FAO calls for urgent donor aid

Donor countries should urgently commit food aid and financial support to Southern Africa to avert a major humanitarian crisis, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned in a report on Monday. The FAO report said only 24 percent of the US $507 million needed to provide more than 10 million people with food assistance until the next main harvest in April 2003 had been pledged. Also urgently needed are agricultural inputs to help farmers recover from the crisis. "The food situation in Southern Africa is of grave concern," the report said. "A prolonged dry spell during the 2001/02 growing season, and excessive precipitation in parts, devastated crops in large growing areas. In Zimbabwe, reduced planting in the large-scale commercial sector due to land reform activities compounded the problem. Maize production in the subregion fell sharply, reaching less than one-quarter of last year's level in Zimbabwe, one-third in Lesotho and just over a half in Malawi, Zambia and Swaziland." In Zimbabwe, the report warned that the "food and nutritional situation gives cause for serious concern following two consecutive sharply reduced cereal harvests and the country's prevailing economic crisis". More than half the country's population was reported in need of food aid, and FAO called for "additional donor contributions" to stem the deterioration of the food situation. Assistance with agricultural inputs was also "urgently required to enable drought-affected farming families to restart agricultural production during the next main planting season starting October 2002". Malawi had also been hard hit by the food crisis, with instances of starvation reported in parts of the country earlier this year. The report said about 3.2 million people had been affected by reduced food availability. Distribution of relief food had begun for about 500,000 people, and that number would rise to 3.2 million by December. So far, the report said, food aid requirements had been well funded by donor contributions. In Zambia, the report said, "severe crop losses during the last cropping season due to drought have left some 2.3 million people, or about one-quarter of the population, in need of food assistance". In the worst-affected Southern Province, 60 percent of the population required relief food. In Angola, an estimated 500,000 people were in a "critical nutritional condition", FAO said. A ceasefire agreement had led to large numbers of severely malnourished people making their way to reception and transit centres across the country. More malnourished people were likely to be found as the security situation in the country improved, and more areas became accessible. At the national level, Mozambique had a good cereal harvest, but the food situation in the southern region and parts of central regions was "extremely tight", because crops had been devastated by drought. Cereal production in these areas declined by one-third from last year's already reduced level. The report estimated that 515,000 people in 43 districts of the southern and central regions were facing severe food shortages and needed emergency food aid. In Namibia, the food supply situation was also described as "tight" following a sharp decline in this year's cereal production. The country faced a cereal deficit of about 156,000 mt in 2002/03. A recent vulnerability assessment by the government found that 500,000 people would need food aid as a result of the reduced harvest.