Residents of the Upper East region have expressed fears 2017 may unleash a degree of food insecurity severe enough to push several households over the edge.
Public anxiety about the hunger ahead follows some natural disasters that left some farmlands with poor harvests in 2016. Acres of croplands, estimated in thousands, were washed away in more than a half of the region's 13 municipalities and districts.
The affected areas, where 1,467 children were among some 2,718 people displaced after no fewer than 450 houses, according to the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), got submerged in tidal waves, included Bongo, Bolgatanga, Kassena-Nankana East, Builsa North, Kassena-Nankana West, Builsa South, Nabdam, Bawku West and Talensi. The livestock that got missing in the unstable belly of the blind floods were numberless.
"As I'm talking to you today, there are households that cannot even get their breakfast, not to talk about their three square meals a day. The year started with floods that [engulfed] the farms and when the farmers thought they could reorganise after the heavy rains, the [rain scarcity] came in. The aged are feeling the suffering more," a resident, Ayeoh-duko Akobulgo-zotipelba, told
Starr News in Bolgatanga, the regional capital.
Comment: Today a 5.5 magnitude quake struck near Japan's east coast according to USGS.