soya-bean [in January 2008] was at the highest it has been in 30 years, while maize is trading at 10-year high prices."

Fears of a global "economic meltdown" and a positive crop forecast for the northern hemisphere have helped stabilise food prices in the past few weeks.
Malawi's agriculture has turned a corner since the drought in 2005, which left close to five million people in need of food aid. The government estimated the 2007 maize crop at 73 percent higher than the average for the past five years. The country requires around two million tonnes of maize annually to feed its population of over 12 million but harvested surplus of about 1.5 million tonnes.

The government attributed the high maize production to subsidised fertiliser, which was sold to farmers at 950 kwacha [about US$6.50] per 50kg bag in 2007; in 2004 the price was around K4,000 [about $27] per 50kg bag.

Each kilogram of fertiliser applied per hectare can produce a minimum yield of over 3kg of grain, according to the Zimbabwe-based African Centre for Fertiliser Development. Farmers in Africa usually apply 16kg/ha, while the desirable level is 100kg/ha. Fertilisers account for one-third of the worldwide increase in cereal production, and 50 percent of the increase in India's grain production, according to the FAO.

The UN agency has warned that unless the nearly 70 million smallholder families in sub-Saharan Africa apply fertilisers and start practising sustainable land and water management on their farms within the next decade, they "will seriously jeopardise their long-term food security, productivity and incomes, while environmental degradation will accelerate".

FAO recommended that average fertiliser application rates in sub-Saharan Africa increase up to 23kg/ha within the next decade to prevent loss of nutrients in the soil and resultant low productivity, but few farmers in Africa can afford them.

Subsidies at what cost?

Agricultural pundits tend to criticise input subsidies. "The problem is one of opportunity cost - what might have been achieved with the same resources had they been spent on something else?" asked Steve Wiggins, Research Fellow in Rural Policy & Governance at the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

"The clearest candidate is agricultural research, where studies repeatedly show very high returns to additional spending; rural roads would be another candidate. Besides, he warned, "the political economy of subsidies is not so good either: once in place, they are the very devil to remove".

Subsidies tend to rise and India is often used to illustrate the pitfalls. "Spending on farm subsidies for electricity, irrigation and water [in India], having once been modest, now exceed the budget for primary education," Wiggins commented.

"India has a huge education deficit; it is staggering that more is spent on farm subsidies than primary schools. Most of the subsidies, by the way, go to the larger and better-off farmers." He said the lack of investment in rural infrastructure and research had slowed the farm economy in India, which was no longer generating new jobs.

Thom Jayne, who teaches agricultural economics at Michigan State University (MSU) in the US, pointed out that "Currently, the governments of Malawi and Zambia devote at least 60 percent of their agricultural budgets to input and crop marketing subsidies, leaving relatively little for the long-term investments that must be put in place for sustainable reductions in poverty and hunger."

Malawi plans to spend $78 million in 2008 - up from $51 million in 2007 - on seed and fertiliser subsidies for farmers, said James Breen, regional emergency agronomist at the FAO. The scheme was effective because it recognised that subsistence farmers have too little working capital, "but it costs", he added.

Why should Malawi not have the scheme? asked Mafa Chipeta, FAO representative at the African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa. "If the developed world can subsidise agriculture to the tune of millions for its farmers, who earn $50,000 a year, why can't Africa offer subsidies to its farmers, who earn $100 a year?"

Wiggins acknowledged that agricultural subsidies offered by governments in the developed world were a "wasteful embarrassment" but argued that rich countries could afford them.

Malawi's success has won plaudits from noted economists Jeffery Sachs and Glenn Denning of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in the US. "The impact has stunned the sceptics and the doomsayers; it seems that an African green revolution is possible after all," Sachs and Denning said in an article they wrote for the London-based Financial Times newspaper in 2007.

MSU's Jayne defended fertiliser subsidy sceptics, saying, "Their positions are usually based on sincere efforts to make scarce development resources provide the greatest achievable payoffs for smallholder farmers. Part of the reason for relatively low returns to fertiliser subsidy programmes, as commonly implemented, is that they displace or 'crowd out' commercial fertiliser sales."

He pointed out that "Recent evidence from Zambia and Malawi indicates that every additional ton of fertiliser distributed under their subsidy programme adds only 0.5 to 0.6 tons of fertiliser to farmers' fields. This is because subsidised fertiliser is often distributed to farmers who would otherwise have purchased fertiliser from commercial retailers [rather than to needy farmers]."

Subsidies often broke down during implementation, said Jayne. In Malawi's case, for example, the subsidy programme did not involve any private fertiliser retailers, which could impede future investment in establishing fertiliser outlets in remote smallholder areas.

"Only four firms received almost all of the contracts to import government fertiliser," he noted. Seventy percent of the subsidised fertiliser was delivered to government distribution points, which then sold the fertiliser to farmers at 25 percent of the full cost, making it very difficult for commercial retailers to sell their own fertiliser, since they had to import at full cost.

More importantly, in studies conducted during 2007 Jayne found that the Malawi programme failed to target needy farmers. "The logic of the programmes is that poor farmers cannot use fertiliser efficiently, and would not contribute to national maize self-sufficiency, hence the need to target more commercialised smallholder farmers."

He added, "Nevertheless, the poor benefited indirectly from the Malawi fertiliser programme because the abundant harvest brought maize prices down and the staple food cost them less".

Fertiliser is only one ingredient in a bumper harvest

Sachs and Denning admitted that Malawi would need more than subsidised farm inputs to escape from the trap of dependency. "Malawi needs to invest in water harvesting and irrigation, diversified agriculture, village-based clinics, rural electrification, rural roads and other infrastructure critical for long-term growth."

Land size also counts: a growing population and limited arable hectarage has hampered Malawi's ability to produce food. The country's inheritance patterns, which result in land being equally divided among siblings, has led to an average arable landholding of .23ha per capita, and even less in the southern region, according to a report commissioned by USAID in 2005, The Governance Dimensions of Food Security in Malawi.

"Land is far more inequitably distributed than income ... because much of the best land is occupied by agricultural estates," forcing most Malawians to rely on the market to procure maize, the report commented. "This places them at the mercy of highly volatile food prices, which tend to be low at harvest and higher during the growing or the 'hungry season' [December to March]."

Many small-scale farmers resorted to working for a pittance - about 29 US cents a day - as casual labour on the estates, which still kept maize beyond the reach of many.

"In Malawi, where land pressures are particularly severe, 70 percent of all smallholder households possess less than one hectare of land, and only nine percent of smallholders in a nationally representative survey [conducted in June 2007] sold maize in the past 12 months," Jayne said.

"While many farms in Asia were similarly very small at the time of their green revolutions, many of them enjoyed irrigation and the higher returns to fertiliser that could be achieved with water control, and more than one cropping season," he added.

"These factors substantially improved Asian land productivity, and partially relieved the severity of the land constraint among small farms. By contrast, the vast majority of African farms are dependent on rain and one crop season per year."

Malawi's government is planning to table a controversial bill in Parliament which would require pregnant women to undergo HIV testing. The move is aimed at reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, but opponents of the proposed bill argue it would violate women's rights.

Malawi's current policy is to routinely test the approximately 500,000 pregnant women who attend antenatal clinics annually, unless they specifically ask not to be. However, according to Dr Mary Shawa, principal secretary for nutrition and HIV/AIDS, by October 2007 only about 162,000 pregnant mothers had been tested for HIV; 13 percent of them were positive.

Without intervention, the risk of an HIV-positive pregnant woman passing on the virus to her baby is between 30 percent and 35 percent, according to health specialists. Miriam Chipimo, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS manager for UNICEF Malawi, told IRIN/PlusNews that only slightly more than half of the 19,120 pregnant women who tested positive for HIV in Malawi in 2006 received preventative treatment.

Malawi recently switched from a single dose nevirapine regimen to the more effective and WHO-recommended triple combination of antiretroviral therapy drugs to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, however Chipimo noted that only 28 percent of the 544 clinics that provide maternal services in Malawi were offering PMTCT (prevention of mother-to-child) services by September this year. The government hopes to roll out the programme to all clinics by the end of 2008.

Shawa said that a law requiring pregnant women to test for HIV would only be put in place after consulting with all stakeholders on the issue.

The government has already surveyed Malawians from throughout the country to determine their views on mandatory testing. According to Shawa, many respondents were opposed to the idea, but she could not provide details.

"The bill will be discussed at cabinet level and then we will be telling the nation everything about the findings," she said.

Izeduwa Derex-Briggs, HIV/AIDS specialist with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said if the law was passed, it would infringe on the rights of Malawian women. "Such a law would be discriminatory. Why should it target women and not men?" she said.

Seodi White, national coordinator for Women and Law in Southern Africa (Wilsa), a group that advocates for women's rights and empowerment, said the proposed bill was unfortunate and retrogressive as it implied women were to blame for transmitting the disease.

"The bill is stigmatising women and Malawi cannot afford to pass such a bill into a law," White said.

Aaron Sangala, Malawi's deputy minister of women and child development, said that government would debate the human rights issues surrounding HIV testing when the bill was tabled in parliament early in 2008.

Despite two years of bumper harvests, malnutrition, partly a consequence of Malawi's famine in 2005, still lingers. "The scale of the malnutrition problem in Malawi is clearly very large and, given its consequences for economic development and child survival, calls for immediate and large-scale action," said Aida Girma, UNICEF Resident Representative.

"Micronutrient deficiencies, which are often referred to as hidden hunger, are also very high." Malnutrition is characterised by key indictors, such as the number of underweight children and levels of stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies: stunting levels were at 46 percent, 19 percent of children up to 59 months were underweight, and wasting was 4 percent, the UN Children's Fund representative added.

After the drought

Malawi has turned the page on the 2005 drought that left about five million people in need of food aid. According to government estimates the 2007 maize harvest, the staple food, increased by 22 percent over the 2006 crop, and was 73 percent higher than the average for the past five years.

Mary Shawa, principal secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet responsible for nutrition and HIV and AIDS, described malnutrition as a silent crisis. She called for a comprehensive study to establish whether the bumper harvests in the 2005/06 and 2006/07 growing seasons had had any impact on reducing malnutrition levels.

"We have started to see improvements in the food security situation in Malawi in the past two years [but] malnutrition is still a challenge," UNICEF's Nutrition Officer, Stanley Chitekwe, told IRIN.

He said malnutrition was caused by three underlying causes: the first, household food security, had shown improvement; the other two - care for children and women, and the availability of health services - were still inadequate.

"Malawi is heading in the right direction by meeting one of the three requisites for nutrition," he commented, but addressing the other issues would "require more investment in building capacity to improve care practices and health seeking behaviours", because "there is still more work required in promoting diversified crops rich in vitamins and nutrients, and in food processing and preservation."

HIV/AIDS also "undermines nutrition improvements by directly causing ill-health and eroding capacity at various levels - family and institutions - to care, produce food and provide services," Chitekwe added.

The hunger gap, a pre-harvest period when food from the previous crop was often depleted, meant that seasonal variations in household food availability still resulted in higher levels of malnutrition from September to March/April each year, he said.

Filling the hunger gap

A 2005 National Nutrition Survey found that 90 percent of children in Malawi were malnourished. Tapiwa Ngulube, principal nutritionist in the ministry of health, said since then the government had established 95 Nutrition Rehabilitation Units, where free food was given to malnourished children and mothers were trained to feed them correctly.

"Our aim is to ensure that the children are healthy and have gained weight by the time they leave rehabilitation units; children who are malnourished lose up to 11 centimetres in height if they are not treated for malnutrition and stunting," Ngulube noted.

Around 39,000 children are still being treated at rehabilitation centres throughout the country, but "our efforts are hampered by a shortage of medical personnel," Ngulube said.

UNICEF's Girma attributed micronutrient deficiency to the low nutrient content in local diets, which are based mainly on cereals, roots and tubers and said diets needed to be supplemented with micronutrient-rich foods like fish, meat, eggs, milk and dairy products.

But in a country where over half the people live on less than US$1 a day, most households struggle to come up with two meals a day.

A government plan to more than double the number of Malawi's child protection officers will not resolve the twin problems of child labour and trafficking, because the root causes lie in areas beyond the reach of monitoring and enforcing legislation, civil rights groups say.

Government is intent on increasing the number of child protection officers from 400 to 1,000 to monitor trafficking and child labour in communities, but rights groups maintain that the country does not have adequate anti-trafficking legislation on its books to allow effective prosecution of such cases.

In 2005 the Malawi government, with funding from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), trained an initial batch of 400 child protection officers. Penson Kilembe, director of child development affairs in the Ministry of Women and Child Development, told IRIN that they had been responsible for about half the reported child labour and trafficking cases.

"Their contribution towards combating child labour and human trafficking has been overwhelming. They work as frontline officers and report any suspicious cases of human trafficking to labour officers and social welfare officers in their respective districts throughout Malawi," Kilembe said.

The officers are deployed in all 193 constituencies represented in the national assembly, and are trained to recognise child labour and trafficking activities.

"Each constituency has four child protection officers, but they are hardly enough. With funding from the National Aids Commission (NAC), we will be training additional officers," Kilembe said.

The Child Care, Protection and Justice Bill, which defines child trafficking and sets a penalty of life imprisonment for convicted traffickers, was approved by the cabinet and is expected to be tabled in parliament soon. The Malawi Law Commission was also "fine-tuning" comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation, Kilembe said.

Poverty

Billy Banda, executive director of Malawi Watch, a non-governmental organisation advocating human rights and good economic governance, said it was difficult to rely on legislation to combat trafficking without tackling poverty, the root cause of child exploitation, in a country where more than 70 percent of the 12 million population live on US$2 a day or less.

While recognising the efforts by government and its development partners to combat human trafficking and child labour, Banda said, "Increasing the number of child protection officers without dealing with what drives thousands of our children into exploitative labour will not solve the problem. These children are compelled to work in estates because of poverty and, to a large extent, because they either have one or no parent at all."

According to UNAIDS, about 14.1 percent of people aged between 15 and 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS. Banda said the HIV/AIDS pandemic had resulted in more than one million AIDS orphans, leading to the creation of child-headed and one-parent households.

"We need to help these children obtain educational scholarships, stipends and life skills if they are to remain in school and grow up into responsible citizens," Banda said.

Maxwell Matewere, executive director of Eye of the Child, an NGO whose activities are directed by the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, said there was a need to increase the cash input to poor families and provide food supplements in schools.

"We need to make primary education compulsory, enforce the employment act, compensate victims, and regulate culture practice by documenting proper guidelines, which should discourage children from seeking work ... [so that they] go to school," he said.

"We need to do more in protecting children from domestic labour: we need to enact the bill on National Registration, the bill on Tenancy, the bill on Child Care, Protection and Justice, and we also need to enact the Penal Code Amendments Bill, which are pending in parliament for the past three to four years, he pointed out.

"All these are important tools if we are to win the battle against child labour. We also need to establish a children's fund, which could help to finance the full implementation of the national plan of action on orphans and other vulnerable children," Matewere said.

Malawi is a signatory to numerous conventions against child labour and has ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, the 1973 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 138 (setting a minimum working age of 18), and the 1999 ILO Convention 182 (outlawing child labour).

However, according to UNICEF, in 2006 about 30 percent of children aged between five and 14 in Malawi were involved in child labour and the children's agency has initiated a child trafficking study to determine the scale of this activity.

A report published in June 2007 by the US state department, Trafficking in Persons, said children were mainly trafficked domestically for agricultural labour, but were also used for cattle herding, domestic service, sex work, and as menial labourers for small businesses.

"Trafficking victims, both adults and children, are lured by fraudulent job offers into situations of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation within Malawi and in South Africa," the report said.

Prevention and protection

The state department recommended that Malawi's government strengthen its legal and victim support frameworks by putting in place comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation.

According to media reports between August and October 2006, the Malawi Law Commission trained 250 prosecutors and investigators from the police and immigration services in prosecuting trafficking cases, using the existing laws.

The Malawi Police Service trained 74 police officers nationwide to provide therapeutic services to traumatised and sexually abused children, including victims of trafficking. In August 2007 a child protection education course for district police commanders was held, as well as an instructor training course for 16 police child protection officers.

"The government made appreciable progress in caring for trafficking victims, and provided assistance commensurate with its limited resources and capacity," the state department report said.

"The government's Lilongwe drop-in centre for victims of trafficking and gender-based violence served approximately 50 victims during the year with counselling, medical care, legal assistance, shelter and vocational training."

President Bingu wa Mutharika has earned the ire of civil society for not keeping his end of the bargain to discuss floor crossing, a tactic that has strengthened his political arm, now that parliament has approved the national budget.

Mutharika's decision to prorogue parliament soon after the budget was passed was seen as an attempt to stem any move by the opposition, who hold the majority of seats in the193-seat house, to force the Speaker to table the issue of floor crossing.

The budget vote was suspended on 24 July after opposition parties - the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) - refused to debate the budget until a standoff over the defection of their members to Mutharika's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), had been resolved. The DPP had welcomed 60 defectors, bringing the ruling party's tally of members in parliament to 80.

Opposition parties cited Section 65 of the Constitution, which bars legislators from switching allegiance from their sponsoring parties, and in June Malawi's Supreme Court granted powers to the Speaker of Parliament to expel defecting lawmakers, a decision that would slash the DPP's seats.

The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR), a nongovernmental organisation (NGO), said the battle over the controversial section had dragged on because both government and opposition leaders had been "dishonest".

"The truth of the matter is that politicians are struggling for power," said Undule Mwakasungura, executive director of the CHRR. "Government is afraid of collapsing, while the opposition wants to wrest power and both are manipulating the poor masses to make their ends meet."

The CHRR, among other NGOs who participated in the 14-day pro-budget vigil outside parliament in the capital, Lilongwe, said the deliberate distortion of Section 65 could only worsen the political situation in the country, and risked bringing "potentially disastrous consequences".

Mutharika went on television to defend his decision to suspend deliberations, arguing that the parliamentarians were wasting taxpayers' money by debating issues that had no economic bearing on poor Malawians.

In a national address on the state-controlled Malawi Broadcasting Corporation in the week the budget was passed, Mutharika alleged that parliament had blown US$2.2 million on allowances and salaries, "refusing to discuss government bills for development, but insisted on discussing Section 65".

UDF publicity secretary Sam Mpasu said Section 65 was about "constitutionalism. We do not have any grudges against Mutharika but would want to see that the rule of law was upheld."

Justin Dzonzi, chair of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, a grouping of local human rights organisations, accused the president of breaching the trust that civil society had built between government and the opposition, who have been at loggerheads for many months.

Last week, the Public Affairs Committee, a grouping of faith-based organisations that have played a crucial role in the fight against one-party rule in Malawi in the early 1990s, also asked Mutharika to reconsider his stand and allow parliamentarians to discuss the contentious issue of defecting MPs.

In a significant move Dorothy Ngoma, chair of the Malawi Human Rights Commission, a statutory body, warned of political instability if political leaders insisted on verbal tirades. "It is only dialogue that can help in the implementation of the Section; using hate campaigns and abusive language will only worsen matters."