Rome | Wednesday
The UN food agency has warned that more than four million people in southern Africa faced severe food shortages because of bad weather and a reduction in the areas planted with crops.
The aggregate output of southern Africa’s main staple, maize, is a quarter lower than 2000 levels at 13,4-million tons and “well below the average of the past five years”, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
Serious food shortages were affecting rural and urban areas of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe because maize stocks were at “extremely low levels”, the FAO said, adding that as a result more than two million people in these countries urgently needed food assistance.
“WFP (the UN’s World Food Programme) has started distributions of food aid but more pledges are required to avoid interruptions in the emergency operations,” the FAO said.
It said emergency food aid was also needed for more than 1,3-million people displaced by the civil war in Angola, while aid was having to be distributed to 172 000 people in southern Mozambique because of a fall in the harvest for the second consecutive year.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who was in Rome on Tuesday, urged industrialised countries to make good their pledges to reduce hunger worldwide when they meet at an international development conference in Mexico in March.
“The leaders of the entire world will be present in Monterrey in Mexico and we will be able to see if they have the political will to combat hunger,” Obasanjo told a meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) in the Italian capital.
The UN’s International Conference on Financing for Development in the Mexican city of Monterrey on March 18-22 will bring together officials from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and governments, as well as representatives of the business community and civil society.
Obasanjo, the leader of the most populous African nation, said if the Mexico summit only produced hot air and no concrete results it would be a waste of time.
In his speech to IFAD members, which comprises agriculture ministers or their representatives from 162 countries, Obasanjo stressed the strong connection between rural development and durable peace. – AFP