WFP in $61 million donor appeal

The WFP on Friday warned that food shortages were still very serious in at least 13 districts of Kenya, and said millions of people needed food aid as drought continued to grip large portions of the country. “Thousands of families are destitute and unable to feed their children. It is crucial we continue to feed them until the harvest early next year,” said David Fletcher, acting Country Director for WFP Kenya. Fletcher was speaking in support of an emergency appeal approved this week in which the agency called for 124,000 mt of food, at a cost of US $61 million, to feed 3.1 million people through March 2002. “In view of the good harvest in areas of Kenya, donors are especially urged to provide cash to buy locally produced maize,” Fletcher added.

Among the communities worst affected were pastoralists in the north, northeastern and Rift Valley provinces, where the rains were late, erratic and insufficient for the regeneration of pasture for livestock and for food crops, WFP reported. “Young and able-bodied men are being driven as far afield as Ethiopia and Somalia to find pasture for their livestock, leaving behind the women, children and the elderly,” it said. Women represented about 51 percent of the population in these areas and, without milk or meat, they and their children were particularly vulnerable, it added.

Cattle herdsmen had already suffered high livestock losses, and reports from aid groups on the ground indicated that many more animals continued to die or were in poor condition, particularly in Mandera District, according to the WFP.

The overall food supply situation in kenya had improved considerably following favourable short-rains harvests and improved pasture in several central and western pastoral districts, but most pastoral districts in the east and north had yet to recover, the FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) reported on Wednesday. The country’s food import requirement for this year of almost 2.2 million mt was 152 percent of the average annual requirement, it said.

[for the full FAO report on “Food supply situation and crop prospects in Sub-Saharan Africa”, go to:
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/faoinfo/economic/giews/english/eaf/eaf0108/httoc.htm]