January 10, 2012: In Kinshasa, the capital of Africa’s mineral-rich Congo, low salaries and exorbitant food prices mean that families must choose who eats each day.

Referring to her children, Ghislaine Berbok, whose monthly police officer’s salary is $50, explained to the New York Times, “Yes, sure, they ask for food, but we don’t have any.” Some of her children eat some days. On other days all of them eat, but the parents do not. “At night they will be weak,” she said. “Sure, they complain. But there is nothing we can do.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire, ranks last on the 2011 Global Hunger Index produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute.  Half the country is undernourished.  “Extremely alarming” is how the institute describes Congo’s food situation, which before this year had rated a mere “alarming.”

Domestic Agricultural Receives Little Public Investment

Less than 1 percent of the nation’s budget is spent on agriculture, according to Dr. Eric Tollens, a specialist on nutrition in Congo at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. The Congolese government, he told the New York Times, is more focused on the lucrative industry of copper and cobalt extraction.
 
Agricultural projects in Congo are almost entirely supported by foreign donors, according to Tollens, and Congo’s heavy reliance on imported food has made food unaffordable.

“Agricultural productivity is simply gone,” he said in an interview with the New York Times. In a fertile country like Congo there is no reason to be importing 20,000 tons of beans a year, he added.

Situation Even Harsher For Children Without Families

With intact working households weak from hunger, Congolese children without families suffer even more acutely. The number of such children is high.

Playtime at the SOS Kindergarten in the Congo

Since 1989 SOS Children’s Villages has provided warm homes and meals, loving SOS Mothers, and schooling to unaccompanied children in Congo. With three SOS Children’s Villages and a complement of schools, clinics, social counseling programs, and vocational training centers, SOS has continued to provide services and hope to vulnerable children and families despite civil war and political strife.

In 1996, for instance, during bitter fighting armed forces briefly occupied SOS Children's Village at Bukavu, in eastern Congo. An emergency clinic that SOS set up for the local population has since become a permanent fixture.

SOS remains in challenging environments for the long haul in order to save children’s lives.

You can help SOS continue to provide loving homes and support to families in need across the world. Make a donation today.