Nearly 40 million people in southern Africa do not have enough food. Of these, more than 23 million need emergency assistance now or will do so in the coming months. But these people don’t need our charity — they need our commitment.
So far, the overall response to this crisis has been too slow. If we — governments, international organizations, NGOs and local actors — are to make a difference, then our response needs to be rapid, localized and sustained.
A crisis in a region, not a regional crisis
Our first priority must be to respond. Decisive action taken now will prevent this severe situation from taking a turn for the worse. But our support needs to go beyond the immediate needs of communities.
This is a crisis affecting an entire region, but it is not a regional crisis. This is a crisis that is unfolding across more than a dozen countries, but it is not a series of national crises. This is a crisis that is unfolding across hundreds of small communities, in an uneven and incredibly localized way.
Across the region, there are communities within close proximity of each other that are affected in vastly different ways. Even within areas that are severely affected, there are pockets of even deeper need. Take, for example, Kaerezi and Chiwenga, two small communities in Muzarabani, a district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central Province, together home to about 12,000 people. In an area that has suffered greatly as a result of the drought, and that ranks among the lowest in the country on any number of development and resilience indicators, these villages are perhaps the worst affected, the poorest, and most isolated. Malaria is endemic, and HIV prevalence is considered high.
Our response needs to be similarly nuanced and localized. It needs to seek out and target the communities most in need, not aggregate their suffering. A regional or even a series of national humanitarian response efforts, risks missing the most isolated, the worst affected, and the most vulnerable. Worst, such an approach can create pull factors that will force people to leave rural areas in search of support in larger towns or cities.
Sustained accompaniment
Our response also needs to be sustained, to look beyond the immediate situation, and to reflect our commitment to strengthening the resilience of these communities. The crisis is affecting communities differently for a number of reasons — access to water, access to markets, pre-existing wealth, variations in rainfall, etc. However, overall, this inconsistency reflects the comparative resilience of different communities: the ability of some communities to better withstand shocks like this drought.
The IFRC, through its network of southern African National Red Cross Societies and 100,000 community-based volunteers, can provide and lead this localized response. We offer multi-country, long-term, community-level engagement. Our volunteers, already present in hundreds of communities, including in places like Kaerezi and Chiwenga, can provide the sustained accompaniment that communities need to, first: face and survive the current drought, and second: to take steps to reduce their vulnerabilities to future threats.
These Red Cross Societies can provide a package of resilience-based solutions, tailored to the specific needs of communities. This package could include cash-based and micro-economic interventions, support to develop diversified and sustainable agricultural practices, water and sanitation interventions, and/or disease prevention activities. Our presence will allow us to closely monitor risk and vulnerability through constant and localized data gathering and analysis.
We know this works because it is already working
These interventions will draw from existing best practices; examples where we have been able to support communities to dramatically reduce their exposure to this current drought. Schemes like the ones we are running in Mwanza in southern Malawi, where there are families who, as a result of long-term support from the Red Cross, are coping with the impact of this drought, an island of stability in a sea of deep food insecurity.
One such scheme sees families receive goats that they can breed and sell for income. Each family is expected to return some of their livestock to the scheme, ensuring that more families can then receive assets. This initiative targets the most vulnerable. Its beneficiaries include a widowed mother of three who is living with HIV. She has reared several goats over the past few years and sold them to purchase food, pay for her children’s school fees, and build a new home. She has sold some of her goats to withstand the current drought. While other communities in the area struggle to put food on the table, this woman and her children are eating three meals a day.
This is an example of the kind of intervention that is needed. Our vision is a large-scale expansion of small-scale interventions that can have a sustainable and life-changing impact.
Together, we can make a difference
We have packaged this proposal into a four year, 110 million Swiss franc initiative that will see the National Red Cross Societies in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe support one million people in hundreds of communities to become more resilient.
Red Cross societies will focus on the worst affected, the most isolated, those furthest away from the large-scale development that is desperately needed by so many people. They will focus on places like Kaerezi and Chiwenga, where the Red Cross is the only humanitarian organization present.
They will focus on those living with HIV, orphans, the chronically and severely poor. These actions will complement and reinforce the work of governments and other humanitarian organizations. Our volunteers can act as an information vanguard: gathering community-level data for use by governments and other actors and, perhaps even more importantly, acting as a means of disseminating information and ideas that can save lives and protect livelihoods.
Let’s demonstrate that we mean what we say
We offer an early intervention to chronic and recurrent environmental risk. Our response seeks to go beyond addressing this present calamity. We know that a failure to take a longer-term view now, will see similar conditions return in two, three or four years’ time, requiring once again, expensive and inadequate emergency response.
This is an opportunity to begin to put into place the ideas and commitments that we brought to the World Humanitarian Summit. It is an opportunity to invest in local capacity, to put communities at the centre of our planning and, by doing so, bridge the artificial divide between humanitarian and development assistance. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that we mean what we say when we talk about reducing need and strengthening resilience.
And finally, this is an opportunity to prepare for a future that we know will bring increasing incidents of drought and other hazards, as climate change worsens. The lessons we learn in Southern Africa will inform the work of 190 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies around the world.
