“One Namibian who dies of hunger is one Namibian too many” HPP
In first world countries food banks are a charity institution that has grown more rapidly than any other, but there is a brand new national food bank in my very own Namibia. A middle-income country right in the South of Africa (please don’t get it mixed up with South Africa… not the same).
This year the Harambee Prosperity Plan (HPP) announced its 7th Goal of elimination of deaths by hunger, this goes hand-in-hand with Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. I’d like to write about it because the Namibian food bank has been criticised for fostering complacency among Namibia’s people, and food banks in general have been accused of allowing governments to turn a blind eye to hunger by relieving them of their duties to feed the poor.
Many food banks attempt to provide hungry households with food in a dignified way while encouraging a sense of community, this is occasionally achieved but sometimes food banks can involve long lines, people being turned away and humiliation.
The food bank being proposed in Namibia is not so much a place of food collection, but more a distribution of monthly food parcels to qualifying households. This is a step away from the original plan which included the building of “state of the art warehouses”, but was then thankfully rejected as being a waste of money. The work that will go into the operations of the food bank will be carried out by “street committees”, previously unemployed youths who have been trained to register needy households and distribute the food parcels. They have been described as the arms and the legs of the Food bank.
Although it hasn’t been directly mentioned in any of my reading, I believe that using youth, who already live in impoverished areas will make the approach more community centred, an essential component of social undertakings. My first recommendation would be to use these street committees not only as the arms and the legs but also the eyes and the ears of the Food Bank. They are in a perfect position to provide insight for areas of improvements and reasons behind the successes and failures that make up the landscape of all social projects. I would further state that to help ensure the success of the food bank the media is to play an important role in informing the public so that government can be held accountable to this plan.
Having described the basic procedure for the Namibian food bank scheme you’ll see what follows is an argument mainly focused on the concept of food justice (meaning the social concerns of some people having food and some not, and one that involves, in this case, political activism).
The Namibian food bank as a government initiative has been described as the most important social protection program in the country’s history by the Cuban Embassy, who is a major supporter of the project and has been providing Namibia’s government with expertise. According to the World Food Programme Cuba has lifted itself out of poverty and hunger through its effective social protection programs. With governmental backing this food bank may be more sustainable if does not rely solely on volunteers and donations as is often the case.
I’d like to broaden my case by looking at social protection programs generally. Initiatives like this may fuel similar activities, such as nationwide school feeding programs and there is room for collaboration with other sectors. At the moment in the monthly parcel is the food staple, maize-meal as well as cooking oil, yeast and canned foods etc., and there is also soap. As a former dental clinician, my first thought is “let’s get toothpaste in too”. Additionally I’d be interested to see how the environmental sector gets behind the movement. As food waste is a huge problem globally with a third of food going to waste, ending up in landfills and contributing to methane gas emissions, this might be a good opportunity to adopt something like in France where super markets are not allowed to throw out edible food, there is now the perfect place for this edible food.
One of my favourite YouTube videos of Hans Rosling’s, a statistician who uses data imagery to explain concepts of populations and poverty, argues that countries that have first placed an emphasis on human development and social growth, have then managed to stimulate economic development and raise their GDP very quickly. Even with relatively limited budgets. Rosling argues against the idea that it is only after economic growth that a poor country is able to meet human needs and insists that human development should take priority over monetary interests as economic advances come naturally once the population’s basic needs are seen to.
This video isn’t necessarily about food as such, but it’s worth the watch as it covers poverty and food related issues and makes a good argument for the importance of investments made in human progression. I think that those condemning hand outs of vital survival commodities (food) to needy community members and accuse the action as promoting complacency, make an unjust argument.
I’m sure that some might argue that I come across as too optimistic and would be rightly able to point to the numerous times where Namibia’s government has failed to implement the programs which have looked like nothing less than master pieces on paper. But, bearing in mind my recommendations that although being a government nationwide initiative, it emphasize the importance of community involvement, using this as an opportunity for interlinking to create a more comprehensive effort in breaking the poverty cycle as well as media watchdogs doing their jobs to inform the public to holding government accountable in fulfilling their aims, we have little other choice than to remain hopefully optimistic.
Hi. Interesting read. Can you add just a bit to this paragraph?
This video isn’t necessarily about food as such, but it’s worth the watch as it covers poverty and food related issues and makes a good argument for the importance of investments made in human progression. I think that condemning the handing out of vital survival commodities (food) to members of the community who may die without them, as promoting complacency, is an unjust argument.
I would like a summary of the key argument and why you think the creation of food banks is unjust (without having to go watch the video).
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Thanks for this note.
The key argument that Hans Rosling makes in his video is that one of the ways countries have seen rapid growth in their economies, as measured by increases in GDP, is by investing in human development. Examples include governmental grants for expensive health care (such as cesarean sections), providing food (through school feeding programs or food support for needy households), community based education and other safety nets that make up social protection programs. He argues that these human centred initiatives, although not a direct investment in economic growth as such, have shown to rapidly increase GDP. He uses the economic growth of several Asian countries, including South Korea, to illustrate this trend and highlights that they enjoyed faster economic growth than even the UK has, at a much smaller budget.
Rosling is arguing against the idea that it is only after economic growth that a poor country is able to meet human needs and insists that human needs should take priority over economic interests as the economic advances will come naturally once the population’s basic needs are seen to. This is an important debate in a climate where economic interests often have the main focus.
I tie this into my argument, which is where I think there might have been confusion.
I use this video as a way to prove that social protection programs like these (food banks) have a way of addressing poverty very effectively. I am arguing for the creation of food banks, not against them.
I am not saying that I believe the creation of food banks to be unjust, you’ll see I said that the argument that handing out resources essential to survival, as fostering complacency, (or in other words, ‘ if the government hands out food rations to the poor, it will make them lazy and they wont work hard to get a job’ ) is an unjust argument.
This links back to the beginning of my post where I mention criticisms of the namibian food bank and I feel the criticisms and the arguments again the food bank are unjust
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We have a population of less than 3 million people and the main objective of the project is to give every single one currently unable to feed their loved ones a helping hand. By feeding the nation we ensure that our children get a better opportunity to excel.
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A convincing argument for community involvement to enhance the chances of success with this Namibian programme, plus the openness to learn from countries (Cuba, in this instance) where similar programmes have been successfully implemented. I like the link to the issue of food waste, with its impact on the environment as well as (more importantly) the ethics of waste in the face of need.
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Thanks for shedding a positive light on this initiative! I myself was (am?) quite skeptical about it – seeing it as a band aid approach rather than one that tackles poverty at its root. Like Sally, I appreciate the way you highlight the involvement of previously unemployed young people in the community and the effort to learn from Cuba, as well as links with food wastage, especially in a country as economically polarised as Namibia. I also like your idea for involving the community in the M&E (are you familiar with ‘social accountability loops’?). I find the argument you make for not waiting for development to somehow be complete before we feel able to help our disadvantaged population very compelling. We need collective, locally sustainable solutions.
However, you might want to research the school feeding programme a little more, as it has been far more than hinted at. It’s up and running in all target schools, and supposedly reaching all target learners, but it is absolutely riddled with problems, from logistics to – shall we say ‘integrity issues’ – that are seriously reducing its effectiveness. Last year I assisted a local development organisation with an extensive proposal to the World Bank for a social accountability project to increase the effectiveness of the programme. This is the sort of domestic experience we should also be learning from. I can send you contacts if you’re interested in finding out more about it. Good luck with the research!
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Thank you Jeanette. I’ll certainly have a look into the school feeding programs as you suggest, I hadn’t realized it had kicked off to that degree. So unfortunate that such important initiatives like these face totally avoidable and disgraceful challenges like the integrity issues you mention. I would love to hear more about the program.
Thank you!
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I have so many questions around this, – having consulted a bit with GRN and development partners in public health and nutrition over the years – maybe they are relevant…
A food bank is a great publicity strategy for a new president. It’s tangible, it’s visible. It can be seen as a quick win. And I do find your argument compelling within the context of how best to apply the band aid. But I feel that It is the government’s responsibility to make structural adjustments so that people do not need handouts. We need a truly sustainable solution to the poverty, inequality and environmental change that are the root causes of food insecurity.
Community gardening projects seem like a more sustainable, locally directed way of addressing hunger and malnutrition (and even income generation), that promises more fundamental change to food access, but they haven’t been a great success in Namibia, for a whole host of reasons. People want to have a secure income and continuous access to a variety of foods as autonomous individuals. They want cash, not crops. They want land. They don’t want to do all the work for a small part of the proceeds.
And then there is the impact of poor sanitation, hygiene and unsafe water… what’s the point of giving mothers formula when the water or the way it is prepared ends up killing their babies?
To me, the problem is structural so the solution must be structural. Namibia is a wealthy country, but the wealth is not directed towards the wellbeing of all Namibians. Until we do that, everything else is window dressing…
Well that escalated quickly! Would love to hear your thoughts.
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I 100% hear what you are saying and totally agree with you. The more people having to use food banks the more it illustrates the wrong direction that a country is going in. This goes for countries like the UK and US as well. There are more people becoming food insecure and having to resort to using a food bank here too, and its concerning that the situation is what it is as it exposes system failures as you mention.
Certainly the lack of sustainability of the project and the fact that it is a band aid solution mean that is doesn’t solve the underlying issues behind some people having food and so many not, so I agree with you on that front as well.
So I’m writing, not to challenge whether the initiative should never have happened, but more from the angle of how it can be as successful as possible in the time that it is running. It’s happening and been decided upon already (by the way, I wonder to what degree public discourse was encouraged during the formulation of the Harambee plan generally and how differently plans like this might have looked if there was more public participation? All I remember is the plan being presented to we the people as a finished project, but maybe that’s just me) and now its important to talk about ways in which it can work best.
I also believe in community gardens, not only as a way to feed people, but as an action to strengthen community ties and create community movement being a plus in any society, and promoting local food consumption and income generation cannot be argued against, despite the many reasons why it hasn’t always been viable in Namibia. And if Harambee had called for community gardens instead of a food bank, or any program that somehow hoped to address the underlying causes of poverty and malnutrition, we’d be having a different conversation. But it didn’t. So there needs to be a space in which debate around what we have and how to make it work can happen. Food issues are fragile due to all the things that can change the status of someone going from being food secure to hungry, and like health, it needs to be addressed immediately whilst at the same time addressing how it can improve in the long run. The extent to which the underlying food issues are being address change the attitude to whether the food bank is a good idea, if we can see tangible actions that break the poverty cycle then we would think of the food bank as a decent band aid for people who need food today. But because we don’t see these tangible actions, the food bank is a just a way ‘someone’ is trying to get political brownie points. So I think the food bank itself is not the central argument, but what is going on around it. And if we take away the external factors that change our mind about whether or not to have a food bank, and look at it in isolation, then there are ways to talk about how it might be successful.
The other thing I’ve been thinking more about is how interconnected all development, health, environmental, gender equality (the list goes on) issues are, you mention some of different factors that have lead to food insecurity at home, and there never would be one type of program or project that can rectify any one problem but the important thing is the movement, and placing social issues on top of the list of priorities is important too. And I think this is where your point about structure comes in too, social issues need to be placed first but in a way that addresses the system changes needed for more equitable wealth generation
btw: i just edited your comments to take out my name. These are suppose to be anonymous, I don’t know why, and I’ve given myself away anyway by being the only Namibian on my course and then writing a blog about Namibia. but there you go
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Absolutely. Love the idea that it can act as a measure to expose the need for deeper change.
As we were! Will mail…
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The removal of names is needed to preserve some sense of anonymity in marking as the student blogs are assessed.
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Have you seen Piers’ very interesting comment below?
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Thanks for a good read.
As you correctly point out, the scheme now being piloted in Katutura actually has nothing to do with food banks. It is a food distribution programme. As such it is simply an addition to the many existing food distribution programmes in Namibia such as drought relief food distribution, food-for-work and school feeding programmes which have operated successfully since independence. You can look up the figures, but hundreds of thousands of people are benefitting from these schemes today. As such I’m sorry to say that the Cubans weren’t quite correct in saying the new scheme is the most important social protection program in the country’s history. The most important is of course Namibia’s old age pension scheme where people receive cash (more to come).
What is new about this food distribution scheme is that it is being implemented in Katutura. It has been started in response to recent public disquiet about people collecting discarded foodstuffs at Windhoek rubbish dumps. On the other hand, it is notable that levels of poverty and hunger are lower in Katutura and Windhoek than just about anywhere else in the country. This is attested to by all socio-economic indicators of poverty. As such I have to say that this scheme has a clear political purpose.
Further to this, all food distribution schemes in Namibia can be criticised for two reasons.
First, hunger is a result of poverty and poor people’s needs go much further than food. They also need shelter, clothes, medicines, fuel and so forth. If all the government can support them with is food, they will inevitably sell the food, usually at heavily discounted prices, to get cash. To address poverty people need cash or vouchers to provide for their multiple needs not just food.
Second, in Namibia food and other markets function effectively and efficiently throughout the country. In purely economic terms it would be far more cost effective to distribute vouchers or cash that food items. This has been recognised by many countries in Africa and elsewhere which have successfully made the switch from food to vouchers or cash. It would appear that Namibia has chosen not to followed this route, despite many recommendations from experts that it should, because of the political capital to be had by continuing with food distribution programmes. Put simply distributing food items is far more visible than say distributing vouchers through a mechanism similar to the pension payment system.
Finally on a positive note, you correctly highlight one of the positive consequences of this new feeding scheme in Katutura, that of street committees as an empowerment vehicle. Just as in the case of drought relief and other feeding programmes which use village committees for the same purposes, street committees can become a means for empowering communities.
Keep up the good work. (**note student name removed from comment, explanation above.)
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