Good African Crops Cold Comfort For Hungry Refugees
Date: 03-Feb-05
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Peter Apps
"We are looking at a very serious situation," United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Ramin Rafirasme, told Reuters from Senegal.
The WFP says it saw donations for Africa vanish almost completely in January, after the tsunami that devastated the Indian Ocean region, forcing it to cut back on how much food it buys -- bad news for producers with surplus stock to shift.
The UN relief agency said it received $36 million in November and December prior to the tsunami, but $74 million was needed.
"We have already reduced food rations in Liberia because of lack of resources," Rafirasme noted.
Roughly 900,000 Liberians -- mainly refugees returning to their villages following the end of a 14-year civil war in 2003 -- rely on WFP handouts. The agency had intended to buy some 200,000 tonnes of food in 2005 for them and for refugees in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
In nearby Mauritania, the agency says it will need 187,000 tonnes of food to cope with consequences of drought and locust swarms, but fears the insects might have destroyed most of the crops in neighbouring countries were largely unfounded.
The WFP says it will also have to cut back its operations in southern Africa unless funding -- which looked bad in December and has entirely dried up since Christmas -- improves.
NEED CASH
Traditionally, some countries, particularly the United States, have donated physical food to the WFP, but agencies increasingly want cash donations so they can buy food on the continent, boosting African agriculture.
As their futures prices crash on poor demand and overproduction, South African maize traders are looking for any markets for their product -- but many think the price will have to drop below its current 570 rand ($94.71) a tonne.
In the past, South African farmers have profited from food shortages in southern Africa, but better rains and agricultural reform mean the 2005 harvest looks better than previous years, and aid agencies have been buying better priced Zambian produce.
A band of drought has hit southern Zimbabwe and Mozambique, but in general aid workers say the region's remaining food shortages are due to people being too poor to buy food due to unemployment and economic collapse rather than crop failure.
Most South African exports have gone to the region, but traders say demand elsewhere in the continent is also good news.
DISPLACED PEOPLE
In central Angola, several hundred thousand people -- including many refugees who had returned home following the end of a 27-year civil war, might soon need aid, South African Development Community food security adviser Gary Sawdon said.
"This population is extremely vulnerable," he said. "They had very poor harvests last year and are now in the heart of the lean season."
In Sudan and neighbouring Chad, refugees are also driving up food need demand. Offshore, WFP is distributing stocks already held on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar to homeless and vulnerable groups after a cyclone killed at least 17 last week.
The worst problems remain in the Horn of Africa where aid workers say more than eight million Ethiopians and 2.2 million Eritreans are still at risk to food shortages.
"A few months ago, people were talking about 12 million Ethiopians needing food aid," Care International food security specialist Dan Maxwell told Reuters. "Things look a little better...but in Somalia things aren't better at all."