13 million people at risk of catastrophic famine

JULITA ANOBI sits outside her mud hut, surrounded by dusty fields, grinding away at husks of maize which are normally fed to the chickens.

The crops should have provided enough to feed the 65-year-old woman and her 18-year-old grandson. Instead they wilted in the baking sun.

"It is a tragedy," she said. "There is nothing to eat and nowhere to go. We try not to eat the husks because they cause diarrhoea. But there is nothing else."

It is a haunting sight. Here in the tiny village of Mitessa, at the beginning of the 21st century, a woman scavenges with the animals in the barren earth to stay alive.

As many as 13 million others across southern African are also in desperate need of emergency food if a famine of catastrophic proportions is to be avoided.

"The window of opportunity to avert a major humanitarian crisis is closing," says Judith Lewis, the World Food Programme's southern Africa director.

The countries now most at risk Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Swaziland and Lesotho already endure some of the world's highest rates of malnutrition.

The conditions are further exacerbated by the alarmingly high rate of HIV/Aids, as high as 35% among some sections of the population.

As far back as April, Irish aid agency Goal was warning of a major disaster unless emergency food supplies were put in place before the end of the summer.

In Malawi, one of the countries most affected, Goal is one of 12 aid agencies working on the ground.

They are helping to keep people alive by distributing thousands of tonnes of maize from USAid and the World Food Programme. But, because of their resources, they are only able to target the most vulnerable.

Politics have hampered the situation in many cases such as Malawi, where the heavily indebted government sold off its emergency food reserves.

Nothing was done to replenish them. Maize prices tripled and are now way beyond most subsistence farmers who make up 90% of Malawi's 11 million population.

According to Goal's country director, Peter McDevitt, there is only limited evidence of malnutrition.

"As yet there are very few children with the classic symptoms swollen tummies, sunken eyes, loose skin hanging from skeletal frames. But it can only be a matter of time before those heart rending pictures start appearing on your TV."