Famine Threat Stalks Africa
At least 10 million people in four southern African countries could starve to death unless the international community quickly mobilizes vast quantities of food aid, senior United Nations officials said on Wednesday.
"In a worst case scenario, 11-12 million people won't have adequate food," James Morris, head of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), the world's biggest food aid agency, told Reuters.
Hartwig de Haen, Assistant Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which tracks food crises, said southern Africa faced its worst food shortages in a decade following two years of poor harvests.
The shortages were most acute in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland where at least 10 million people were threatened by potential famine, the two food agencies said in a statement after joint crop assessment missions in the four countries.
"They will face grave food shortages as early as June 2002, which would continue up to the next main harvest in April 2003," the statement said.
"The overall picture will become even bleaker when the report on Zambia and one on some parts of Mozambique are added to the assessment of an already critical humanitarian situation," it said.
Two successive years of poor harvests caused by drought, floods and frost, coupled with economic crises and disruption of farming, have slashed food output and availability across the region. Prices of the staple food maize are soaring.
WFP is already feeding 2.6 million people in Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, aid officials say.
Over the next year, nearly four million tons of food will have to be imported to meet the minimum needs of the people.
The famine-threatened countries need some 1.2 million tons of immediate emergency food aid.
Morris said WFP was planning a further appeal to governments for food aid and estimated the international aid operation for southern Africa could cost around $400 million.
Other agencies have put the cost of aid at $1.8 billion.
The two U.N. agencies appealed to governments to respond quickly and generously with food donations to avoid a famine.
"We have to get the message out to donors -- a famine can be averted if they act quickly," said Judith Lewis, WFP's regional director for southern and eastern Africa.
"Much needs to be done, and we need to do it now."
WFP officials also said they were worried about a possible recurrence of El Nino and its impact on crops in Africa.
U.S. climatologists have warned that El Nino, a periodic warming of part of the Pacific Ocean, could return this year. El Nino can cause drought in some countries and floods in others.
U.N. food agency officials declined to estimate how many people in southern Africa had already died from starvation, saying the picture was complicated by unreliable official figures and death from disease linked to hunger.
Many people in southern Africa had died because hunger had reduced their resistance to widespread HIV/AIDS, they said.