Rich Countries Fail Africa on Food Aid: UN

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Rich Countries Fail Africa on Food Aid: UN

Published on Thursday, October 26, 2006 by Reuters

Rich Countries Fail Africa on Food Aid: UN

JOHANNESBURG - Millions of people in southern Africa face food shortages after rich countries failed to meet money pledges, the U.N. food agency said on Thursday.

An Eritrean refugee receives food aid at the Shimelba refugee camp, which hosts over 12,000 Eritreans, in northern Ethiopia, September 7, 2006. Millions of people in southern Africa face food shortages after rich nations failed to meet pledges for financial assistance, a United Nations agency said on Thursday. REUTERS/Euan Denholm

The World Food Program (WFP) said a $60 million gap in funds has forced it to cut aid to up to 4.3 million people in southern Africa.

That included aid to mother and child nutrition centers, school feeding projects and schemes targeting HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis patients, for whom nutrition is key in boosting immunity to diseases that have ravaged the region.

Namibia, Malawi and Swaziland faced aid reductions of between 80 and 100 percent. HIV/AIDS rates in Swaziland are among the highest in the world.

The shortages coincide with the coming so-called lean season, when southern Africa has to wait until March or April for new harvests.

"Due to a lack of donor support, since September WFP offices across the region have begun to reduce the level of food assistance provided to mother and child nutrition centers, school-feeding projects and patients receiving medication for HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis," it said in a statement.

"Here, where HIV prevalence rates are the highest in the world, people are dying of AIDS-related illness when they could have survived for years if they had had enough food to eat. Anti-retroviral therapy is not effective on an empty stomach."

The statement said the WFP had so far received only half the $118 million in cash contributions needed.

Around 1.4 million people were in critical need of food aid in Zimbabwe, where the WFP said it had been forced in October to scale back help to about half the 900,000 people then in need.

Critics blame persistent food deficits in Zimbabwe on drought and an exodus of the country's most productive commercial white farmers who fled the government's controversial land reform program.

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