Empower 20 million Africans to sustainably provide for themselves by 2032.
One-year-old Avelino Katende lives with his grandmother Cecília Mariana in the Benguela province of Angola. His mother died when he was only two weeks old and he did not receive the essential nutrition that breast milk provides, especially in the first few months of life.
Cecília was not able to afford alternatives.
Avelino was admitted to the municipal hospital of Bocoio, where he was diagnosed with complicated malaria, severe anaemia, acute diarrhoeal disease, and marasmus — a severe form of protein-energy malnutrition.
Fortunately for Avelino, he was immediately enrolled into ForAfrika’s emergency feeding programme and started to receive therapeutic milk. After a few days of this treatment Cecília could see her grandson recovering. He is now a healthy little boy and Cecília is unable to hide her happiness.
“Thanks to you and the nurses, my grandson has recovered today and I will do everything to protect him from falling back into malnutrition and malaria.
I ask that you continue with this gesture because there are many needy people who miss it [malnutrition], but you have managed to do something. Twapandula [thank you]!” she said.
Malnutrition is a major health concern, especially in developing countries, with the main drivers being poverty, hunger, malaria and inadequate water and sanitation.
But, in Angola, the south-western states are on the brink of a food security and nutrition “catastrophe” mainly because of an ongoing drought, deemed the worst in 40 years.
ForAfrika has responded to this emergency by redirecting funds to purchase therapeutic milk (such as F75 and F100) and food products (such as the peanut-based Plumpy’Nut) to ensure children, like Avelino, receive the urgent nutritional treatment they need to survive. In our experience, severely acute malnourished children who receive these treatments are able to recover in as little as 30 days, although some children take longer.
“It is a safe space for me and the community — it is a place where we all come together and work together. It belongs to us!” says Rebecca Athiep Akeen of the communal well and its adjacent vegetable garden.
Rebecca is part of a 24-strong committee that built and tend to the garden in Apada, a rural suburb on the outskirts of Aweil town in South Sudan.
A few years ago, ForAfrika and the World Food Programme assisted the community to restore and improve their hand-dug shallow well. At the time it was just a hole in the ground, roughly covered in branches as a safety measure.
With a bit of help, the community members were able to reinforce the structure and build a raised wall on which a metal top could be placed to ensure safety and cleanliness.
A simple pulley system was erected and people are now able to pull containers of clean water out of the ground.
A trough was added to prevent wastage of any spills and also to allow the goats and cattle to enjoy a fresh drink.
It didn’t take long for the women in the village to devise a plan for a vegetable garden alongside the functioning water source; it is now worked by 20 women and four men who each take care of a portion.
Rebecca, a 40-year-old single mother, says: “I used to be angry all the time, but the garden has helped me.”
She explains that ForAfrika has assisted the group with nutritional education, skills training, seeds and implements, such as watering cans, spades and rakes.
The garden, beautifully fenced in thatched mats as is particular to the region, boasts healthy sukuma (collard greens), pumpkin and okra plants that can be harvested for consumption or sale at the market.
“It is also good that we have added some nutritious greens to our diets,” Rebecca says, smiling as she watches a tiny goat kid jumping up to the trough for a drink.
At a time when the world seems to be tilting from one disaster to another, it is the small seeds of hope that keep us grounded.
In Mozambique, these small seeds have grown into a thriving communal vegetable garden that gives people a great sense of accomplishment. ForAfrika assisted community groups with seeds, farming equipment and training in Sofala province after Cyclone Eloise destroyed homes, infrastructure, farming land and livelihoods in January.
Father of seven, Belito João Njaze and his fellow farmer, Manuel Verniz, said they did not expect these blooming results when they started building seedbeds earlier and are overjoyed.
“The support came when we didn’t know what to do because we had lost almost everything,” says Manuel, pointing to his bumper crop.
A group of four women – Isabel Alberto Luis, Teresa Jacinto, Joana Ernesto and Rosita João – were also thrilled when their vegetables were harvested – there was enough to feed their families and some extra that they were able to sell.
Alcidio Benjamin, ForAfrika’s manager in Sofala, explains that plant varieties are especially chosen for their nutritional qualities and climate-smart techniques are taught for an environment where conditions are often harsh.
The project also included training on making compost and natural pesticides, how to store and take care of the produce once it is harvested and also how to go about collecting seeds for next season’s planting.
“Thank you for bringing light and hope into our community. Today we have this group vegetable garden which will provide food for many families,” said Belito.
“Empowering people to produce their own food has a real impact,” concludes Vimabanai Chakarisa, ForAfrika’s programme quality and development manager. “This is how we move people from surviving to thriving!”
The South African Child Gauge 2020 revealed that in terms of nutrition and food security, high stunting rates, micronutrient deficiencies, and overnutrition (overweight and obesity) are prevalent in its children. It referred to it as the “slow violence of malnutrition”.
Malnutrition is on the rise in South Africa, a middle-income country, as it is in other parts of Africa.
Malnutrition can have devastating effects on a child, including death, but it is preventable. Spotting the signs early enough is also key. In Angolan and South Sudanese malnutrition clinics, we see children with severe acute malnutrition. If they can get to a clinic on time, we are able to save them with therapeutic milk and food.
In South Africa, where malnutrition looks different, our specially formulated porridge has had miraculous results too. The porridge is named CSS+ after its ingredients: Corn, Soya and Sugar while the plus sign indicates the added essential vitamins and minerals necessary for children’s optimal growth and development.
Vincent Mhirisawo started attending Bright Light Early Childhood Development Centre in Somerset West from the age of three.
When ForAfrika visited soon after to conduct routine assessments, where children are weighed, measured and checked for signs of malnutrition, our field workers immediately spotted a sign on Vincent’s little head and arms — they were covered in open sores.
Three months later, however, after a daily dose of CSS+, Vincent’s skin condition had cleared completely. He is now a healthy seven-year old who has done well at primary school.
This is a testament to the super powers of adequate nutrition. The turnaround is relatively simple — just a sprinkling of the right vitamins and minerals over breakfast can turn a life around. It is tragic to think, however, that millions of others don’t get the “magic” ingredients in their diets and could end up being wasted, stunted, obese or worse.
Clarissa Nakulenga, who has been the principal of Nicuapa School in Mozambique for the past 10 years, chuckles cheerfully between questions in an interview.
“I am happy with the mission I was given,” she tells the ForAfrika crew who visited her school earlier this year.
The crew was there to assess its impact in the internally displaced people’s (IDPs) camps it is currently serving in the province of Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique. Clarissa’s school, in the district of Montepuez, has taken in a lot of children who had to flee their homes because of the ongoing conflict in the region.
The province has rich gas reserves, but the people who live there are very poor and do not benefit from such wealth. This has caused tension and led to some insurgent groups wreaking violence on innocent families.
According to the World Food Programme, with whom JAM has partnered, more than 700,000 people have been displaced in what is becoming one of the “world’s fastest-growing displacement crises” and a “hunger emergency”.
Innocent people have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their crops and animals. Many have lost members of their families too.
Part of ForAfrika’s response has been to launch a school-feeding programme in host schools whereby children are given a red bowl of highly nutritious food each morning. In just over a month, Clarissa has noticed the changes. Not only for the IDPs but for the host community as well.
“Before the school feeding programme, we struggled to retain children in school,” she says. “We had about 25 in each stream, now we have 50-60!
“We even had a child who quit her school and came here when she found out about the food,” she says, breaking out into her hearty laugh once again. Besides children wanting to attend and stay at school, she has also seen an improvement in grades.
“At school, if children have food, they learn better,” she says, adding that a good foundation lays the path to better options in the future.
“If this project [school feeding programme] continues, the school will gain, the community will gain. Numbers will increase and dropouts decrease. Pupils will have the motivation to come back.”
Women in the Lobule refugee settlement in Uganda are so happy with their communal farming success that they have named their group Nyolenita Ku JAM, which means: “We are happy with *JAM.”
The group comprises 33 members who escaped war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013.
“You made 2021 one of our best years since we came to Uganda,” said the group’s spokesperson to Fred Mutenyo, our country programme manager.
“The number of visits that most of our group members would initially make to the clinics /hospitals to treat themselves and their children have drastically dropped due to the nutritious vegetables produced at every household by our members.”
The group has also benefited greatly from learning how to preserve vegetables for the lean season — they were able to store about 50kgs of eggplants (aubergines) and 30kgs of cowpeas by drying them. Any excess is sold at the local markets and the income can be used to buy other groceries, including meat and fish.
The spokesperson said that this year, any profits made would go towards hiring more land and increasing their yield.
“We are yet to harvest our groundnuts, simsim and soybeans and more money will flow into our pockets!” she said.
Another refugee, Aluma Moses, says he was struggling to provide for his children and decided to explore farming as a way to bring in an income. He started attending the gardening training and received some seeds and other resources to set him on his way.
“My family and I now have a constant food supply in the house and do not rely on the food assistance from WFP,” he explains.
Better still he has been able to sell his surplus produce of groundnuts, onions, eggplant, maize, cabbages and tomatoes to make money for essentials not provided by the aid programmes. He even managed to buy a goat doe, who has since given him four kids!
Aluma now has the beginnings of a small business.
*For Afrika is previously known as JAM
Angola is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years, leaving many, but particularly women and children, exposed to food insecurity and malnutrition. The 2021 Integrated Phase Classification (which is the widely accepted scale used to describe the severity of food emergencies) showed that in some drought-affected provinces about 49% of households were in phases 3 (crisis) or 4 (emergency). ForAfrika conducted a nutrition SMART survey (that assesses the nutritional status of children under five and the mortality rate of the population) with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the preliminary findings of which show that one in six children suffer from acute malnutrition in Benguela province alone.
The security situation in Cabo Delgado, which started in 2017, remains volatile and the humanitarian situation fragile. An attack in Palma in late March left dozens dead and an additional 80,000 people displaced, bringing the total number of displaced people to more than 700,000. Most of these people remain dependent on humanitarian aid, as they attempt to rebuild their lives from scratch. Mozambique is a country hard hit by climate change, with more and more tropical storms reaching her shores. Cyclone Eloise made landfall in January 2021 devastating five of the countries provinces. We are making concerted efforts to have emergency reserves available and increase our mitigation programmes, to increase resilience when disasters strike.
The world was stunned when in July, devastating riots rocked South Africa. Sparked by protests at the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma, the reaction quickly escalated out of control, fueled by frustration at the poor economic status of the country. People ransacked shopping malls, burnt down businesses and disrupted supply chain routes. Many people lost their lives, others their livelihoods and food was scarce. This on the back of the devastating impact of COVID and the current 40% unemployment rate in South Africa, has more people facing food insecurity. Increased stunting and malnutrition noted across the country is a grave concern and has kept us very focused on the Early Childhood Development sector in South Africa.
The East African country is still reeling from the worst flooding in 60 years. Above normal rainfall for the third consecutive year in 2021 led to prolonged flooding and impacted an estimated 835,000 people. The humanitarian crisis was further exacerbated by intercommunal conflicts triggering displacements in various locations. In 2021, a total of 7.7 million people needed food assistance, while a further 1.4 million children and 480,000 pregnant or lactating women were acutely malnourished and needed treatment.
We worked with over 500 young people at our skills programme at the Fred Nkunda Centre, teaching them marketable skills. This project has been so successful over the years that we were able to hand the project over to our local Rwandan management team, who are now continuing to run the project under their own local NGO, which is primarily funded through local sources, allowing us to shift our focus to other areas in Rwanda. Despite Rwanda’s remarkable turnaround since the devastating genocide in 1994, there are pockets of poverty in the country where children are not being educated or receiving adequate nutrition.
Our model of moving people “from surviving to thriving” has proved very successful. Refugees and host communities have come together to coexist peacefully while also developing communal farming blocks that have increased food security and livelihoods and have empowered them economically. We look forward to translating these programmes into other areas.
Paul Edwards
Chairperson
Ann Pretorius
Founding Director
Isak Pretorius
Group Chief Executive Office
Nico Esterhuizen
Group Chief Financial Officer
Muhammad Muntasir Nawool
Board Member
Muhammad Muzammil Rengony
Board Member
Killen Otieno
Chief Operating Officer
Amanda Koech Otieno
Chief Programmes Officer
Fiona Hannig
Chief Communications Officer
Simon McGregor
Chief Development Officer
Dr Mary Okumu
Chief Technical Director
Terri Pretorius
Group Marketing Officer
Celio Njinga
Country Director Angola
Arsénio Mucavele
Country Director Mozambique
Sihle Mooi
Country Director South Africa
Abeba Amene
Country Director South Sudan
Bosco Mfashingoma
Project Co-ordinator Rwanda
Fred Mutenyo
Programmes Manager Uganda
Simon McGregor
Canada
Sabine Wenz
Germany
Nelli Sattler
Switzerland
Simon McGregor
United Kingdom
Eddie Brown
United States
Lisa Rollnes
Norway
Name:
Philip Thon Garang
Birth Place:
Sudan
Position:
Area Manager of Aweil, South Sudan
What I love about my job:
“I really enjoy the development projects that build resilience in the communities of Aweil. These projects are full of ideas and innovations.”
Most memorable moment of 2021:
“When I won the Innovation Award at ForAfrika’s staff awards evening in 2021!”
Name:
Arsenio Mucavele
Birth place:
Mozambique
Position:
Country Director Mozambique
What I love about my job:
“Working at ForAfrika is a dream come true, especially considering I grew up in an area where it all started. I consider humanitarian work a calling from God.”
Most memorable moment of 2021:
“In 2021 we won a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to deliver food to more than 70 schools in Cabo Delgado, Inhambane and Sofala, where food insecurity is high.”
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