Preparations for food shortages underway

Donor organisations and the Tanzanian government have started making contingency plans following several warnings of an imminent food shortage for some two million people.

"We are still finalising our emergency appeal document in response to the prime minister's request," Matthew McIvenna, a World Food Programme programme officer in Dar es Salaam, said.

The government has appealed for 45,000 mt of cereal, preferably maize. Meantime, the director of food security at the Ministry of Agriculture, Sophia Kaduma, said on Wednesday that the government would release 32,000 mt of supplies from its Strategic Grain Reserve and sell it at subsidised prices to vulnerable people, notably HIV positive people. The government has called on businesspeople to bring in extra food.

McIvenna said donor aid should be available by December, when people's coping mechanisms were likely to be exhausted.

The ministry’s Food Security Information Team warned in August that 1.9 million Tanzanians in 46 districts would be in need of food aid between October 2003 and March 2004. The food shortages have been put down to bad harvests following poor rains.

The impact of the impending food shortages is already being felt. According to the Food Security Information Team’s assessment, staple food prices in most of the villages covered were significantly higher this year than in 2002, with a number of villages recording price increases of more than 250 percent.