Famine ‘threatens five million in Malawi’

THE President of Malawi has declared the impoverished, AIDS-decimated southern African nation a disaster area and said five million people are threatened with famine.

Like many, Dona Kijani dives into a crocodile-infested river for water lilies, gambling with death to pull up tubers that are barely edible and give her children diarrhoea. She says it is her only source of food.

For Kijani and many of her neighbours in the dirt-poor southern tip of Malawi, water lilies have become a staple part of the diet as drought withers corn crops, worsening a malnutrition problem aggravated by poverty, corruption and AIDS.