South Sudan's spiraling food crisis

Mary Achol fled her home when conflict erupted in South Sudan. Now she lives in a camp alongside over 50,000 other displaced people in Mingkaman, Lakes State. Mary has been trying to cultivate land allocated to her, but low rains have meant her crops have failed. Day by day, her food stocks deplete.

“I feel frustrated. The rains have let us down, and now our crops are drying up,” said Mary. “The goat-keepers are also letting their goats into our farms, destroying our crops. But I cannot tell them to go, it is their land."

Mary is one of 4.8 million people – more than a third of the population – that are expected to be unable to feed themselves in the months ahead. An alarming half a million people have become food insecure in the past year alone. In addition, food security experts warn that the risk of famine cannot be ruled out in parts of Unity State and the greater Bahr el Ghazal region.

Despite the peace process, the humanitarian situation for ordinary South Sudanese families continues to spiral downward. Low rainfall, conflict and the effects of an economic crisis have led to today’s food emergency. Displaced communities, people returning to areas they fled during the conflict, and low-income families are expected to be hardest by the food shortages.

Roads become rivers

NRC works in some of the hardest-to-reach corners of South Sudan, providing food and restoring livelihoods to communities worst hit by the conflict. The logistics of delivering food to some of these areas can be gruesome. Only about 2 per cent of roads are paved, in a country similar in size to France. Despite low rainfall in some regions of the country, the onset of the rains in other areas has cut off some road networks completely. Trucks carrying food aid have had to turn back as collapsed roads turn into rivers.

Searching for food in swamps

In some places the rains have cut off access to food markets, shooting up the price of basic commodities like rice, sorghum and beans. Unity State has been particularly badly affected, and families there are barely surviving. Women have resorted to picking seeds off water lilies in swamps, which they grind into flour.

 “Collecting seeds from swamps is an agonizing process, and there is a constant risk of crocodile attacks,” warned NRC’s Clemensia Mwiti, who recently visited Unity State. “We were told that five women lost their lives to crocodiles while searching for water lilies.”

While delivering emergency food to communities in need is critical to help prevent the crisis from worsening, it is only a temporary solution.

“We must address the underlined reasons why livelihoods are being disrupted and families cannot feed themselves,” cautioned Mary Karanja, NRC’s Food Security Specialist. “The solutions to the crisis involve creating jobs for people so they can provide for themselves, building roads and stabilizing the economy. None of these things can be fixed overnight, but all must be addressed. These are some of the issues that the new Transitional Government of National Unity should prioritize.”