Annan calls on world leaders to act now to help avert food crisis in southern Africa

Warning that more than 10 million people in southern Africa will need humanitarian aid over the coming year, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has written to world leaders and development agencies urging them step up their food donations and cash pledges to help turn back this off-the-media-radar crisis before it is too late.

“Tragic experience has taught us that we cannot wait until the last minute to help,” Mr. Annan said in the letter, released by his spokesman in New York. Mr. Annan warned a number of Heads of State – from both developed and developing countries, as well as the African Development Bank and the European Commission – about the unfolding food emergency in Southern Africa brought on by previous food shortages, endemic poverty and HIV/AIDS.

With Malawi facing its worst harvest since 1992, and with the late arrival of seeds and fertilizer impacting agricultural production in Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, “urgent and focused support would be needed to avert a catastrophe in a few months time,” Mr. Annan wrote.

The looming crisis, far from the media’s spotlight, is startlingly reminiscent of the current humanitarian tragedy in Niger, where years of drought and a recent devastating locust invasion have left nearly a third of the country’s population on the brink of starvation. The UN Emergency Coordinator warned of the situation nine moths ago, but only within the past few weeks has the world awakened to the fact that thousand of children in Niger could die.

“The lean season in Southern Africa traditionally starts in December and runs through March, but many people have already exhausted their food stocks,” he said, stressing that the region has been battling food shortages for the past there years, and because of endemic poverty and the impact of HIV/AIDS have not had the chance to recover.

Expressing concern that hunger was forcing children, especially orphans, to drop out of school, and causing some women to turn to prostitution to survive, Mr. Annan asked the world leaders to do everything in their power to ensure that Southern Africa didn’t become another crisis that could have been prevented.