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Donor fatigue means Zimbabweans go hungry
Angus Shaw, Associated Press (AP)
November 14, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=15494

Harare - The United Nations food agency said on Monday that it has scaled down food distribution in Zimbabwe, where more than a million people are in critical need, because of a shortage of donor funds. It said further reductions might be necessary across southern Africa. The World Food Programme said in a statement the poor donor response followed repeated assurances by the government that the nation would be able to feed itself ahead of the next harvests in March. The agency estimated 1.4 million Zimbabweans are in critical need of food aid now and predicts the number will rise to nearly two million in coming weeks because of soaring inflation and shortages of food on the local market. "WFP has had to resort to cutting back its urban feeding and school feeding programmes, and a suspension of mobile feeding in rural areas," the agency said. About 65 000 tons of emergency food was budgeted for at a cost of $35-million for the "lean" period, when last year's harvest is running low and before the new harvest is in, from October to March. The agency only received pledges for 39 000 tons expected in Harare via South Africa, leaving a deficit of $17-million needed to import more food. The worst current food shortages were being reported in arid areas of western, southern and far northern Zimbabwe.

In its operations across southern Africa, the agency said it faced a $60-million funding shortfall and aid cutbacks were affecting 4.3 million chronically vulnerable people, 35 percent of them in Zimbabwe. "Further feeding operations may be cut back across the region if resources do not improve," said the WFP. In the longer term, there were concerns over a general decline in agricultural productivity in southern Africa linked to shortages of capital for fertiliser and other inputs, soil erosion, overgrazing, deforestation and global warming that reduced yields. These conditions forced an increasing number of people to become dependent on small holder and subsistence farming to survive. Zimbabwe needs about 1.8 million tons of corn, the staple food, a year but in the last harvest produced less half that amount, according to independent surveys. The country is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with more than 1 000 percent inflation, the highest in the world, and acute shortages of hard currency and gasoline. The crisis has been largely blamed on the chaotic and often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms since 2000 in Zimbabwe, a former regional breadbasket.

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