The Malawi food crisis remains an ongoing severe food security crisis affecting more than five million people in Malawi, especially in the south, caused by the failure to harvest sufficient staple maize due to drought. I traveled to Southern Africa in the summer of 2002, when the food crisis was at its height, documenting the effects of, and responses to the food crisis and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Whilst in Malawi I covered the emergency relief and development programs of a number of NGOs in Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantire. Later that year the documentation was used to promote the Disisters and Emerengees Committee's Southern African Food Crisis fundraising appeal.

In the region as a whole close to 9 million people were in urgent need of food aid, 3.2 million of which where in Malawi. In August 2002 the United Nations appealed for US $88 million of donations to Malawi, with only $28 million pledged. During the summer months it was estimated that 6,000 children were on the verge of death while 65,000 were malnourished. School attendance also dropped with 500,000 children absent. (UNICEF) The government of Malawi reported that some 500 people eventually died from starvation.

The year before Malawi produced just 1.25 million tons or 37 % of the 3.4 million tons of maize required to feed its people. This a consequence of, failed rains, a lack of irrigation (only 2% of cultivated land is irrigated), the decline in the agricultural workforce as a consequence of the AIDS pandemic (currently 1/3 of Malawian population is infected with the HIV virus), ill-conceived international structural adjustment policies, internal corruption and decline of the agricultural sector in neighbouring Zimbabwe.