Needs escalating, but aid slow to arrive

Mozambique's drought-induced food shortage is spurring vulnerability in parts of the south and centre of the country but the World Food Programme (WFP) says relief aid has been slow to arrive. Currently some 428,000 people need food aid, but this will rise to 534,000 between October and December, and to 587,000 between January and March next year, said WFP spokeswoman Karin Manente. She told IRIN that WFP was "very concerned about the situation, as we've only been able to reach 140,000 people at the moment" through the agency's relief programme. "We sent an appeal to donors a couple of weeks ago - what we're appealing for is 55,000 mt of food aid, which equates to US $30.5 million, to help us meet the needs of the most vulnerable people from now until the next harvest [in March/April 2006]," Manente explained. She added that "as soon as we have more contributions we will increase [food aid] distributions to get closer to the [total] needs" in the country. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) noted that "the available resources [in Mozambique] are inadequate", and there was an urgent need to mobilise resources to mitigate the impact of the dry weather. "The level of household food insecurity is more pronounced in the cereal-deficit southern region, where crop production and water availability for humans and animals were severely affected by the drought," FEWS NET said in its latest report. "Because of high household dependence on markets, food prices in the southern region are key determinants of poor and middle-income household food security. In the remote areas, due to poor road networks and undersupplied markets, households have limited food access even in a normal year," the report pointed out. "In deficit areas dependent on supplies from surplus areas of the central region, [a] recent sharp increase in fuel prices will contribute to additional increases in the prices of foods like maize and beans. Unless timely mitigating measures are taken, the high maize prices will prevent many poorer households from meeting their minimum food needs," FEWS NET warned. Manente noted that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had written to 27 heads of state, as well as the African Development Bank and the European Union, to alert them to the fact that millions of people would go hungry in Southern Africa unless donations to the WFP were made immediately. "We still need the support of the donor community to help us through this season," Manente stressed.