The World Food Programme has launched a $507-million appeal to help feed two-thirds of the 13-million people at risk of starvation in six African countries over the next nine months.
The WFP’s executive director, James Morris, told a news conference that $507-million would buy 990 000 tons of food, mostly cereals, for emergency programmes in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
He said that would feed 10,2-million people until the next main harvest in March 2003.
He said half the food ? 453 000 tons — would go to Zimbabwe, formerly the breadbasket of southern Africa, which now faces a crisis of political origins threatening five million people.
Zimbabwe could not solve its crisis unless President Robert Mugabe reversed a ban on private grain imports, Morris said.
For all six countries, WFP needed a total of 1,5-million tons in emergency aid for 12,8-million people likely to be affected by the current drought, the worst in at least 10 years, if not two decades, he said.
”The WFP is committed to address two-thirds of the problem,” he said. ”The rest will be handled by NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and bilateral arrangements.”
The forecasts were based on three-month estimates, he explained. Seven million people were estimated to be in need of aid between now and September, rising to 11-million by November and peaking at 12,8-million in the first quarter of next year.
”This is the biggest emergency the WFP is addressing now, it will be bigger than Afghanistan,” Morris said.
It was exacerbated by the large number of deaths of working men and women from Aids, which had left ”a huge number of orphans,” he said.
”We don’t have a weather problem like we have in Afghanistan,” where food had to be distributed before winter sets in, he went on.
”But in order to have what we need for distribution, we need the commitments in the next three to four weeks,” he said.
Noting that it sometimes took five months from the time a donor pledged help to the time the donated food arrived, he said WFP was opening an office Monday in Johannesburg to coordinate operations throughout the region.
”We need to persuade the eight, 10 or 12 countries that have surpluses” to donate grains and cereals, he said, adding: ”We have never had so many challenges.”
Morris said he had met Mugabe twice in the past three weeks.
”We suggested strongly to him that he cannot solve his problem unless he opens up Zimbabwe to the free market and allows grain traders to come in,” he said.
”It won’t work for his grain marketing board to manage this or to try to set prices, for all sorts of reasons, but specifically because they don’t have the hard currency to provide the working capital to do the work,” he added.
”There is actually more ground under cultivation in Zimbabwe today than there was a year ago,” Morris went on.
Commercial farmers had achieved huge yields through irrigation but that was not available to the hungry poor, and ”small mom and pop operations were not producing” adequate amounts of food.
Morris said he would see Mugabe again next week and added: ”We’re going to be very persistent on this.”
Saving lives ”requires internal production, it requires the free market to work and it requires the donor community to be generous,” he said.
But ”we need to give comfort to the donors that things will be handled properly,” he added. – AFP
