New funds, but more needed - WFP

A relieved World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Monday it had secured vital donor funding to help save millions of lives across Southern Africa in the coming months. Fresh end-of-year contributions, totaling more than US $25.2 million, have lifted WFP's emergency operation out of a weeks-long funding slump. With the new donations, the largest from Japan, the African Development Bank (ADB), Germany and Canada, the operation is now 62 percent resourced, the agency said in a statement. "These donations have come just in time to keep the food pipeline flowing, but we are not out of danger yet. Food is running out fast and millions of people can simply not make it through the next several months without continued food aid," Judith Lewis, WFP's Southern Africa Regional Coordinator, was quoted as saying. WFP has been urging donors for a rapid response to its US $507 million appeal to feed at least 12 million people caught in a "hunger belt" that stretches across Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland. The emergency operation, which began in July, still requires some US $190 million, more than one-third of the total project cost, to make it through March 2003. The situation was set to worsen in the coming months as more and more people drop into the most vulnerable category during the current lean season, which runs up to the main harvest in April. In the long term, more was needed to be done to address economic collapse, continued policy mismanagement, chronic poverty, and most of all, the devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic, WFP said. In the meantime the agency warned that early signs were pointing to another possible drought next year in parts of Southern Africa, with lower than expected rainfall in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia. "It is still too soon to know how much next year's harvest will produce, but with unfavorable weather, insufficient access to seeds and other agricultural inputs around the region, the impact of HIV/AIDS on productivity, the likelihood is that the harvest will once again fall far short of regional needs and that additional food aid will be needed well into next year," the statement said.