The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Monday that the food outlook in the DRC was “bleak” and that food assistance was still needed elsewhere in the Great Lakes region, including Burundi and Rwanda. It noted that the DRC had some two million internally displaced people and an additional 333,000 refugees, mainly from Angola. “The number continues to rise as fighting flares up in both countries, with serious nutritional and health consequences,” the FAO said. It said the food problem had been further aggravated by the outbreak and spread of the cassava mosaic virus, which had seriously affected the staple crop, particularly in eastern parts of the country. “The food situation is also extremely tight in urban areas, mainly Kinshasa, where the number of vulnerable people has increased,” the FAO said. The DRC, Rwanda and Burundi are among 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa facing “exceptional food emergencies”, according to the FAO.
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