WFP to feed 10m West Africans
2006-01-16 22:18
Dakar - The World Food Programme plans to feed at least 10 million west Africans in 2006 by supplying almost 300 000 tons of food, says the organisation on Monday.
Jean-Jacques Graisse, the WFP's joint executive director, said so far, about $18.4m or eight percent of the total amount, had been confirmed. The estimated total cost was $237m.
Graisse said: "Access to food is at the heart of human existence and poverty means that millions of people before us, in west Africa, are waking up each day without knowing how to feed themselves."
He referred to last year's food crisis in Niger in his call for financial help.
'Little children die'
He said: "We need resources to do it because we have learned on several occasions that being late bringing help costs a lot more that bringing it now.
"We have just seen last year in Niger what happens when we leave poverty to take root and brew for a long time: the means for survival collapse and people, especially little children, suffer terribly and even die sometimes."
Last year's food crisis in Niger was the result of drought and invasions by locust swarms, although the president and his prime minister disagreed about whether it was a famine or local food shortages.
Disagreement about famine
The government of Niger in November denied a WFP statement that said that the country faced a new food crisis in 2006, raising memories of a disagreement about famine earlier in the year, which brought UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to Niger to answer criticism of their activities.
Graisse warned that the Sahel region of Africa, that included Niger, would have another difficult year in 2006.
He said that WFP action in Niger still required almost $22m to avoid a break in food deliveries, starting from next month.
Graisse also spoke of problems created by wars in the region and reconstruction afterwards. He said: "The WFP has an enormous amount of work to do in 2006."