Major food security programme to be launched

A major nationwide food security programme is to be launched this month in the Republic of Congo (ROC), according to Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). He announced the initiative during a recent visit to the capital, Brazzaville, en route to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. The programme - a joint initiative of FAO, NGO partners and government ministries - will aim to strengthen the capacities of farmers, herders, and fishermen to increase the output of food for personal use, with any surplus to be sold commercially. Jeanne Dambendzet, the ROC agriculture minister, recently announced that the government had allocated a first disbursement of 500 million francs CFA (US $786,980) for the programme, with a second allocation to be made before the end of 2002. The programme will begin with pilot projects, to be conducted by 34 Vietnamese experts due to arrive in Brazzaville in the next few days. It will be divided into three stages running from 2002 to 2008. Today, 32 percent of Congolese suffer from hunger. The level of agricultural production in the ROC has remained low due to widespread conflict and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the past decade in the country's highly productive central region, thereby increasing the country's reliance on imported food. Food security has deteriorated considerably in zones of conflict, and inhabitants of these regions have seen their food reserves depleted.