The United Nations’s food agency on Friday warned that despite an urgent aid appeal made in the summer, it now faces a ”significant” funding shortfall that could leave millions in Southern Africa facing food shortages.
”In July the World Food Programme (WFP) appealed for $308-million to fund 540 000 tonnes of food — enough to feed 6,5-million people until June of next year in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi,” the agency said in a statement released in Johannesburg.
”Despite appeals, the WFP received only 24% of what is required, and has unmet needs amounting to $235-million,” the agency said, warning that ”millions of people in Southern Africa will face massive food shortages as early as next month”.
The shortages will most acutely affect Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Zimbabwe, once regarded as the breadbasket of the region, accounts for about two-thirds of the appeal, the WFP said.
”The WFP’s appeal is based on an assumption that governments will meet commercial import targets. However, in Zimbabwe’s case, a severe lack of foreign exchange is clearly affecting the country’s ability to import food.”
Compounding the food shortage in Zimbabwe is the steep economic decline in the country, including a huge drop in cereal and cash-crop production, an inflation rate of more than 400% and a doubling in infant mortality rates since 1998.
President Robert Mugabe’s fast-track programme of redistributing white-owned farms to new black farmers is partly to blame for chronic food shortages there, say aid agencies.
In the region, HIV/Aids is also compounding the problem, the WFP said.
”The region has the highest HIV prevalance rates in the world and there has been an alarming increase in the number of households headed by children, the chronically ill and grandparents,” it said.
WFP executive director James Morris made the $308-million appeal in Geneva in early July.
”The situation is incredibly serious. In Mozambique, rations for hundreds of thousands of people may be cut, or they may get nothing at all unless our appeal receives an immediate cash injection.”
So far, the United States has made the largest donation for the appeal, giving $37-million, followed by the European Community-EuropeAid with $28,5-million. — Sapa-AFP