Food from USAID helps "avert famine"

With an additional 67,690 mt of food aid, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) said this week, it has helped meet more than one third of the food required to feed the hungry in drought-affected southern Africa, so far. However, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said its aim of feeding the 12.5 million people in need of food aid in the region, mainly in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia, was still underfunded by US $77 million. The USAID food assistance, to be delivered through the NGO, Consortium for the Southern Africa Food Security Emergency (C-SAFE), brings the food contributed by the US to avert famine in sub-Saharan Africa since June this year to more than 370,000 mt, valued at approximately $280 million, said the agency. According to Michael Hess, assistant administrator of USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, "The combined efforts of the United States and UN World Food Programme have averted a widespread humanitarian crisis in southern Africa this year." He urged international donors to honor their pledges for "greater assistance", and called on African governments to continue reforms that would "ultimately lift their populations out of poverty". WFP spokeswoman Stephanie Savariaud told IRIN that countries like Malawi and Zambia were still in need of food aid. "We are very short of vegetable oil and pulses in Malawi - we are unable to provide the necessary additional nutrition critical in a country with a high HIV prevalence," she said. The UN food aid agency's efforts to feed 82,000 Angolan and Congolese refugees living in settlements across Zambia have also been affected by the funding shortfall and WFP is considering cutting food rations by 50 percent next year. "We are underfunded by $8.5 million - we will run out of food by the end of March," said spokeswoman Jo Woods. Until early next year, an estimated 12 million people in six countries across the region, - Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe - will face food shortages caused by poor and erratic rainfall.