Harare | Saturday
MOST of the 12 countries in the southern Africa region will suffer food shortages this year due to a combination of floods and drought, a regional food security warning unit said on Friday.
The Southern African Development Community Regional Early Warning Unit (SADC-REWU) said due to an overall drop in regional crop production, countries faced with shortages would be forced to import from far afield.
It predicted a regional decrease of 22% in maize production and a 17% fall in the production of other cereals.
“The decline was occasioned by a … severe mid-season dry spell which affected cereal crops in parts of South Africa, southern Zimbabwe, southern Mozambique,” the unit said.
The drought was followed by “devastating floods which affected those parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique that lie within the Zambezi valley,” said the unit in its latest food security quarterly bulletin published on Friday.
A regional deficit of maize, the region’s staple grain, of 1.78 million tonnes is predicted. Production is expected to decline from 20.50 million tonnes last season to 16.05 million tonnes this year.
Last year’s regional surplus of 2.11 million tonnes of maize included significant exportable amounts from South Africa and Malawi. But this year there might not be enough surplus to export within the region, according to SADC-REWU.
“Limited availability of exportable maize surpluses imply reliance on imports from further afield,” the unit said.
It predicted a decline of 17% in wheat production over the previous season, or some 2.56 million tonnes. In 2000, the region had a wheat surplus of 583 000 tonnes.
Flooding has left tens of thousands of hectares of crop under water in Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, while at the other extreme, dry spells have withered crops.
Despite drastic reductions in the production of sorghum and millet in Namibia (48%), South Africa (45%), Botswana (36%) and Zimbabwe (27%), significant increases for these crops are projected for Angola (29%) and Mozambique (24%), the unit said. – AFP