African food aid needs to be as great in 2001 as last year

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said 28 million people in sub-Saharan Africa face severe food shortages, nearly two-thirds of whom are in eastern Africa. In its first report for 2001 on the food supply situation and crop prospects for the region, the FAO said 16 countries on the continent face exceptional food emergencies, mainly in a swath cutting across the continent from Angola in the southwest to Sudan in the northeast.

The lingering effects of the drought that peaked last year in eastern Africa accounts for most of the problems with the food supply, said Shukri Ahmed, an FAO economist. He told a news conference in Nairobi on Monday that a combination of prolonged dry spells and flooding in southern Africa, conflict in several nations, and a lower than normal harvest in the countries of the Sahel region are also contributing factors.

Unlike its sister U.N. agency, the World Food Programme, the FAO does not distribute relief food but provides agricultural assistance, seeds and tools. The FAO is appealing for 140 million dollars for its programmes in sub-Saharan Africa this year, while the food aid requirements for the region are estimated at 10 times that amount. "The international community was really responsive in the last drought and it was due to that assistance that a catastrophe was averted," said Ahmed. "This year we would like again to emphasize the continued need."

He said the people worst-affected by the drought were pastoralists, many of whom lost their key source of nutrition - their livestock - last year. "Just rains coming would not really bring back whatever they had," Ahmed said. "We would need to continue the assistance these people have had for some time to come."

In the report, the FAO forecasts that southern Africa's production of maize - the region's most important cereal crop - will fall by 27 per cent this year from 2000. It blames low prices in South Africa during planting season and resettlement of large-scale commercial farmers in Zimbabwe.

(dpa)