A Thousand Opportunities

This September, George Soros, donated over $50 million to fight poverty in Africa. The funds will be marched by other donors and will be used specifically in the Millennium Village project, which are in 14 sites in about 10 African countries, a total of 78 villages. 

A two- days International Sports and Development Conference was held at University of the Western Cape inSouth Africa on September 1-2 2010.

I managed to attend the Young Researchers Day, which was on the first day of the conference accompanied by staff and executive members of the United Nations Association of South Africa (UNASA), who were participating in the conference.

The sessions were on Sports and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Various speakers from all over the world spoke on how sports facilitated the achievement of MDG targets, empowered the youths and minority groups and enhanced gender relations, community reconciliation, social cohesion and peace.

UNASA was one of the organizations that supported and participated in the conference. Currently they are implementing two programmes. The Sports-in-a-Box project supported by UNA Canada; an initiative that aims to provide improved sports coaching and education for primary school pupils in disadvantaged schools, clubs and community service organizations. The project is also involved in developing youth leadership.

The second Project supported by UNA Sweden, using SIDA funds that are channeled through Forum Syd, is the Millennium Development Goals Awareness Programme with the aim of raising awareness on the eight goals amongSouth Africa’s national, regional and local governments, and among other civil society stakeholders, and to highlight the importance of achieving the goals by 2015. The conference was a merge of issues addressed by the 2 projects.

Who's Really Fighting Hunger? a report by ActionAid that was recently released in New York reveals that 20 out of 28 poor nations are off track to halving hunger by 2015 and 12 of these are going backwards, despite UN claims that the world is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goal. The report further revealed that hunger could be costing poor nations $450 billion a year - more than ten times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015

Brazil tops the list as the best performing developing country. The three best performing countries in Africa are Malawi, Ghana and Mozambique. Malawi has reduced the number of people living on food hand outs from 1.5 million to 150,000 in just five years. The Democratic Republic of Congo is at the bottom of the list with 76 percent of its population chronically hungry. It has the worst hunger statistics in the world.

In Southern Africa, Lesotho and South Africa were ranked in position 24 and 22 respectively in the achievement of MDG 1 which seeks to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty by reducing by half the proportion of people whose income is less than a dollar a day. In addition, countries are supposed to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, and achieve decent and productive work for all.

. According to the report, Lesotho, DRC and Burundi are going backwards on the targets with an increase in the number of hungry population and underweight children since 1990. In South Africa, hunger levels are increasing. The report quotes the national surveys that show that up to 18 percent of South African children live in households where hunger is reported. The country has an overall score of 29% in the achievement of the goal.

According the report, The South African government in the last two years has begun to increase spending in rural economies and has shifted the agricultural policy’s focus to the needs of poor smallholders. In addition, funding has been committed to some of the areas with the highest concentration of poverty - mostly in the former apartheid homelands’, where 60 percent of today’s rural population lives.

In East Africa, Kenya scored the lowest in position 16 out 28 developing countries assessed. Uganda and Tanzania were ranked position 8 and 15 respectively. Kenya scored 37%. In recent years, Kenya has suffered major food crisis from drought to floods to post election violence where close to a million people were displaced from highly productive agricultural areas of Rift Valley region. In 2009, close to 10 million people were in need of food aid.

The report recommends that the Kenyan government urgently implements effective hunger policies like empowering small scale-farmers. Other recommendations include direct funding to sustainable agriculture, increase in social protection programme, a freeze to land-buying by foreign countries and multinationals and the preparing and approval of the national food and nutritional policy.

The report also hails the Kenyan National Land Policy and the new constitution that guarantees right to food, strengthens women's rights, guarantees women stronger land ownership rights and protects community land interests.

The senior UN MDG Campaigner present during the launch of the report in Nairobi however expressed optimism that Kenya and other determined African countries could still achieve the goals on time.