Dodma, partners outline response plan challenges

Favouritism in the identification of beneficiaries, theft of maize, political interference and logistical hitches have emerged as factors that compromised food and cash distribution under the 2023/24 Lean Season Response.

Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) commissioner Charles Kalemba said this in Lilongwe yesterday during the opening of the Lean Season Response Review that Doma and humanitarian partners organised to share experiences encountered, successes and challenges that will shape subsequent programmes.

He said the 2023/24 Lean Season Response, which targeted 4.4 million food-insecure people, reached all the targeted beneficiaries despite meeting a number of challenges, including distribution delays in some districts due to the shortage of maize amid the import ban then, which made it hard for Dodma to source required volumes in time.

Said Kalemba: “Malpractices affected the implementation plan. The majority of the reported issues were about leaders like chiefs, councillors pushing to register their own people, in some cases food was stolen, in other places wrong people were being registered and as you know, we stopped the exercise in order to address such issues.”

On the outlook for this year’s lean period, the commissioner could not disclose the numbers, saying there will be a response outlined soon after the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (Mvac) Report is released later this week.

“We are waiting for Mvac to complete the assessment because the El Nino response plan was based on agriculture crop estimates, but the Mvac report, which may be coming possibly this week, will tell us what is the situation on the ground,” said Kalemba.

However, he hinted that the department expects a reduced number of vulnerable people as compared to the nine million food-insecure population that resulted from El Nino-induced poor yield.

One of the partners, World Food Programme (WFP) intends to reach 2.1 million people of those to be affected, but according to WFP deputy director Simon Denhere, their response plan budget of about $80 million has a deficit as only about $20 million has been raised.

“We still have a gap, but we are talking with our partners to come up with further assistance and I must say that the response has been very positive as we’ve received already some contributions that can enable us to start with our response plan,” he said.

Since 2021, there has been a steady increase of vulnerable people during the lean period from 1.6 million (8 percent) to 4.4 million (22 percent).

The total requirement for the response plan was estimated at K260.26 billion covering different types of support but food support alone needed K232 billion.

Of the total support, K188.6 billion was mobilised, representing 81.3 percent by Malawi government, World Bank, WFP, Unicef, Embassy of Ireland, European Union and the USAid, among others, according to a presentation during the meeting.

About 1.37 million metric tonnes of maize and maize flour was distributed, reaching close to 100 percent of the targeted numbers while 91 percent of those targeted with cash transfers were reached, spending K61.6 billion.

Meanwhile, government previously announced that at least nine million people will be food insecure this year following the El Nino weather that brought dry spells and floods, reducing production output.