{"id":3186,"date":"2011-07-04T12:39:23","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T12:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=3186"},"modified":"2011-07-04T12:39:23","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T12:39:23","slug":"could-a-leaked-cable-lead-to-hunger-in-africa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2011\/07\/04\/could-a-leaked-cable-lead-to-hunger-in-africa-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Could a leaked cable lead to hunger in Africa?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3187\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3187\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3187\" title=\"malawi111\" src=\"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/malawi111.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3187\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo: Before the subsidies: An elderly Malawian peasant farmer  describes her failed maize crop, May 25, 2002. Reuters: Howard Burditt)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A leaked cable that has sparked a row between Britain and Malawi  could give rise to rural hunger in the impoverished southern African  nation.<\/p>\n<p>That is the upshot of the spiralling row that has seen Britain suspend aid including its  support for a support for a highly successful seed and fertiliser  programme in Malawi \u2013 and the government in Malawi stick to its guns despite the possible consequences for its people.<\/p>\n<p>The row, which we have been reporting on, stems from a leaked  diplomatic cable that described Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika as  \u201cautocratic and intolerant of critcism.\u201d Other western governments have  also had concerns about human rights in Malawi, including a law that  lets the government ban newspapers.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the merit of the\u00a0arguments, the consequences may be felt most harshly by rural people.<\/p>\n<p>Farm subsidies in the developed world are seen as obscene by some and  are regarded as unfair to peasant farmers in regions like Africa who  can\u2019t compete with their European or American counterparts because of  them.<\/p>\n<p>And of course there is a whole debate about aid in Africa in general which is an occasional theme on this blog.<\/p>\n<p>But the seed and fertilizer programme in Malawi \u2014 and a similar one  in neighbouring Zambia \u2014 actually seems to be reaping real dividends.<\/p>\n<p>Both countries, which are among the poorest on earth and have seen  hunger shortages in the past (years ago I visited a Malawi village where  people risked crocodile attack to harvest wild water lilies to eat),  have been\u00a0yielding bumper maize crops over the past few years,\u00a0at least  in part thanks\u00a0to the subsidy programmes.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi is expected to harvest 3.8 million tonnes of maize this year,  up from 3.5 million the previous year, despite some dry periods during  the year.<\/p>\n<p>Growing harvests have helped annual economic growth to average a  brisk 7 percent in the last five years and contain inflation to single  digits. Food accounts for 58 percent of the consumer price index.<\/p>\n<p>But because of cutbacks to the programme, Malawi has already  announced that this year it will only import 90,000 tonnes of  fertilizer, half of last year\u2019s amount.\u00a0 And the number of farmers under  the programme is also expected to be reduced from the 1.6 million  families who have benefited from the subsidy, so hunger could increase  in rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>All because of a leaked cable?\u00a0Or because of a president\u2019s autocratic behaviour?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A leaked cable that has sparked a row between Britain and Malawi could give rise to rural hunger in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[135,897,258],"class_list":["post-3186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-ngwazi-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-england","tag-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}