Famine is a threat in almost half of Chad because of destructively heavy rains after a long period of drought, a food security official at the health ministry, Tao Bouhouraye, said on Wednesday.
”Today, we can’t speak of famine in Chad, but we can talk of a risk of famine in the Sahel zone and in the centre of the country, as well as … in the west,” Bouhouraye said.
Chad is a large landlocked nation stretching southwards from a northern desert highland frontier with Libya deep into Central Africa with a less arid south and has a western border with famine-wracked Niger, where United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was on Wednesday concluding a two-day visit on the crisis.
The ministry official said that rains should have accompanied the regular crop-sowing season between early May and the end of June but failed this year, to be suddenly followed from the end of July by heavy rainfall that ”flooded tracts of farmland” and has caused havoc and several deaths across a belt of the African continent.
”We’re close to the end of the month of August and people are still sowing their crops,” Bouhouraye said, expressing concern that usually the rain has completely stopped by the beginning of September.
”There are also food difficulties in the south and east of the country, where there are no supplies at the markets” because of a bad harvest in the south last year and a destructive locust invasion in the east, he added.
The risk of starvation currently hangs over 24 of the country’s 51 administrative departments with a total affected population of about 508 000 people, he added.
”Food aid amounting to 26 405 tonnes of cereal staples under various forms of subsidised sale and free distribution is recommended,” he said, but pointed out that no food security reserve stocks are available to be tapped. — Sapa-AFP