Bad news for Southern Africa

2005-07-22 10:02

Geneva - Up to ten million people in six Southern African countries could reach the same critical situation as those in Niger because of a shortage of aid, United Nations agencies said on Thursday.

"If there's another poor harvest, as is likely, there's a fair chance because these countries have become very vulnerable," said Simon Pluess, a spokesperson for the UN's World Food Programme.

The WFP has only received $65m of the $423m it needs from donors this year to provide food aid in the six countries -Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

The area is hard hit by a long drought and the situation is compounded as these countries are among those hardest hit by HIV/Aids in the world.

"There's a real problem finding even farmers," Pluess told AFP.

Food shortages

Earlier this month the WFP warned that food shortages in Southern Africa were expected to persist until the next harvest in May 2006.

It urged donors to come up with $266m - or 477 000 tons of food - immediately for the southern African countries "to avoid widespread hunger from developing into a humanitarian disaster".

The northwest African state of Niger began receiving dozens of tonnes of emergency food aid Thursday after the UN issued dire warnings this week about an impending famine affecting 2.5 million people in the country.

The WFP has received just five million out of 16 million dollars in aid it requested for emergency food supplies in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, this year.

"We only got that money within the last few weeks," Pluess remarked.

Aid agencies have been warning about funding shortfalls for months.

The situation is repeated across Africa, in areas with refugee crises, conflicts, droughts or in the midst of recovery form war, according to the latest UN data.

Thirteen countries - all but one of them in Africa - have received less than 40% of the emergency aid they need for this year under the UN's overall Consolidated Appeals Process.

Even operations in Sudan, which has attracted considerable media attention, have attracted just 36% of $1.2bn needed for this year.

Officials are reluctant to blame the unprecedented response for the tsunami victims - which has already netted 82% of the required funds - for drawing official aid away from elsewhere.

"We got the assurance from some of the major donors that the funds dedicated to the tsunami would not affect their level of funding and they gave that reassurance again," Stevens said after a mid-year meeting with donor nations.

"In general terms we get reports that the situation is worsening. But we cannot put for the most part in quantitative terms, such as 'malnutrition rates have increased by X'," Stevens said.

In recent weeks, the WFP has cut emergency food rations for refugees in Rwanda and Tanzania because of a shortage of money.

- AFP