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UN food agency launches urgent appeal to feed 500,000 in Zimbabwe

UN food agency launches urgent appeal to feed 500,000 in Zimbabwe

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today urgently appealed for $54 million to feed more than half a million people in Zimbabwe suffering from severe food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic hardship.

On Tuesday, the Government of Zimbabwe and WFP signed a Letter of Understanding outlining the operational details for the planned emergency intervention after the Government had requested in mid-October that the UN provide humanitarian assistance to the country, WFP said in a statement.

Rural families facing the most acute need are located in the south, west and extreme north of the country. "While these are chronically poor areas, the situation went from bad to worse this year because of erratic rainfall; a strong down-turn in the economy coupled with a sharp rise in staple food prices; and disruption to the commercial farming sector due to land acquisition activities," the statement said.

According to a team of WFP experts deployed to Zimbabwe in September and October, people were finding it increasingly difficult to feed themselves in what was, until recently, a food-surplus country. The cost of a 20-kilogramme bag of maize has risen as much as 100 percent during the last year.

Approximately 36 percent of Zimbabwe's 12.6 million people live below the poverty line, with less than $1 per day to meet their basic needs.

In another development, Germany donated $2 million in cash to help feed 1.3 million people suffering from an unusual combination of drought and floods in neighbouring Zambia, the first contribution to the WFP's emergency food operation in that country.

The funds will enable the agency to quickly buy 4,400 tonnes of maize from nearby countries while an advance of $3 million from WFP's emergency credit reserve will increase the agency's total food purchase to 10,000 metric tonnes, just one-quarter of the total amount needed.