9.4m Malawians need bailouts in 2024

While government is grappling with resources to support 4.4 million hungry Malawians through March, there are revelations that as many as 9.4 million Malawians including 4.8 million children will require humanitarian assistance in various areas.

This is contained in the 2024 United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) appeal for assistance to Malawi which amounts to $47.4 million (about K80 billion).

Of the sum required, 27.8 percent is for water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash), 19.8 percent for nutrition, 16.7 percent for health, 8.5 percent for education while 6.9 percent is for child protection. The remaining 17.1 percent is cross-sectoral.

The need, it said, is a result of the El Niño weather pattern and the anticipated poor food security outcomes, coupled with high poverty rates, the existing vulnerabilities especially in the southern areas affected by Cyclone Freddy, and the ongoing economic downturn.

It reads: “Unicef is anticipating that the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance could rise to 9.4 million in 2024. It is anticipated that beyond March 2024, the food security situation will deteriorate further.

“Urgent action is required to protect livelihoods, reduce the deterioration of the nutrition situation and prevent the resurgence of a widespread cholera outbreak.”

Around 6.5 million people, according to Unicef, require support through disaster risk reduction and livelihoods protection interventions to avoid shifting to a higher acute food insecurity category.

It notices that Malawi also faces endemic malaria and a re-emergence of such vaccine-preventable diseases as polio, contributing to the need for response programmes that are fit for this polycrisis context.

With reduced access to health care, it said Wash and nutrition services due to damaged health-care facilities and underlying economic challenges, disease outbreaks, especially cholera, could continue into the next rainy season.

“There will be a focus on ensuring that the government and other partners maintain an agile technical capacity (human resources) to provide life-saving emergency support to affected children and their families within the first two weeks of the onset of a disaster.

“Unicef will enhance the resilience of systems, communities and individuals by working directly with communities and young people and strengthening the capacity of community-based platforms and frontline workers to ensure uninterrupted services during unforeseen events,” it pledged.

Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale said they are encouraging farmers to plant early maturing and drought resistant varieties to deal with the challenges, but also intensifying mega farms and irrigation farming.

“We have had droughts but also floods. These have reduced the amount of food being harvested. But we believe that we can achieve food security and sufficiency and economic development if we invest heavily in irrigation and will continue to invest in this.

“The ministry is also doing mega farms and we already have over 1 000 farmers who have between five and 2 000 hectares. We are providing them with finances, equipment and inputs for local consumption as well as exports. We are also lobbying with them to do irrigation farming and we have K37 billion in the budget for this.”

In his New Year message, President Lazarus Chakwera also said the El Nino is pushing for the growing of legumes that will thrive in and survive in those conditions instead of crops that will not.

Already, findings of a new research in December 2023  from the National Planning Commission and  International Food Policy Research Institute showed that 600 000 more Malawians or about 2.6 percent of the population will slide into the poverty in 2024 due to the impact of El Niño weather pattern.