Ending Extreme Poverty in the Congo

Malnutrition in the Kasai's

Here's an article describing the Children Malnutrition in the Kasai provinces of Congo.

EXCERPTS:
Barely two years old, their faces are already withered, their eyes bulging on a forehead dotted with wrinkles. "How can I feed them enough?" worries a mother at the bedside of her two-year-old twins.In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in the diamond-rich Kasai region, malnutrition continues to take its toll in this country, which is now the most food-insecure in the world, according to the UN."My husband doesn't work, I only sell water myself," says Claudine Kamwanya, a pregnant mother of four, who has taken her two twins to Bonzola hospital near the large city of Mbuji-Mayi.

https://www.africanews.com/2021/05/11/dr-congo-at-the-bedside-of-malnourished-children-in-kasai/

Congo is Among the Most Needest in West and Central Africa

The OCHA is targeting 9.6 million congolese of 34.7 million in the West and Central Africa region needing assistance. Approximately, $250 million have been funded of the nearly $2.0 billion requested for Congo.  

Mothers are Protective of their Children

With my grandchildren, I was watching a cartoon movie, The Mitchells vs the Machines. In the movie, the machines captures mother Mitchell's son. And she goes super human to save her son. And we know animals are really protective of their young.

In Congo, the young children those under five years old, are suffering from the lack of food and nutrition. A Deep Dive article of the Congo (https://www.one.org/africa/blog/covid19-country-update-drc/) by the ONE organization highlights some distrubing nutrition statistics on children under five years old.

More than eight percent of children in the Congo are suffering from acute malnutrition. That is, "Acute malnutrition is a form of under-nutrition caused by a decrease in food consumption and/or illness that results in sudden weight loss or oedema (fluid retention). Acute malnutrition can be moderate or severe, and prolonged malnutrition can cause stunted growth, otherwise known as stunting."

And more than forty percent of the children in the Congo are suffering from chronic malnutrition. "This is a condition that develops when children do not eat the correct balance of nutrients in the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to the age of two), resulting in the irreversible stunting of their cognitive and physical development."

So, why is this happening? The Congo is a critical food insecurity problem. More than one out of three adults in Congo are food insecure. We must have assist the mothers and they will protect their children.

COVID-19 country update: Deep dive into the resource-cursed DRC | ONE

Facts from our Africa COVID-19 TrackerTotal population: 86,790,567Percentage of population living in extreme poverty: 77.2%People with insufficient food intake: 33.6% (latest: 3 March 2021)Children (under 5) with acute malnutrition: 8.1%Children (under 5) with chronic malnutrition: 42.7%

https://www.one.org/africa/blog/covid19-country-update-drc/

Proverty Knows No Equality

July 18, the day former South African President Nelson Mandela was born, was declared by the UN in 2009 to be the Nelson Mandela International Day for freedom justice and democracy. 

This year’s theme is Action against Poverty. So, I am giving insights into the current poverty and borrow lessons from Mandela on how to eradicate poverty globally.   

Currently, 935 million people globally live in extreme poverty and about 800 million people go hungry. While 19.7% of people in Uganda live in extreme poverty, in DR Congo is 77%. A world of gross income inequality has been created where the eight richest people own as much wealth as half of the world’s population (OXFAM, 2017).

http://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1457933/lessons-mandela-eradicate-poverty-globally

Is Congo's Coffee Served at a Starbucks Near You

When I see or purchase an imported product, I can't help but think about the country of origin and its people.  Are its people better off?  Are their lives being improved?  But we know it is not always for the better.  Natural resources and minerals from Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are examples of mixed results.

As an avid coffee and tea drinker, I always wanted to see Congolese coffee and tea in the marketplace.   Reaching the marketplace, both internal and external, is a key to breaking the cycle of poverty in a country like the Congo.

The next time you visit Starbucks, ask for their new coffee from the Congo.  Try it and think about the Congolese people, especially the women and children of Eastern Congo

BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of the Congo—Jeannine Balagizi is the mother of seven children, about average for a woman in South Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). She is also a passionate grower of high-quality Arabica coffee, less common in an area better known in recent decades for its armed conflict than its coffee fields.

Coffee, however, is gaining ground. On March 22, the American giant Starbucks (link is external) launched its first single-origin specialty coffee from South Kivu in 1,500 stores across North America and online. This coffee was grown and processed by Balagizi and 4,500 other small-scale farmers whose cooperatives are breathing new life into the DRC’s coffee sector with the help of a four-year project funded by USAID and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (link is external).

via www.usaid.gov

Why water is key to beating poverty

Ending extreme poverty requires tackling the global water and sanitation crisis, a valuable investment in public health that will help protect people from diseases such as Ebola and cholera. Doctors Without Borders explains that disease outbreaks are more likely to occur in areas where hospitals have poor infection control and limited access to running water. In West Africa, for example, this lack of access to water and basic sanitation has made responding to Ebola slower and riskier for everyone involved.

via www.erietvnews.com

Lack of access to water and basic sanitation threats the education of millions of girls.  Education helps break the poverty cycle.

Toilets Critical to Ending (Extreme) Poverty

Water and Sanitation is link to extreme poverty. You can't break the cycle without providing access to water and sanitation.

http://blogs.worldbank.org/water/toilets-critical-ending-poverty

As we acknowledge the first official UN World Toilet Day on November 19, it is worth reaffirming the significance of this very simple instrument, which the Economist hails as the most important invention in the 20th century, and its potential impact on the world.

Shockingly, there are 2.5 billion people today who don’t have access to a safe means of disposing human feces, which contain pathogens that cause diarrheal disease. Access to sanitation is one of the most off-track of the Millennium Development Goals. Over 1 billion people defecate in the open, contaminating the area where children play, the agricultural fields where people gather food and the rivers used for drinking water.

Thousands of children die every day from related diarrheal disease. In infants it can cause malnutrition, which can lead to stunted growth and impaired cognitive development with negative consequences for school performance as well as poor health outcomes later in life. A recent World Bank report finds that open defecation can account for much or all of the excess stunting in India.

Behind Those Fast Growth Rates, Rising Inequality - NYTimes.com

Rising inequality translates to rising extreme poverty. The numbers and percent of population living in extreme poverty is going up.
”It was his first post-election news conference, at a luxurious villa high above the Congo River, and the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo was in a combative mood. How dare the reporters question his country’s progress, he argued: just look at our sizzling growth rate —double, even triple, the rates of those pitiful laggards in the West.”

”On paper, it was certainly true. Many African nations, including Congo, have been expanding rapidly for years, producing some of the fastest-growing economies in the world.”
”But the reality down below the villa, in crumbling shacks where adults talked of forgoing meals so their children could eat, told a different story. It angered the president, Joseph Kabila, on that steamy December morning in 2011 to be reminded that his misnamed country (neither particularly democratic nor a republic) consistently ranked at or near the very bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, a comprehensive measure of economic, physical and social well-being across nearly 200 countries.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/world/africa/behind-those-fast-growth-rates-rising-inequality.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131106&tntemail0=y

BBC News - DR Congo: Cursed by its natural wealth

Congo has given the world so much. It has given slaves, ivory, rubber, copper, uranium, diamonds, tin, cobalt, and coltan to develop the western world.
In return, it's people live in deadly extreme poverty. I see it every day. They try to survive without clean water, basic health care, electricity, roads, basic food and more.
Read Dan Snow's article for about Congo's giving. Oops! It's receives charity and foreign aid to survive another day so they can keep on giving.
The full article at http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24396390
(excerpt) The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest, writes historian Dan Snow.
The world's bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today.
It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.
The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, yet consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty.