ZIMBABWE is among the world’s top 19 countries that face severe food shortages this year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said.
FAO’s latest report released yesterday in collaboration
with the World Food Programme (WFP) says Zimbabwe will face critical food
shortages starting from October this year to January 2023 due to the country’s
ailing economy and global conflicts.
The joint FAO/WFP statement came as the International Red
Cross and Red Crescent Movement (ICRC) said it would distribute grain to nearly
2,5 million people in Zimbabwe in the last quarter to December this year as
hunger hits the southern African nation.
A similar report by the World Bank early this week also
adjudged Zimbabwe as the worst country in the world in terms of food price
inflation.
FAO and WFP said Zimbabwe was one of the acute hunger
hotspots in Africa, a situation that has been exacerbated by extreme weather
conditions.
Some of the 19 countries mentioned as hunger hotspots
include Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
“Extreme levels of mortality and malnutrition may unfold
without immediate action. The hunger crisis in Africa, where the longest
drought in over 40 years is forecast to continue with Guatemala joining Sri
Lanka, Zimbabwe and Madagascar that remain hunger hotspots,” the FAO report
read.
FAO director-general QU Dongyu said: “The severe drought in
the Horn of Africa has pushed people to the brink of starvation, destroying
crops and killing livestock on which their survival depends. Acute food
insecurity is rising fast and spreading across the world.
“People in the poorest countries in particular who have yet
to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are suffering from the
ripple effects of ongoing conflicts, in terms of prices, food and fertiliser
supplies, as well as the climate emergency. Without a massively scaled up
humanitarian response that has at its core time-sensitive and life-saving agricultural
assistance, the situation will likely worsen in many countries in the coming
months.”
Recently, a United Nations joint report on food security
said the number of people facing starvation worldwide was expected to continue
rising.
To avert hunger, the WFP will assist 560 000 people in
Zimbabwe.
Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare minister Paul
Mavima recently told NewsDay that the number of food insecure people in
Zimbabwe for the 2022/23 consumption year had considerably gone up compared to the
previous year.
“During the peak hunger period between January and March
2023, 38% of the rural population (approximately 3,8 million people will need
emergency food assistance. This has increased from 27% from last season,”
Mavima said.
A joint statement by the ICRC regional director for Africa,
Patrick Yousseff and IFRC regional director for Africa, Mohammed Omer Mukhier,
said about 146 million people in sub-Saharan Africa face acute food insecurity.
Newsday
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