Tonight, 800 million people globally will go to bed hungry, one of those could be your neigbour; here’s why?

Jules Hakizimana is one of those young men you see pacing the city streets selling blazers; but he’s an illegal street hawker who continuously plays cat and mouse with the city enforcement officers to avoid being captured but on Monday afternoon, Hakizimana didn’t really care.

He was hungry; he had covered over 30km pacing back and forth the Rubangura Street in the city centre looking for someone to buy a khaki blazer he had been vending for the previous two days, he desperately needed money to buy food.

"Yesterday I didn’t make any money so I technically slept hungry, its 2pm now and I am yet to sell this jacket, it could be another bad night for me,” said the young man.

He was speaking outside an MTN shop when, suddenly there was a rush of people, other street vendors were hastily gathering their items and dashing down the street, after spotting the police at the far corner, but as everyone else ran, Hakizimana surprisingly stood his ground.

Rather than hide the blazer, he decided to wear it on top of his checkered shirt and leaned against a wall, like he was waiting for a friend to show up. "I am too tired and hungry to run, let them come,” he said.

Two blocks from the MTN shop is Fantastique Restaurant, a popular eatery strategically located on a busy street corner; it was 2:24pm, just after lunch and the waitresses were clearing the tables; many plates had substantial amounts of leftovers which were being emptied into the dustbin somewhere.

Here, people part with Rwf2000 for a self-service buffet and Rwf500 to complete the meal with a drink yet the amount of their wastage could serve hundreds of people in Hakizimana circumstances.

The UN estimates that some 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted each year causing economic losses of over $750 billion.

800 million hungry people

A few days ago, World Bank released a report indicating that every night, at least 800 million people globally, go to bed on an empty stomach; street vendor Hakizimana is part of that statistic, for without an assured income, food too is un-assured for him.

The report suggested that the majority of the world’s poor were living in rural areas; 900 million or 78 per cent of the total poor; 750 of these were in agriculture which accounted for 63 per cent of the poor.

But because of the fast urbanisation levels, especially in developing countries, about 200 million of the rural poor could migrate to urban areas by 2030; and without jobs, they could end up in Hakizimana’s circumstances.

The year 2030 is also when World leaders have committed to end extreme poverty and hunger and the report highlighted some of the things countries around the world must do to achieve that feat.

"To permanently end poverty and hunger by 2030, the world needs a food system that can feed every person, every day, everywhere; that can raise real incomes of the poorest people; that can provide safe food and adequate nutrition; and that can better steward the world’s natural resources,” said the report.

In Rwanda’s case, State Minister for Agriculture Tony Nsanganira said although 800 million people is a big number, the situation varies from country to country depending on what individual governments are doing to address the problems.

"In Rwanda we have done quite well in improving our food security levels through investing in post-harvest infrastructure as well as improving farmers’ capacity to manage bumper harvests,” minister Nsanganira said in a phone interview.

The minister made a case for rural populations where he observed that natural factors such as heavy rains or long droughts are often responsible for the occasional food shortages after crops are destroyed.

"Hunger situations will, therefore, be occasional depending on the circumstances and we have mechanisms to deal with them, for instance, if one area is experiencing a food shortage, we can supply them from those that are well stocked,” he said.

Urban hungry

But proper food storage and other solutions that the government has for rural based populations don’t serve the interests of the urban hungry.

"For individual cases in urban areas, that ceases to be a food security problem and it becomes one of unemployment and incomes, whereby if you have no job then you have no income to enable you buy food from the marketplace, it would then call for measures to fight unemployment, which we have,” said the minister.

That’s true because the World Bank report strongly linked income levels to hunger where it noted that many of the people going to bed hungry are those whose daily average income is a dollar and a half.

"In low-income countries, the average income of poor people (living on less than $1.25 per day) is 78 cents, lifting these people above $1.25 per day requires average income gains of at least 60 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa,” noted the report.

So for people like Hakizimana to have enough food, they need an improved income and one that’s sustainable; it means government has to create jobs or give people the skills they need to create their own jobs.

The government recently created National Employment Programme (NEP) whose main mandate is to coordinate all the government’s job creation activities and regularly assess their performance.

To create jobs, government, on one hand, is equipping the youth with skills to create jobs under the Workforce Development Authority (WDA), which is promoting vocational education that is more hands-on and prepares the youth for a practical world.

And, on the other hand, the government is encouraging start-up small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through the Business Development Fund (BDF), which helps successful applicants to access credit guarantees for bank loans or grants to get started.

Many of BDF’s beneficiaries are to be found in the Hanga Umurimo Programme which is currently in its third phase; as of January 2015, over 18000 projects had been funded under the programme to the tune of over Rwf10 billion creating about 39000 jobs with over 2000 of the beneficiaries being youths.

In a year, Rwanda’s long term goal is to create 200, 000 jobs, improve people’s incomes and put them in a position to fend for their basic needs, including food.

The World Bank report commended Rwanda with a mention, alongside Ethiopia, as examples of countries that have posted very significant yield growth that led to large reductions in poverty; this means that as the country experienced fast economic growth, it resulted into people getting out of extreme poverty.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw