Johannesburg. Millions of people in southern Africa are threatened with famine due to a historic drought that could cause “a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe” due to lack of funds, the World Food Program (WFP) warned on Tuesday.
The UN agency “launches an urgent call for help to prevent the widespread drought triggered by the El Niño phenomenon from turning into a large-scale humanitarian catastrophe,” declared in Geneva the WFP spokesperson for southern Africa, Tomson Phiri. .
The WFP is distributing food and supporting aid programs but has only received a fifth of the $369 million needed, Phiri lamented.
Five countries (Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) declared a state of emergency after drought destroyed crops and livestock several months ago.
Angola and Mozambique are also seriously affected, indicated the World Food Program (WFP).
The drought has destroyed 70% of the crops in Zambia and 80% in Zimbabwe, the acting WFP regional director for southern Africa, Lola Castro, told AFP in July.
The crisis is expected to continue worsening until the next harvests in March and April next year, the WFP warned.
“A historic drought – the worst food crisis yet – has destroyed more than 27 million lives across the region,” said WFP Southern Africa spokesperson Tomson Phiri.
“Around 21 million children are malnourished,” he added.
The drought has been caused by the recurring El Niño weather phenomenon, which is responsible for drought conditions in some regions of the world and abundant rains in others.
It would be the worst drought in the region in a century, according to Lola Castro.
The lack of rain also reduced hydroelectric capacity in the region, causing major power outages.
Zimbabwe and Namibia announced they had culled hundreds of wild animals, including elephants, to ease pressure on resources.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘133913093805922’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Contact’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Donate’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘FindLocation’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Subscribe’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘MXN’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’});
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
#alerts #humanitarian #catastrophe #due #historic #drought #Africa
–
