Trailblazer to share at Top 100 Brightest Young Minds summit
Social entrepreneur and community developer Masonwabe Fuma, who was born and bred in Komani, said subsistence farming could play an important role in reducing the vulnerability of food-insecure rural and urban households.
Fuma, who is now based in Johannesburg, will be part of Africa’s Top 100 Brightest Young Minds 2022 Summit – hosted with the World Food Programme Southern Africa under the theme: Connect, Inspire, Impact: Solutions to food systems challenges.
The local trailblazer, global speaker and Sakhulutsha eAfrika MD will attend the summit in Johannesburg next Friday.
Fuma played a role in providing solutions to curb the food crises through an urban farming project advocating for specific approaches to urban agricultural development.
He said so far the project had trained more than 200 farmers and created 156 self-sustainable jobs for farmers, allowing for the production of safe and fresh food at lower costs.
“Rubbish dumps are now being turned into vegetable gardens, edible gardens are springing up throughout townships and vacant land, wasted and dangerous for passers-by, are being used for producing food and securing an income,” Fuma said.
He said food insecurity in SA was related to a lack of access to resources, various psycho-social capabilities and the effects of rights, freedoms, policies and social, political and economic arrangements.
The challenge was that food insecure households did not have enough money to buy food and produce it, he said.
Unemployment, low incomes and high population sizes were also key contributors which made insecure households vulnerable to economic shocks, he added.
“At least 20% of the continent’s population suffers from malnutrition,” Fuma said.
“The top three countries in the world with the most malnutrition are Somalia (60%), Central African Republic (48%), and Haiti (47%).
“Malnutrition is largely caused by poverty and low income,” he said.
Land and crop degradation, periodic droughts and weatherrelated shocks, limited access to basic food staples and essential services, and population growth were the major causes of people lacking food.
In 2021 and 2022, the world has been faced with food shortages and insecurity due to several factors.
“There are multiple integrated drivers of food insecurity including the uneven global economic recovery from Covid-19 and widespread supply chain disruptions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is also a leading factor.
“Domestic food price inflation in many low-income countries rose significantly and in particular those with weak currencies and a high reliance on food imports, in those where border closures, conflict or insecurity disrupted trade flows and where weather extremes severely affected food production and availability,” Fuma said.
These macroeconomic factors, he said, had a major impact on the purchasing power of the poorest households and income losses due to the Covid -19 pandemic-related restrictions.
He believed the short-term solution would be for countries to provide humanitarian assistance and effective social protection measures to effectively improve food security and nutrition. “Over the longer-term,
countries will need to invest in agriculture and related sectors, as well as in water, health, and in education services to reduce vulnerabilities and build capacities to withstand shocks from climate change and conflicts, as well as economic downturns and slowdowns.”
Fuma said farmers could be engaged in the production of fruits and vegetables, grains and other food
crops, and the raising of livestock and poultry.
Grants remained the primary source of income for most rural households in the Eastern Cape and could be strategically used to assist with food security.
An example, Fuma said, was that the designing of the social grant could be re-evaluated at a policy level to assist with challenges such as these.