Food shortages affecting large parts of Malawi

World Vision International (WVI) said on Wednesday that food shortages were affecting large parts of Malawi. “So far we know of districts in the north, south and central parts of the country that have been affected by these food shortages,” Elton Ntwana, the Relief and Rehabilitation Manager for WVI in Malawi told IRIN. “At the moment there is very little maize on the commercial market and what little there is is very expensive, so people are really struggling to feed themselves. We do know that the Malawian government has put in an emergency order of 150,000 mt to South Africa to help relieve the shortages.”

WVI said in its latest food assessment of Malawi that the food shortages were brought on by a severe drought and the resulting poor harvests in large parts of the country. Harvesting in Malawi is normally done between late June and early September. “We have requested our people and partners in the field to send us information on the nutritional status of people in their areas. So we are working on trying to get a more accurate idea of the nutritional status of the population.

But the food security situation is very very bad,” Ntwana said. “We have heard of acute hunger in some of the districts where we have our area development programmes.”

Ntwana said that it was not possible to say how many people have been affected. “We are looking at a very large area, but until we get more information we can not say how many people.”