{"id":46805,"date":"2021-02-20T04:29:27","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T04:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=164776"},"modified":"2021-02-20T04:29:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-20T04:29:27","slug":"madagascar-a-nation-of-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/20\/madagascar-a-nation-of-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"Madagascar: A Nation of Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Madagascar is in great pain. Theodore Mbainaissem, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) sub-office in Ambovombe, southern Madagascar, says<\/a>: \u201cSeeing the physical condition of people extremely affected by hunger who can no longer stand\u2026children who are completely emaciated, the elderly who are skin and bone\u2026these images are unbearable\u2026 People are eating white clay with tamarind juice, cactus leaves, wild roots just to calm their hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n One third<\/a> of people in southern Madagascar will struggle to feed themselves over the next few months. Until the next harvest in April 2021, 1.35 million people will be \u201cfood insecure\u201d \u2013 almost double those in need last year \u2013 and 282,000 of them are considered<\/a> \u201cemergency\u201d cases. Pervasive food insecurity in Madagascar is the result of a variety of factors.<\/p>\n Poverty<\/strong><\/p>\n Food security is not only caused by a lack of food supply but also by the lack of political and economic power to access food. Thus, access to income is one potential means for alleviating food insecurity. In Madagascar, the majority of the people don\u2019t have proper access to income.<\/p>\n Madagascar is one of poorest countries in the world. In the 2007\/2008 United Nation Development Programme\u2019s (UNDP) Human Development Index, an indicator that measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income, Madagascar was given the rank of 143rd out of 177 countries.<\/p>\n Madagascar\u2019s economy is tiny<\/a>. The market capitalization of U.S. tech giant Facebook is more than 40 times Madagascar\u2019s national income. The company\u2019s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, alone is five times richer than the island nation. A large chunk of Madagascar\u2019s minuscule national income is appropriated by the rich, evidenced in the declining consumption capacity of the poor. Between 2005 and 2010, consumption for the poorest households declined<\/a> by 3.1%.<\/p>\n