More than 520Â 000 people need urgent food aid in Mozambique while 600Â 000 face famine between now and April next year, its disaster management agency said on Thursday.
”The food shortages resulted from the joint effects of drought, Favio cyclone and floods that hit the country in the first quarter of 2007, and reduced by 30% agricultural production in the central and southern regions of Mozambique,” the director of the National Institute for the Management of Natural Disasters, Paulo Zucula, said.
The government, in conjunction with its international partners, is currently studying the possibility of finding a national solution before making an appeal for international assistance, Zucula said.
”We are studying the possibility of taking food from the northern region of the country, where there is excess, to redistribute in the central and southern regions,” Territorial Administration Minister Lucas Chomera told journalists.
”If that proves insufficient, then we would make an appeal to the international community,” he said.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme are working with the Mozambican government to a find a solution to the food crisis, representatives of the UN bodies in Maputo told AFP. — AFP
