LILONGWE - A major new study has been launched in Malawi to determine the scale of child trafficking in the impoverished southern African country, the United Nations children’s fund (Unicef) said today.
“We don’t have any data on child trafficking in Malawi and so we want to carry out a research to provide an indication on the magnitude of the problem,” Linda Kabwila-Kalenga, Unicef’s child protection officer in Malawi, told AFP.
Kalenga said she wanted the study to be used to build up the case for a comprehensive child protection legislation.
“We have been improvising on child laws but now we want to advocate for the child care protection bill to pass,” she said.
The study is being supported by a coalition of 40 non-governmental organisations as well as the police and state-funded commissions on Law and Human Rights.
ILO’s national programme officer for Malawi, Chimwenje Simwaka, said there was “a lot of child trafficking for sex and labour in Malawi which we don’t see."
According to a recent report by the United Nations Organisation for Migration (IOM), southern Africa is a “fertile ground” for human trafficking.
The report identifies Mozambique, Malawi and Lesotho as “key source countries for women and children trafficked to South Africa."
Thursday, 8 November 2007
UNHCR fits Malawi's refugees into one camp
DZALEKA REFUGEE CAMP, Malawi, November 8 (UNHCR) – The children filing into the classroom at Dzaleka Refugee Camp occupy all the seats, then overflow onto the floor at the feet of their teacher. Outside, three large tents shelter other classes as workers busily erect four more classrooms.
The school's population has abruptly risen this year from 1,200 to 1,700 students with the government's decision to close Malawi's other refugee camp. The last of 3,000 residents of Luwani, located in the south of the country, arrived in the centre of the country at Dzaleka at the end of October.
The unexpected consolidation into one camp near the capital, Lilongwe, forced UNHCR into a crash programme to increase the capacity of Dzaleka, which has swelled from about 5,000 refugees and asylum seekers to more than 8,000.
The camp clinic will benefit from the opening of a maternity wing, which was started well before the current needs increased. But the medical service, which treats Malawians as well as camp residents, has seen surging demands. While staff from Luwani – including the ambulance driver, with his vehicle – are to be transferred to Dzaleka, there is no place for them to live.
"The area is now congested with patients from morning to afternoon," said the head of the clinic.
The school has seen class sizes rise abruptly, with those in the lowest grades containing more than 100 children despite running two shifts a day. Classes for the higher grades often hold 70 or 80 children, although they have held down the size of the Grade Eight classes, the highest in the school, to about 45 students.
"The shortage of classrooms is the biggest problem. There are up to 120 in a class," said Headmaster Augustine Chipula, whose school is run by the Jesuit Refugee Services for UNHCR and has obtained the best graduation results in the district.
The number of students is likely to rise again when the new academic year starts in January because some 250 students who were enrolled in Luwani have not resumed classes in Dzaleka, possibly because they were initially busy helping build new homes.
Housing, of course, is the most urgent need. Those moving from Luwani, who arrived in convoys over the space of several months, were allocated individual plots with the foundations of a house.
Refugees and asylum seekers receive the material needed to complete their houses: grass and poles for the roof and moulds to shape sun-dried mud bricks for the walls. The clouds are thickening and those in the last convoy from Luwani have little time to complete their homes before the rainy season.
UNHCR provides finished houses to vulnerable individuals, but the work is not complete. While Ruth Mya, a 20-year-old single woman from Kenya, has been plastering the inside walls of the mud house she received, she is awaiting repairs to the hole in the plastic under the grass roof. She worries about the lack of a lock on the door and a window blocked only by a piece of cloth.
But the problems of accommodating those moving from Luwani are temporary. The longer-term implications are more serious. Hopes that at least some of those in remote Luwani could become self-sufficient through agriculture have been replaced by the limited prospects in Dzaleka.
The government of Malawi does not let refugees or asylum seekers take jobs in the country, leaving a small amount of tomato gardening at Dzaleka as their main legal source of income. But the new houses are rising amid the furrows of limited farmland that is no longer available.
UNHCR seeks to find a lasting solution for refugees by repatriation, local integration or resettlement to another country. Almost no refugees have chosen to go home from Malawi in recent years, the government rules out local integration and resettlement is available in relatively few cases. This raises the prospect that most refugees in Malawi will rely on UNHCR for a long time.
And with Dzaleka's population now building to the edges of the camp, there is the fear of what would happen if there is a fresh influx of refugees. Although the vast majority of arrivals in Malawi – Ethiopians and Somalis – quickly disappear toward South Africa, there is a steady trickle of asylum seekers who stay.
"We can't be complacent about the carrying capacity of this camp," said Henry Domzalski, UNHCR's representative in Malawi. "We must be clear about what the situation is so we don't suddenly discover it's full."
In the first half of this year, more than 300 new asylum seekers arrived from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo – the same nationalities that already make up most of Malawi's refugee population. New arrivals previously were taken to Luwani on the grounds that Dzaleka was full, but since the closure order was issued in April new asylum seekers have been heading to the increasingly crowded facilities of Dzaleka.
The school's population has abruptly risen this year from 1,200 to 1,700 students with the government's decision to close Malawi's other refugee camp. The last of 3,000 residents of Luwani, located in the south of the country, arrived in the centre of the country at Dzaleka at the end of October.
The unexpected consolidation into one camp near the capital, Lilongwe, forced UNHCR into a crash programme to increase the capacity of Dzaleka, which has swelled from about 5,000 refugees and asylum seekers to more than 8,000.
The camp clinic will benefit from the opening of a maternity wing, which was started well before the current needs increased. But the medical service, which treats Malawians as well as camp residents, has seen surging demands. While staff from Luwani – including the ambulance driver, with his vehicle – are to be transferred to Dzaleka, there is no place for them to live.
"The area is now congested with patients from morning to afternoon," said the head of the clinic.
The school has seen class sizes rise abruptly, with those in the lowest grades containing more than 100 children despite running two shifts a day. Classes for the higher grades often hold 70 or 80 children, although they have held down the size of the Grade Eight classes, the highest in the school, to about 45 students.
"The shortage of classrooms is the biggest problem. There are up to 120 in a class," said Headmaster Augustine Chipula, whose school is run by the Jesuit Refugee Services for UNHCR and has obtained the best graduation results in the district.
The number of students is likely to rise again when the new academic year starts in January because some 250 students who were enrolled in Luwani have not resumed classes in Dzaleka, possibly because they were initially busy helping build new homes.
Housing, of course, is the most urgent need. Those moving from Luwani, who arrived in convoys over the space of several months, were allocated individual plots with the foundations of a house.
Refugees and asylum seekers receive the material needed to complete their houses: grass and poles for the roof and moulds to shape sun-dried mud bricks for the walls. The clouds are thickening and those in the last convoy from Luwani have little time to complete their homes before the rainy season.
UNHCR provides finished houses to vulnerable individuals, but the work is not complete. While Ruth Mya, a 20-year-old single woman from Kenya, has been plastering the inside walls of the mud house she received, she is awaiting repairs to the hole in the plastic under the grass roof. She worries about the lack of a lock on the door and a window blocked only by a piece of cloth.
But the problems of accommodating those moving from Luwani are temporary. The longer-term implications are more serious. Hopes that at least some of those in remote Luwani could become self-sufficient through agriculture have been replaced by the limited prospects in Dzaleka.
The government of Malawi does not let refugees or asylum seekers take jobs in the country, leaving a small amount of tomato gardening at Dzaleka as their main legal source of income. But the new houses are rising amid the furrows of limited farmland that is no longer available.
UNHCR seeks to find a lasting solution for refugees by repatriation, local integration or resettlement to another country. Almost no refugees have chosen to go home from Malawi in recent years, the government rules out local integration and resettlement is available in relatively few cases. This raises the prospect that most refugees in Malawi will rely on UNHCR for a long time.
And with Dzaleka's population now building to the edges of the camp, there is the fear of what would happen if there is a fresh influx of refugees. Although the vast majority of arrivals in Malawi – Ethiopians and Somalis – quickly disappear toward South Africa, there is a steady trickle of asylum seekers who stay.
"We can't be complacent about the carrying capacity of this camp," said Henry Domzalski, UNHCR's representative in Malawi. "We must be clear about what the situation is so we don't suddenly discover it's full."
In the first half of this year, more than 300 new asylum seekers arrived from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo – the same nationalities that already make up most of Malawi's refugee population. New arrivals previously were taken to Luwani on the grounds that Dzaleka was full, but since the closure order was issued in April new asylum seekers have been heading to the increasingly crowded facilities of Dzaleka.
Joy TV Station Ordered to Stop Broadcasting
On 29 October 2007, the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) ordered Joy TV to immediately stop all television broadcasts until the station is issued appropriate radio and broadcasting licenses.
Joy TV- a sister company to Joy Radio - has been held up in a wrangle with the country's communications regulator after it challenged the Macra Board in court, describing it as illegal.
In the latest development, Joy TV's project manager Tailosi Bakili expressed surprise over the directive, saying the television station had applied for a court injunction stopping Macra from blocking its operations.
According to Macra's letter to the station's manager, the regulator expressed concern that Joy TV was broadcasting without a license, which it said expired on 31 March 2007.
"Carrying out such an activity without a licence is prohibited and amounts to a criminal offence under the Communications Act of 1998; you are hereby ordered to immediately stop any television broadcasting or related activity until you apply for and are issued with appropriate radio and broadcasting licences under the Act," read the letter.
The letter further warned that if the station flouts the directive, Macra would proceed to take appropriate measures against it, as stipulated in the same Act.
Joy Television Limited is expected to be Malawi's first private TV station. There is only one state-owned television station, Television Malawi (TVM), in existence.
This development comes after Joy TV wrote the regulator on 28 August 2007 complaining that it had delayed in giving them a Studio Transmission Links (STL) Frequency, which could have allowed the station to conduct studio broadcasting.
Macra's board was dissolved following a lawsuit filed by the station's sister company, Joy Radio, describing Macra's board as unlawfully constituted and lacking an institutional memory.
The tit-for-tat battle between Joy's proprietors and the regulator started early this year when Joy, through its lawyer, got a High Court injunction restraining Macra from blocking its operations. Joy argued that Macra could not transact any business to do with communications because it lacked the mandate to enforce and regulate communications in the country.
The High Court in Blantyre nullified the composition of the Macra board because, among other issues, its members were unqualified and the appointment of the members was not gazetted as required by law.
President Bingu wa Mutharika appointed the Macra board, as well as the boards of various other statutory corporations, on 1 March 2006.
There is a strong link between Joy Radio and Television and former President Bakili Muluzi. It is believed that he owns the two institutions. Currently Muluzi is not on good terms with President Bingu wa Mutharika, whom he accused of betrayal for ditching Muluzi's United Democratic Front (UDF) party after it ushered him into power.
Joy TV- a sister company to Joy Radio - has been held up in a wrangle with the country's communications regulator after it challenged the Macra Board in court, describing it as illegal.
In the latest development, Joy TV's project manager Tailosi Bakili expressed surprise over the directive, saying the television station had applied for a court injunction stopping Macra from blocking its operations.
According to Macra's letter to the station's manager, the regulator expressed concern that Joy TV was broadcasting without a license, which it said expired on 31 March 2007.
"Carrying out such an activity without a licence is prohibited and amounts to a criminal offence under the Communications Act of 1998; you are hereby ordered to immediately stop any television broadcasting or related activity until you apply for and are issued with appropriate radio and broadcasting licences under the Act," read the letter.
The letter further warned that if the station flouts the directive, Macra would proceed to take appropriate measures against it, as stipulated in the same Act.
Joy Television Limited is expected to be Malawi's first private TV station. There is only one state-owned television station, Television Malawi (TVM), in existence.
This development comes after Joy TV wrote the regulator on 28 August 2007 complaining that it had delayed in giving them a Studio Transmission Links (STL) Frequency, which could have allowed the station to conduct studio broadcasting.
Macra's board was dissolved following a lawsuit filed by the station's sister company, Joy Radio, describing Macra's board as unlawfully constituted and lacking an institutional memory.
The tit-for-tat battle between Joy's proprietors and the regulator started early this year when Joy, through its lawyer, got a High Court injunction restraining Macra from blocking its operations. Joy argued that Macra could not transact any business to do with communications because it lacked the mandate to enforce and regulate communications in the country.
The High Court in Blantyre nullified the composition of the Macra board because, among other issues, its members were unqualified and the appointment of the members was not gazetted as required by law.
President Bingu wa Mutharika appointed the Macra board, as well as the boards of various other statutory corporations, on 1 March 2006.
There is a strong link between Joy Radio and Television and former President Bakili Muluzi. It is believed that he owns the two institutions. Currently Muluzi is not on good terms with President Bingu wa Mutharika, whom he accused of betrayal for ditching Muluzi's United Democratic Front (UDF) party after it ushered him into power.
Human rights advocate requests visit to Malawi prisons
Cape Town, South Africa - The Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) has written to the African Commission for Human and Peoples' Rights to request a visit to Malawi prisons by the Special Rapporteur for Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa, according to Nicole Fritz, Executive Director of SALC.
In making the request, SALC cited the well-documented history of appalling prison conditions in Malawi.
In the letter, the Centre requested that the Commission took up the matter at its meeting, scheduled for the Republic of Congo 14 to 28 November, 2007.
The letter pointed to press reports and to severely critical official reports by the Malawi Inspectorate of Prisons, a constitutional agency composed of judicial officers, prison officials and the Ombudsman of Malawi.
SALC also cited 'reliable reports' of extreme overcrowding, inadequate diet, shortage of clothing and blankets, lengthy detention without trial, sexual assaults on juveniles and deficiencies in sanitation and health care.
"Despite the most terrible overcrowding in Malawian prison, where it is not uncommon for detainees to spend more than five years in detention without ever being brought before a court and convicted, the Malawian government is insistent that it will not carry out any further homicide trials until it receives outside funding to do so.
"In these circumstances, fairly extraordinary measures need to be initiated in order to bring some relief to Malawi's prison population," the SALC boss said.
In making the request, SALC cited the well-documented history of appalling prison conditions in Malawi.
In the letter, the Centre requested that the Commission took up the matter at its meeting, scheduled for the Republic of Congo 14 to 28 November, 2007.
The letter pointed to press reports and to severely critical official reports by the Malawi Inspectorate of Prisons, a constitutional agency composed of judicial officers, prison officials and the Ombudsman of Malawi.
SALC also cited 'reliable reports' of extreme overcrowding, inadequate diet, shortage of clothing and blankets, lengthy detention without trial, sexual assaults on juveniles and deficiencies in sanitation and health care.
"Despite the most terrible overcrowding in Malawian prison, where it is not uncommon for detainees to spend more than five years in detention without ever being brought before a court and convicted, the Malawian government is insistent that it will not carry out any further homicide trials until it receives outside funding to do so.
"In these circumstances, fairly extraordinary measures need to be initiated in order to bring some relief to Malawi's prison population," the SALC boss said.
Malawi finally make it to Auckland
The Malawi netball team for the world championships will be completed with the arrival of seven team officials in Auckland at about noon.
The team's 12 players arrived at midnight - just one day before they take on New Zealand in the opening match of the championships.
Malawi were delayed and forced to reschedule their arrival in two flights after ex periencing transit problems.
Botswana are expected to arrive at 1pm at Auckland airport.
Cooks Islands and Scotland, who are preparing outside Auckland, are also expected in the city today.
The team's 12 players arrived at midnight - just one day before they take on New Zealand in the opening match of the championships.
Malawi were delayed and forced to reschedule their arrival in two flights after ex periencing transit problems.
Botswana are expected to arrive at 1pm at Auckland airport.
Cooks Islands and Scotland, who are preparing outside Auckland, are also expected in the city today.
Purging Malawi's peanuts of deadly aflatoxin
Local efforts to put an end to aflatoxin outbreaks are helping groundnut farmers back to prosperity.
For Amos Katosa, a subsistence farmer in Malawi's central region district of Mchinji, the groundnut — popularly known as the peanut— has been his main source of income for the past 40 years.
He describes how the crop helped to pay school fees for his four children and to buy household necessities for his family.
But over the past few decades, peanut sales have been declining at commodity markets.
Little did farmers like Katosa know, but the groundnut, once their best income earner, was facing a major challenge that would jeopardise Malawi's contribution to the international export market.
The challenge was aflatoxin, a highly potent poison contaminating crops and rocking Malawi's groundnut industry, which could no longer meet international standards of quality.
Cost of the problem
Aflatoxins are a waste product from the fungus Aspergillus, which grows on food crops such as maize, groundnuts, sorghum and cassava.
The fungus grows on harvested crops under warm, moist conditions that can occur during transit and storage. Unripe crops are also prone to aflatoxin contamination during drought.
Because of the toxicity of aflatoxins, the European Union — an important trading partner for Malawi — effectively banned the import of groundnuts from the country in the early 1990s because contamination exceeded acceptable levels.
A groundnut plant
Credit: Flickr/Megan Choo
The European Union limits aflatoxin contamination to four parts per billion, a standard that has cost some developing countries hundreds of millions of dollars in export losses.
The problem, according to Rodomiro Oritz, from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, is that monitoring for toxins and enforcement of standards are rarely effective in the developing world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cost to health
In developing countries such as Malawi, the best-quality foods tend to be exported, whereas poor-quality food — often contaminated with aflatoxins — is kept for local consumption.
Children exposed to aflatoxins can suffer from restricted growth and from immune suppression, making them more susceptible to HIV and malaria. Aflatoxins are also strongly associated with the development of liver cancer.
According to Charles Dzamalala, a pathologist at the University of Malawi, acute aflatoxicosis is widespread in developing countries.
The syndrome can be fatal and is characterized by vomiting, abdominal pain, pulmonary oedema, convulsions and coma, and damage to the liver, kidneys and heart.
"Conditions increasing the likelihood of acute aflatoxicosis in humans include limited availability of food, environmental conditions that favour fungal development in crops and commodities, and lack of regulatory systems for aflatoxin monitoring and control," he said.
In 2004 in Kenya, 300 people became ill after consuming aflatoxins, leading to the deaths of 125 people.
Lasting solutions
In Malawi, the challenge presented by aflatoxins has seen the launch of a nongovernmental organisation, Facseat–Tropical.
A young Malawian farmer
at market
Credit: Flickr/mick y
The organisation promotes food-safety measures, including the prevention of fungal contamination of crops, sorting and removal of contaminated grains, and increasing awareness of state-of-the-art facilities for grain storage.
The organisation plans to assess these measures to determine whether they can be linked to any changes in the pattern of liver-cancer incidence, food poisoning or toxicity in the population.
The National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) is collaborating with the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the United States Agency for International Development to help farmers meet the aflatoxin safety requirements for export markets.
This involves promoting good agricultural practices, including early planting to prevent groundnuts from maturing during potential drought conditions at the tail end of the season — which can encourage growth of Aspergillus on ripening crops — and appropriate harvesting and drying techniques to reduce the possibility of Aspergillus infection.
NASFAM is also encouraging the use of hand-operated or mechanised shelling equipment to ease the task of shelling. Much of the aflatoxin contamination in Malawi arises from moistening the unshelled nuts to make them easier to shell. The association also encourages farmers to sell their groundnuts immediately after shelling because storage increases the risk of contamination.
NASFAM has recommended organising a national conference to initiate awareness on issues surrounding aflatoxins and their effects on agriculture, health and trade.
The association has so far trained 803 staffers and farmers as part of its capacity-building process to fight aflatoxin contamination, and is setting up a system to trace contamination back to the source.
Catching the culprit
Detection of trace amounts of aflatoxins has recently become much easier for developing countries, thanks to the development of inexpensive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits (see Farmers use cheap technology to fight fungus).
At about US$1 per sample, ELISA is a testing tool that individual farmers can afford; the exorbitant cost of assay by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), used by pre-shipment inspection agents costs around US$230 per sample.
A Malawian woman roasting
groundnuts
Credit: Flickr/Josh Wood
The ELISA kit uses monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to detect aflatoxins in crop and feed samples. Even remote rural farms can use a small, mobile kit to monitor grains and nuts and to improve storage techniques.
The kit also enables crops for export to be screened rapidly, reducing the risk of infection of other crops.
ICRISAT has established diagnostic laboratories in India, Malawi and Mozambique, which can assay up to 300 samples daily versus the HPLC methods, which can analyse between 20–40 samples a day. This has resulted in safer products for consumer and higher returns for African farmers.
A safer future
Zuberi Seguni, principal agricultural research officer at the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Station in Tanzania, says the technology represents a real saving for farmers.
It should eventually benefit local populations too, as crop quality and storage methods improve.
These new developments have prompted Amos Katosa and many other farmers to give groundnuts another chance, wise to the potential value of the crop both locally and internationally.
"During this crop season, which commences in October, I am certain to reserve two hectares of my garden for groundnuts; this is the crop that has supported me since time immemorial," he says.
For Amos Katosa, a subsistence farmer in Malawi's central region district of Mchinji, the groundnut — popularly known as the peanut— has been his main source of income for the past 40 years.
He describes how the crop helped to pay school fees for his four children and to buy household necessities for his family.
But over the past few decades, peanut sales have been declining at commodity markets.
Little did farmers like Katosa know, but the groundnut, once their best income earner, was facing a major challenge that would jeopardise Malawi's contribution to the international export market.
The challenge was aflatoxin, a highly potent poison contaminating crops and rocking Malawi's groundnut industry, which could no longer meet international standards of quality.
Cost of the problem
Aflatoxins are a waste product from the fungus Aspergillus, which grows on food crops such as maize, groundnuts, sorghum and cassava.
The fungus grows on harvested crops under warm, moist conditions that can occur during transit and storage. Unripe crops are also prone to aflatoxin contamination during drought.
Because of the toxicity of aflatoxins, the European Union — an important trading partner for Malawi — effectively banned the import of groundnuts from the country in the early 1990s because contamination exceeded acceptable levels.
A groundnut plant
Credit: Flickr/Megan Choo
The European Union limits aflatoxin contamination to four parts per billion, a standard that has cost some developing countries hundreds of millions of dollars in export losses.
The problem, according to Rodomiro Oritz, from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, is that monitoring for toxins and enforcement of standards are rarely effective in the developing world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cost to health
In developing countries such as Malawi, the best-quality foods tend to be exported, whereas poor-quality food — often contaminated with aflatoxins — is kept for local consumption.
Children exposed to aflatoxins can suffer from restricted growth and from immune suppression, making them more susceptible to HIV and malaria. Aflatoxins are also strongly associated with the development of liver cancer.
According to Charles Dzamalala, a pathologist at the University of Malawi, acute aflatoxicosis is widespread in developing countries.
The syndrome can be fatal and is characterized by vomiting, abdominal pain, pulmonary oedema, convulsions and coma, and damage to the liver, kidneys and heart.
"Conditions increasing the likelihood of acute aflatoxicosis in humans include limited availability of food, environmental conditions that favour fungal development in crops and commodities, and lack of regulatory systems for aflatoxin monitoring and control," he said.
In 2004 in Kenya, 300 people became ill after consuming aflatoxins, leading to the deaths of 125 people.
Lasting solutions
In Malawi, the challenge presented by aflatoxins has seen the launch of a nongovernmental organisation, Facseat–Tropical.
A young Malawian farmer
at market
Credit: Flickr/mick y
The organisation promotes food-safety measures, including the prevention of fungal contamination of crops, sorting and removal of contaminated grains, and increasing awareness of state-of-the-art facilities for grain storage.
The organisation plans to assess these measures to determine whether they can be linked to any changes in the pattern of liver-cancer incidence, food poisoning or toxicity in the population.
The National Smallholder Farmers Association of Malawi (NASFAM) is collaborating with the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the United States Agency for International Development to help farmers meet the aflatoxin safety requirements for export markets.
This involves promoting good agricultural practices, including early planting to prevent groundnuts from maturing during potential drought conditions at the tail end of the season — which can encourage growth of Aspergillus on ripening crops — and appropriate harvesting and drying techniques to reduce the possibility of Aspergillus infection.
NASFAM is also encouraging the use of hand-operated or mechanised shelling equipment to ease the task of shelling. Much of the aflatoxin contamination in Malawi arises from moistening the unshelled nuts to make them easier to shell. The association also encourages farmers to sell their groundnuts immediately after shelling because storage increases the risk of contamination.
NASFAM has recommended organising a national conference to initiate awareness on issues surrounding aflatoxins and their effects on agriculture, health and trade.
The association has so far trained 803 staffers and farmers as part of its capacity-building process to fight aflatoxin contamination, and is setting up a system to trace contamination back to the source.
Catching the culprit
Detection of trace amounts of aflatoxins has recently become much easier for developing countries, thanks to the development of inexpensive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits (see Farmers use cheap technology to fight fungus).
At about US$1 per sample, ELISA is a testing tool that individual farmers can afford; the exorbitant cost of assay by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), used by pre-shipment inspection agents costs around US$230 per sample.
A Malawian woman roasting
groundnuts
Credit: Flickr/Josh Wood
The ELISA kit uses monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to detect aflatoxins in crop and feed samples. Even remote rural farms can use a small, mobile kit to monitor grains and nuts and to improve storage techniques.
The kit also enables crops for export to be screened rapidly, reducing the risk of infection of other crops.
ICRISAT has established diagnostic laboratories in India, Malawi and Mozambique, which can assay up to 300 samples daily versus the HPLC methods, which can analyse between 20–40 samples a day. This has resulted in safer products for consumer and higher returns for African farmers.
A safer future
Zuberi Seguni, principal agricultural research officer at the Mikocheni Agricultural Research Station in Tanzania, says the technology represents a real saving for farmers.
It should eventually benefit local populations too, as crop quality and storage methods improve.
These new developments have prompted Amos Katosa and many other farmers to give groundnuts another chance, wise to the potential value of the crop both locally and internationally.
"During this crop season, which commences in October, I am certain to reserve two hectares of my garden for groundnuts; this is the crop that has supported me since time immemorial," he says.
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