For eight years, Malawi has remained stuck in a web of hunger, making it unlikely to achieve zero hunger in line with United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) report, launched in Lilongwe on Wednesday, shows that while Malawi made progress between 2008 and 2016, it registered negligible improvements in the last eight years.
In 2000, according to the report, Malawi scored 43, which is high hunger level, but dropped to 28.1 in 2008 and 22.8 in 2016 and is now on 21.9, which is a minor improvement in the eight-year period.
Wet Hunger Hilfe, the authors of the report, attributed the lack of progress to endless climatic shocks and disasters facing the country.
Wet Hunger Hilfe head of programmes Claudia Plock said the other contributing factor is gender injustice.
She said: “The willingness to push through policies and acts to roll them out for practical application so that the citizens can benefit is one of the observed challenges.
“Gender inequality is another factor. Malawi is one of the countries where women are struggling to access finance and the land tenure system does not favour women. All these, cumulatively contribute to the status quo.”
Ministry of Agriculture statistics presented at the launch indicate that 70 percent of the agriculture workforce in Malawi comprises women.
Plock expressed fear that at the current rate of progress in fighting hunger, it may take nearly a century for Malawi to bring hunger to zero.
The report ranks countries in different categories depending on the level of hunger with some classified as extremely alarming category with a score of 50 and above, seconded by the alarming category between at 35 and 49.9 and the serious category, where Malawi and other countries are within the score of 20 to 34.9.
Another group is moderate and low, both of which have lower scores of below 19.9.
However, despite facing serious hunger, Malawi is better than most neighbouring countries in the same category.
On a list of 127 countries Malawi is on 93rd ahead of its neighbours Tanzania on 94, Mozambique at 107 and Zambia at 115. Malawi also ranks better than other countries such as Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Countries with alarming hunger are Madagascar, Chad, Yemen and Somalia.
It is this part of the report that seemed to have excited Deputy Minister of Health Halima Daud who took advantage of her speech to heap praises on her administration.
She said: “We are facing hunger, but I would like to appeal to journalists to look at this with a positive eye that we are better than many other countries.
“We are doing something as an administration to eradicate hunger. The mega farms initiative is among the strategies to deal with hunger.”
But reacting to the report, Catholic Relief Service (CRS) country representative Sekai Mudonhi said while there are positive strides in Malawi, there is still a lot of work to be done.
She said CRS has developed a tool known as the Rapid Feedback Monitoring System (RFMS), which provides real time data on how communities are coping with climatic shocks.
The RFMS is a tool co-designed by CRS and Cornell University in collaboration with National Statistical Office (NSO) and the Centre for Social Research at the University of Malawi. It uses community based enumerators provided with smartphones who capture real time data.
