Global Policy Forum

WFP has warned that a massive funding shortfall is forcing food aid cuts to as many as 4.3 million people across southern Africa who remain chronically vulnerable despite this year's reportedly good harvests across the region. The US$60 million funding shortfall comes just as the annual "lean season" approaches, when people have to wait until next March or April for the harvest.

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 centres, school-feeding projects and patients receiving medication for HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis. Countries like Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland are facing severe cuts of between 80 and 100 percent.

HIV/AIDS

"After the good harvests were reported, WFP scaled down general food assistance to concentrate on the people with the most chronic needs – such as those with HIV/AIDS," said Amir Abdulla, WFP's Regional Director for southern Africa.

"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." "HIV-positive people in poor communities have little or no food at home, because they cannot grow it or pay for it. If we can help them now, we can avoid a longer drawn-out crisis down the road," Abdulla said.

A Chance

"Food aid gives them a chance not only to live longer, but also to work and raise their families," he said. In addition to HIV/AIDS, the region suffers from grinding poverty and other diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and pellagra.

Despite some abundant rains this year, millions of people were too poor to buy seeds and fertilisers to grow food or buy grains once they were harvested. Some areas still had insufficient rain or even floods that washed out crops. In Zimbabwe alone, a May 2006 vulnerability assessment identified 1.4 million people as being in critical need of food assistance.

Funding Shortages

Yet in October, WFP was forced to scale down operations in the country to roughly half of the 900,000 people it was originally targeting. Funding shortages forced cuts in the urban feeding and school-feeding programmes, and a suspension of mobile feeding in rural areas.

"Further reductions may have to be imposed unless resourcing improves," Abdulla said. According to revised figures, WFP needs at least US$17 million just to get Zimbabwe through the lean season, when it expects to target some 1.9 million people. Zimbabwe is one of seven countries under a regional WFP operation, which began in January 2005 and is scheduled to continue through December 2007.

Tragic

The other countries under the operation – and facing similar shortfalls – are Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia. "While the hungry elsewhere on the continent attract world attention, southern Africa's food problems are equally tragic," said Abdulla.

"Hungry people are less able to cope; they succumb more quickly to chronic disease. Young children who are poorly nourished are more likely to die before reaching their teens," he said. "With food assistance, people get the survival cushion they need while they finish schooling, learn new job skills, or switch to more hardy crops." It must remain a vital element of the region's development," Abdulla said.

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