Governments warned over looming famine crisis in Africa

International governments need to give emergency aid to southern Africa which is facing the biggest famine in the world, it was claimed today.

Global food agency, the UN World Food Program (WFP) said there could be up to three million people starving in Malawi by January.

WFP executive director James Morris said in Dublin that bad weather and the HIV/AIDs crisis had badly hit crop harvests in the six countries of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland.

“The issues in Southern Africa represent the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world today,” Mr Morris told a news briefing.

“We will need more help to do our job in southern Africa. We will need additional help from the international community.”

“We currently have between half and two-thirds of what we need to do our work.”

The former US businessman said the WFP had planned to feed 1.6 million people in Malawi but would now have to provide aid to three million people who will be ’food insecure’ by January.

The international community was heavily criticised by the UN earlier this year for its slow response to a food crisis in Niger in western Africa.

The WFP estimates that HIV/AIDS killed 85,000 people in Malawi alone last year and orphaned 500,000 children.

Mr Morris is in Ireland for a round of meetings with Government officials as well as Irish NGOs, Concern, Goal and Trocaire.

He also held talks with Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Conor Lenihan and Junior Agriculture & Food Minister Brendan Smith.

Mr Morris praised Ireland’s generosity on humanitarian aid. The country is the 7th per capita contributor with each citizen donating $4.10 (€3.38) per year compared to the world average of $2.59 (€2.14).

The Agriculture Department gives untied, multi-lateral aid while the Development Co-operation Ireland arm of the Foreign Affairs Department gives project-specific support.

“Ireland has become one of our important partners, one of our strongest donors and one of the highest per capita givers in all the world,” Mr Morris said.

“The deep concern that the Irish people have for hungry people around the world is extraordinary.

“The support that Ireland has made available comes with that special spirit of empathy and understanding of how serious the hunger issue is.”

Mr Morris, who has run WFP since 2002, said food aid for southern Africa countries can be bought from nearby Zambia and South Africa where its harvest was up by 20%.

“We’ll buy as much food as we can there but we have to be careful that we don’t send prices rocketing,” he explained.

He said thousands of teachers, health workers and farm workers in the region were ill or have died from HIV.

There are up to 15 million orphans and life expectancy levels have plummeted from the mid-60s to the low 30s.

He said the burden on women was almost beyond comprehension as they do 80% of the farm work and all of the home care.

Money provided at the beginning of a crisis can feed 20% more people than later on because of the difference in food and transport costs.

He explained that 25,000 people die every day from hunger, including 18,000 children. This was the equivalent of 45 747 aeroplanes crashing on a daily basis, he said.

Mr Morris also estimated that an extra 5 billion a year in aid from the international community could eliminate child hunger in Africa.

He said there were 852 million people currently suffering from hunger in the world, including 300 million children.

He added: “When I think of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of cutting hunger and poverty in half, of reducing infant mortality, improving maternal health, gender equity, universal primary education, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria - food and nutrition are at the base of progress in every one of those.

“And if in 10 years we could eliminate child hunger in the world, we would achieve the MDGs and we would have a powerful, highly leveraged impact on peace and on prosperity and on economics, but most importantly, it’s the moral, humanitarian, right thing to do.

“But it’s do-able, it’s not an expensive proposition to eliminate hunger in the world among children.”