The World Food Program (WFP) has warned that 27 million people in southern Africa are facing the worst food crisis in decades, saying it cannot provide enough aid due to a lack of resources.
The UN agency announced that Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have declared a state of disaster and requested international humanitarian aid due to record drought. Angola and Mozambique are also hard hit, with around 21 million children malnourished, according to Anadolu news agency.
“If we don’t get additional funding, millions of people are at risk of being left without assistance during the worst period of shortages in decades. October in southern Africa marks the beginning of the period of shortages. We can expect each month to be more difficult than the previous until the harvest in March and April next year. Crops have failed, livestock have died, and children are happy to have one meal a day,” said WFP spokesman Thomson Phiri.
Tens of millions of people in the area depend on small-scale agriculture and rely on rain for irrigation.
The agency plans to provide more than 6.5 million people in the seven most vulnerable countries with food and, in some cases, cash until the next harvest. The WFP said it has received only about a fifth of the $369 million it needs.
At the end of last year, humanitarian agencies warned of the possibility of a disaster, because the El Nino weather phenomenon resulted in below-average precipitation in the region.
The United Nations announced in July that this is the worst drought in the area in the last century. It destroyed 70 percent of crops in Zambia and 80 percent in Zimbabwe, said Lola Castro, WFP’s acting regional director for southern Africa.
Due to the lack of rainfall, hydropower plants in the country also have problems in their operation, which leads to frequent power outages.
