Under normal circumstances, 14-year-old Paul Katana would be in school, but not today. Katana is instead flagging down vehicles along the Mombasa-Malindi highway, hoping to sell sacks of charcoal he is hawking.

About 2km down the road, a young boy watches over his mother's goats, while another is hawking brooms.

Many children in the north-coast region are staying out of school due to a lack of food and water, after a prolonged drought.

The number of school dropouts is increasing by the day, according to education authorities. "Pupils ... can no longer concentrate on [their] studies," said Kezia Yusuf, a local teacher. Worst affected are the districts of Kaloleni, Malindi and Kilifi.

"We ... can't do much, but just call upon the government to address this [situation] before it gets out of hand," Ann Charo, a teacher in Kilifi, said.

School timetables have had to change to cope with increasing absenteeism. "We no longer have lessons in the afternoon these days because not even half the school-children return after breaking for lunch," said Leslie Katana, another teacher.

"In the afternoon, the pupils would rather stay at home and help their parents search for water and pasture for their livestock than come to school," Katana said.

The children who do make it are also reporting to class later than usual.

“There is no use having them go to school when we have no water in the house,” said Phelomena Mcharo, a mother of five, adding: "There is no way I can ask my children to attend school on an empty stomach."

School-feeding programmes crucial

According to a programme adviser with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Kenya, René McGuffin, some of the schools in Malindi district had been targeted for school feeding as part of an emergency programme due to the drought in 2006. The programme was for a period of two years and was phased out in term three of 2007.

However, food distribution is going on in the district of Kilifi. Kaloleni district was recently carved out of Kilifi.

McGuffin said the three districts would be included in the new school-feeding programme starting in January; the current programme ends in December.
"We did realise there are pockets of need in some of the divisions," McGuffin said. At least 60,000 school-children in the three districts are expected to benefit in the new programme.

"The government has recognised that there is a need to ensure the worst-off areas continue to receive assistance," she said. "When there is a true need based on the indicators we should be there."

Improving livelihoods

Many parents have stopped sending their children to school, said Kilifi district education officer, Dickson Ole Keisi. "They'd rather ask their children to stay at home and look after goats or do other odd jobs."

About 10 pupils from the local Jila primary school are working in a quarry in Kilifi.

Ole Keisi said the water and education ministries were working on providing adequate water to schools and the community.

NGOs were also running programmes to improve the quality of life among local communities but a great deal still needed to be done, he said. Most of the residents in the semi-arid districts live on less than US$2 a day.

Medical agency AMREF Kenya constructed water pans in Kilifi and Kaloleni, but they have since dried up due to the aridity of the land and overuse. The organisation is also helping local schools harvest rain water.

In addition, leaders are holding barazas (meetings) to sensitise parents to the importance of education. "Yes we have a [famine] problem ... but we are hopeful a lasting solution will soon be found," said Johnson Jeffer Yah, a local leader.

IRIN  

At least six countries in Southern Africa could receive poor rainfall during the critical planting season starting next month, says an early forecast for the 2008/09 agricultural season.

Lesotho, Swaziland, most of Namibia, parts of Angola, Madagascar and South Africa are likely to receive "normal to below-normal" rain in the first half of the season from October to December, said the forecast by the Drought Monitoring Centre of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

This could have significant implications for the start of the growing season, meaning that rains could be delayed or erratic. "[If this happens] the situation is likely to be critical in those areas that also had a poor season or poor harvest last year and are trying to recover," said an analysis of the forecast by Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) directorate of SADC (SADC-FANR).

Lesotho and Swaziland are still recovering from one of their worst ever droughts in 2007, which left several hundred thousand in need of food aid. Southern Angola recorded poor harvests in 2007 and production in Namibia was down by four percent last season.

SADC-FANR warned that the situation was more critical in areas where poor rainfall in the first half of the season was likely to be followed by a "normal to below normal rainfall" in the second half of the season, from January 2009 to the end of March 2009.

The report predicts that the six countries which could receive poor rains in the next three months could end up in this critical category.

In these areas, the forecast indicated that the second half of the season might be characterised by erratic rains that were insufficient to bring crops to maturity. "In such a scenario, farmers might opt for short-maturing crop varieties that might mature before any early cessation of the rains," SADC-FANR suggested.

"But we must be cautious about the forecast, as this is an early prediction - a clearer picture will emerge closer to the start of the season in October," said Kennedy Masamvu, a senior SADC-FANR agro-meteorologist.
Meteorologists say the climate outlook for SADC region seems to be in a neutral phase, emerging from a La Niña cycle, which has had a "wet impact", perhaps towards a drier phase. La Niña is characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, recorded every three to four years, which have a ripple effect across the globe, making wet regions wetter and dry ones drier.

Jennifer Moetie, a meteorologist at the Namibian Meteorological Service, said: "If the temperature of the Pacific Ocean should rise by one degree Celsius by next month [October] then we could be moving towards a drier phase; it is still very neutral at this stage."

High fertiliser and fuel prices have already made most farmers in the region consider planting less. "The cost of fertiliser has shot by more than 150 percent since last year," said John Weatherson, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's former emergency coordinator in Swaziland.

"I have seen 30 maize seasons in Swaziland; the planting season has been pushed back from September to November as the rains have become more unpredictable over the years," he commented. "The impact of climate change is clearly felt - it is a fact that it is only going to get drier, and we have to opt for more sustainable agriculture practices and opt for short-cycle, high-yielding varieties."

The SADC's report said normal to above-normal rains forecast for Zambia could result in flooding in some parts of the Zambezi River Basin.

IRIN 

Five children have died in Zimbabwe’s southern drought-prone Masvingo province from severe malnutrition-related illnesses, according to members of a faith-based mission.

"The children died of starvation last week," said a member of the Catholic-run Bondolfi Mission, a member of the Holy Cross Convent, who did not want to be named. The mission is located in Chivi district. Two of the children died in the Mapanzure area near the mission, and three at a clinic in Mukaro Mission in the neighbouring Gutu district.

"There was nothing the clinic could do to help them - they were severely malnourished," said the mission staff member. The children had not eaten for a week.

Members of the Bondolfi Mission said they had last seen such levels of malnutrition in the severe drought of 1991/1992. "During that time, humanitarian organisations helped to alleviate the shortages by distributing food aid in communities so the impact was not as severe as were a witnessing now," pointed out the staff member.

Nongovernmental organisations in Zimbabwe are in the process of resuming food distribution after a government ban on their operations was lifted on 28 August. The ban had been imposed ahead of a second round of voting in the presidential ballot on 27 June because of the alleged collective anti-government bias of NGOs. The most recent data from 2006 showed that 29 percent percent of Zimbabwean children below the age of five were stunted or suffering chronic malnutrition, indicating a lack of nutritious food for a long period of time.

Every evening, children from villages around the mission arrive at the boarding school run by the convent to wait for leftovers. "The situation is very bad," said a nun, and described tear-jerking scenes of children scrambling for scraps and running back home to share with siblings.

"You feel helpless because there is not enough food to go around. You can't do much. Even adults sometimes join the scramble for the food scraps and leftovers. Just yesterday, an entire village arrived begging for food," she said.

The mission has tried to help, at times inviting mothers to do some work at the mission station. "Only last week we offered six women some work to do in return for grain and one of them fainted because she was too weak to finish the task," said a nun at the mission.

"We have witnessed hunger and food shortages in the past, but this one is the worst. Our teachers cannot also afford to buy food even when they have been paid," commented another member of the mission. "Food costs three times as much as it costs in South Africa and their salaries are too low to buy enough for themselves and their families as it has become too expensive."

A government-sponsored programme to distribute basic commodities at affordable prices is expected to begin this week, according to the mission. Under the Basic Commodity Supply Side Intervention (BACCOSI), government provides food hampers at reduced prices to rural communities.

Expectant villagers

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC), unaffected by the government’s ban on NGOs, has announced the start of a food distribution drive targeting those infected or affected by HIV and AIDS, which will continue for the next nine months.

Trucks loaded with 383 metric tonnes of maize, beans and cooking oil have been dispatched to feed 24,000 people in eight provinces: Masvingo, Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Midlands, Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East and Mashonaland West. The IFRC announced that distributions would take place on a daily basis, reaching 260,100 people with monthly food support.
For most of the villagers whose crops failed because of patchy rains and lack of farming inputs such as seed and fertiliser, the arrival of food aid trucks is long overdue as they have struggled for months without aid. A crop assessment forecast by a joint Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food Programme mission, released in June 2008, projected that about 5.1 million Zimbabweans out of a total population of 12 million would suffer food insecurity by early 2009.

Peter Lundberg, the head of the IFRC delegation in the capital, Harare, appreciated the Bondolfi Mission’s concerns. "This is a critical period for these communities. They have faced months without enough food and, for many families, the situation has deteriorated drastically in recent weeks."

Françoise Le Goff, head of the IFRC’s Southern Africa zone, said people infected or affected by HIV and AIDS were particularly vulnerable to food shortages. "Many of these people are on antiretroviral medication (ARVs). For these drugs to work effectively, people need food. Without a full stomach, many of those on [ARVs] are now choosing to default on their treatment as they can’t cope with the debilitating side effects."

The IFRC said according to health authorities in Masvingo province, one of the regions worst affected by the food crisis, 70 percent of people on ARVs have defaulted in recent months because of food shortages.

A little over 15 percent of the country’s population is living with HIV. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), approximately 1.3 million, or one fifth of all Zimbabwean children have lost a parent; most have been orphaned by AIDS.

IRIN 

Chief Paulosi Lebakeng is a troubled man. Food production has dipped in his village of Ha Tsiu, perched about 2,500m above sea level on the Thaba Putsoa mountains, about 100km east of Lesotho's capital, Maseru.

Rainfall has become less frequent every year, as has snowfall; both important sources of water for food crops. There are more HIV/AIDS orphans in the village, and the pandemic has also left fewer people to work in the fields. Then, last year, the price of maize, the staple cereal, began to climb.

"People don't have enough to eat," he says in Sesotho. "It was never like this in my grandfather's time." The wind howls around his one-room mud-and-stone house as if in agreement. The name of the village in Sesotho means "This village belongs to many years" (it has existed for a long time).

Time is a critical factor in the villagers' lives. Ma Theko Mokhachane, a village elder shelling beans nearby, interjects, "We didn't have enough snow this year. The soil is not moist enough for planting maize. In our grandfathers' time we used to start planting by August; now it's getting later and later." When planting is late, the young maize sprouts are exposed to frost in April the following year, which kills most of them.

The fields have been tilled and now await the rains, but the forecast for the rest of 2008 and early 2009 is quite gloomy, according to Peter Muhangi, a project officer with the Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee (LVAC), based in Maseru.

The people of Ha Tsiu realise that something is very wrong with the weather. Lebakeng asks the IRIN reporter: "Do you know what is happening?" He, Ma Mokhachane and his wife, called Ma Lebakeng by the villagers, are amazed to learn of the connection between their lives and the greenhouse gas emissions of industries and cars in cities far away.

They look up at the sky, trying to spot the gases warming up their part of the world. "Yes, the sun has been getting hotter," says Ma Mokhachane.

Scenarios based on projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that by 2045 Lesotho will face severe water shortages, and the government's national report on climate change has noted that there will be even less rainfall by 2075.

In 2007 Lesotho was ravaged by one of the worst droughts in 30 years, which left 400,000 people - a fifth of the country's population - in need of food aid.

The villagers are still trying to get back on their feet. The more than 1,000 residents, mainly farmers and herders, were forced to sell their animals – donkeys, horses, sheep, goats and hens - as a coping mechanism. In neighbouring villages some animals died. "In the old days, each family had at least 10 animals, now they are lucky if they have one," says the chief.

The village overlooks the Mohale Dam, one of two built as part of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), the world's largest water transfer operation; the other is Katse.

The dams were built in the Thaba Putsoa mountain range in southern Lesotho on the Senqunyane River, which becomes the Orange River when it reaches South Africa, at a cost of US$4 billion, to supply water to neighbouring South Africa's rapidly expanding industrial hub in Gauteng Province.
In terms of the water-sharing agreement between Lesotho and South Africa, the villagers, whose parched fields lie around the dam, can only access water to drink. They eye the dam with some resentment.

Lesotho's natural renewable water resources are estimated at 5.23 cubic km per year (km3/yr), far exceeding its water requirements, according to the Encyclopaedia of the Earth, but because of Lesotho's commitments in the framework of the LHWP, its actual water resources will have decreased to 3.03 km3/yr by 2020.

Alternative income at a cost 

Over the years, more and more villagers have been forced to seek jobs across the border in neighbouring South Africa, the region's economic hub. Economic migration, temporary in most cases, exposed the village to HIV/AIDS.

Lesotho's HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 23.2 percent in a population of 1.8 million is one of the world's highest, and the country has more than 100,000 HIV/AIDS orphans.

Ha Tsiu has 74 HIV/AIDS orphans. "There are at least five child-headed households in the village," says Lefulesele Sutha, principal of the local primary school.

Adapting to survive

Chief Lebakeng has begun to mull over possible solutions. "I am thinking of a communal grain reserve so no one will starve in the village," he says. The people already share their produce and the idea would be welcomed.

They are learning to use the wetlands near the fields as a source of water for irrigation, "But it is still underutilised," says Moliehi Shale, a researcher with the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town.

Shale is part of a research team working on an European Union project, New Approaches to Adaptive Water Management under Uncertainty (NeWater), which has 43 scientific partners and has case studies from the river basins of the Rhine, Nile, Elbe, Tisza, Guadiana, Amudarya and Orange.

The objective of the project was to support the transition to more adaptive water management, particularly in the face of the uncertainties associated with climate change and other global shocks.

Lesotho lies entirely in the Orange River Basin, and the study examined the use of the wetlands by the residents of Ha Tsui as a source of water and food for their livestock.

In the past few years, some have begun to plant apple trees and grow garlic as alternative sources of income, "But not everyone can afford these trees, and you need many trees to make money," says Lebakeng.

"You can maybe earn R50 [a little more than US$6] a tree," says Ma Mokhachane. The money can buy around 10kg of maize-meal, which could feed a family of four for a few days.

The people are also considering other ideas. "Some of the villagers can learn to make handicrafts with grass," says Lebakeng, but Makoanyane Letsora, a subsistence farmer, points out that "We need someone to market our produce; I cannot even find a place to sell my apples."

Researcher Shale is exploring the villagers' understanding of climate change and the need to find alternatives to subsistence farming. "It is evident so far that the villagers would not like to leave their land and would prefer to find solutions here," she said. "The farmers in the village already shop around for drought-resistant seeds." Some are now part of a potato cooperative.

But Ha Tsiu is one of several hundred villages tucked away in the Lesotho highlands; about 80 percent of the country's population live in rural areas and struggle with the eccentricities of the ever-changing climate.

Some help on the way

Food production in Lesotho has been hit by various factors, including climate change, says Memed Gunawan, country representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). "Thirty years ago, the country produced enough to meet its national requirement – it was an exporter of cereals and vegetables - now it barely manages to produce 30 percent of the requirements."

Besides the frequency of natural disasters, such as droughts as a result of climate change, lack of investment, economic migration and HIV/AIDS have all affected agriculture. The government spends a little more than two percent of its gross domestic product on agriculture, far below the 10 percent stipulated for African countries to achieve food self-sufficiency.

The FAO is looking at ways to help the country overcome the challenges of climate change. "We are also trying to develop some irrigation strategies," says Gunawan. "We are looking at training people in conservation farming techniques, which does not require a lot of water."
Conservation farming minimises soil disturbance, applies more precise timing for planting and utilises crop residue to retain moisture and enrich the soil.

The government has identified several ways of adapting to climate change, such as developing high-yield crop varieties, conserving rangelands to prevent soil erosion, and afforestation.

However, it says its adaptation plans are challenged by the communal land tenure system, which provides little incentive to the individual to improve or protect arable land and communally grazed resources; by poverty, which curtails the ability of many households to engage in conservation activities that may require purchased inputs; and by the low priority accorded to conservation by the Basotho.

IRIN 

Tens of thousands of people are facing food scarcity in the areas of Baringo and East Pokot in Kenya's north Rift, a humanitarian official said.

"There is an acute food shortage and the situation has been rated as alarming," Anthony Mwangi, public relations manager with the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), said.

At least 64,000 people were affected in East Pokot and another 32,000 in Baringo.

Mwangi said the food scarcity was attributed to poor rainfall and drought, which had led to crop failure. High food prices had exacerbated the situation.

In addition, prolonged drought was contributing to environmental degradation, he said.

Absenteeism in schools had also been reported, with at least 5 percent of children missing school. "They are staying behind to support their parents," he said.

Livestock health has been affected due to a lack of pasture and water. The two areas have a large pastoralist population.

"The livestock are in poor condition and are fetching low prices in the markets," said Mwangi. Milk production had also fallen.

He said some of the affected population was feeding on wild fruits and rodents to cope with the food shortage.

The worst-affected areas include the localities of Sacho, Margat, Makutani, Tenges, Koloo, Tangul bei and Nginyang.

The KRCS has launched relief food aid distribution targeting at least 68,000 people in the affected areas. So far, the KRCS had distributed 1,246 tonnes of assorted food stuff, including 1,152 tonnes of cereal, Mwangi said.

IRIN 

Drought, conflict, hyperinflation, high food and fuel prices, the weakness of the Somali shilling and a succession of poor harvests have increased the number of people needing food and other assistance to 2.6 million – up 40 percent from January.

At a news conference in Nairobi on 22 July, Mark Bowden, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, called the situation “fluid” and warned that “we are months before a major crisis” as the situation was likely to deteriorate further, potentially affecting 3.5 million, or half the total population.

Bowden said that “although this is a frightening figure to deal with”, it was the responsibility of the humanitarian community to provide assistance and seek ways to address the crisis.

Already, UN agencies and NGO partners of the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) had revised upwards the financial requirements from the original US$406 million to $637 million, an increase of 53 percent, in their mid-year review. Financing the CAP would be a challenge as the global price rises had increased costs and affected donor governments’ budgets too.

In Somalia, the critical food and livelihood crisis, combined with price hikes, very poor rains in the southern and central parts of the country, violence and limited or no access to the affected populations, was further exacerbating the situation and severely restricting the ability of humanitarian organisations to deliver assistance.

At the press conference, Beatrice Spadacini, media and communications manager for CARE International, said access was the greatest challenge facing humanitarian organisations.

She said in many parts of the country, particularly the central and southern regions, aid workers were increasingly being targeted. At least 19 UN and NGO aid workers have been killed and 13 others abducted since the start of 2008 and 31 piracy cases reported, in addition to 82 looting incidents.

Per Engebak, the director for the UN Children's Fund in eastern and southern Africa, said on average, it took 47 days to cover 200km, bypassing 400 checkpoints to deliver assistance to the vulnerable population,.

Peter Smerdon, a senior public affairs officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said: “WFP needs to double the amount of food it is bringing into Somalia to 32,000MT per month.” The agency was urgently appealing to governments to escort naval vessels to protect ships loaded with WFP food from piracy. At least 90 percent of all WFP food for Somalia arrives by sea.

Smerdon said the first unescorted ship loaded with WFP food was due to leave Mombasa on 22 July. Another ship had refused to load 12,000MT of cereals in South Africa without naval support, he added, and if this cargo did not leave South Africa soon for Mogadishu, one million people in Somalia would not receive cereals - the bulk of the food ration - in August.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Crop Prospects and Food Situation report released in July forecasts that the main Gu cereal crop, due for harvest from next month, is largely expected to fail as a result of a late start and poor rains in most parts of the country. According to the FAO’s Food Security Analysis Unit, if the Gu rains fail, the Somali shilling continues to fall, food prices continue to increase and civil insecurity worsens, potentially half the total population could face a humanitarian emergency or acute food and livelihoods crisis.

IRIN 

Three parched years in a row have drained Lesotho's water sources and thousands of people that are already facing chronic food insecurity risk losing access to water, the spread of disease and death.

"Water is increasingly becoming a scarce commodity; this, coupled with recurrent droughts and variable weather patterns ... poses serious challenges," Bernard Batidzirai, Education Specialist at the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN.

In 2007 the worst dry spell in three decades put 400,000 of the roughly 1.9 million population in desperate need of assistance, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency. The situation has scarcely improved: the Disaster Management Authority (DMA) estimated that 350,000 people would suffer food deficits over the next six months.

"The deteriorating water situation in the country is evident, as the water table is receding and a number of boreholes and springs in populated rural areas have dried up," Batidzirai said.

According to the Lesotho Department of Rural Water Supplies (DRWS), 30 percent of water points - boreholes, wells and springs - in rural areas have dried up. In both the highlands and the lowlands, thousands now depend solely on limited surface water, where and when it is available.

A 2007 assessment of water and sanitation needs in schools, undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Training, indicated that more than 60 percent of boreholes in the lowland districts had already dried up as the water table dropped.

DRWS figures indicate that up to 30 percent of households nationwide now lack access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities. In 2006 the figure was substantially lower, but still affected 21 percent.

"We are experiencing the very serious reality of climate change ... in Lesotho this has been evidenced by our country being affected by the worst drought and the longest rains, all in the same year," Monyane Moleleki, the Minister of Natural Resources, said last week during a handover of UNICEF water pumps for schools in the capital, Maseru.

Water health hazard

Chronic food insecurity, declining agricultural productivity, desperate poverty and one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world mean Lesotho's population is already highly vulnerable to shocks.

Water scarcity on top of this "is likely to lead to increased incidents of water-borne diseases, such as cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery", Batidzirai said.

Diarrhoeal diseases are the second most common cause of hospital and clinic admissions among children below the age of 12, after pneumonia. According to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoSW), 14 percent of institutional deaths of children are due to diarrhoea.

An internal MoSW survey found that approximately 60 percent of the country's health centres did not have access to clean, safe water.

Moleleki said access to clean water was enshrined in Lesotho's National Water and Sanitation Policy. The national goal was to provide 30 litres of clean water per person per day, and to ensure that the travelling distance required to collect clean water did not exceed 150 metres.

In response to the crisis, the UK's Department for International Development has made available some US$1 million, with which UNICEF has provided 310 hand pumps and rehabilitated 345 more, constructed 40 boreholes and erected 50 water tanks, providing safe drinking water to nearly 200,000 people and 81,000 school children.

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