ZIMBABWE: World Food Programme launches appeal for emergency funding

1 August, 2007 in Zimbabwe

source: IRIN

JOHANNESBURG, 1 August 2007 (IRIN) – The UN World Food Programme (WFP) made an urgent US$118 million appeal on Wednesday to provide immediate assistance to 3.3 million Zimbabweans facing severe food shortages.

“Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans are already starting to run out of food, and several million more will be reliant on humanitarian assistance by the end of the year,” Amir Abdulla, WFP’s Regional Director for Southern Africa, said in a statement.

“WFP plans to feed more than 10 times the current number of beneficiaries over the next eight months to avert the threat of widespread hunger, but to do this we need more donations – and we need them immediately.”

The agency has already secured 138,000 metric tonnes (mt) of food for Zimbabwe, but requires another 207,000mt of cereals and other commodities, costing about $118 million, to cover its increased relief activities from now until the next harvest in April 2008.

Although the WFP has received $70 million for its operations in Zimbabwe so far this year, mostly from the US and European Union, food stocks were expected to begin running low in September if the additional funding was not received, and “will be completely exhausted by December, just as the crisis reaches its peak.”

The dire food shortages in Zimbabwe, once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, are blamed on a combination of drought, lack of inputs and expertise, and an economic meltdown that has seen inflation soar to over 4,000 percent – the highest in the world.

WFP has been providing food assistance to 300,000 people every month, but this number was expected to rise to 1.3 million people from September, 2.5 million people in October, and 3.3 million people from November to March 2008.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and WFP issued a joint report on Zimbabwe’s food security in June, in which they predicted that [continue reading]