AFRICA: Southern Africa is facing a food crisis within six months that will affect 10 million people unless wealthy nations help to avert the impending disaster, according to aid agencies in the region.
The agencies - which include the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and international NGOs - have called on governments to avoid a repeat of the recent crisis that hit west Africa, where 2½ million people in Niger and its surrounding countries were affected by severe food shortages.
In the months leading up to the crisis, aid agencies had repeatedly asked western governments to provide assistance, but the pleas fell on deaf ears until pictures of starving women and children were beamed into the living rooms of western homes.
The southern Africa food shortages have been brought on by repeated poor harvests due to drought, and the situation is being compounded by the HIV/Aids epidemic ravaging the region. While the region is not yet in the grip of famine, says the UN, the situation could soon spiral out of control.
WFP officials have estimated that around four million Malawians, four million Zimbabweans, one million Zambians and another million in Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho are affected by the shortages.
But due to an immediate funding shortfall of $187 million for feeding programmes in the above-named countries, only a fraction of those who require assistance will receive it, says the WFP's Mike Sackett.
"It can take up to four months to move food to the region, so donations are needed urgently if we are to reach the neediest before the beginning of the lean season. We need food and cash now. Many people who have already eaten their food reserves are surviving on wild foods."
The permanent secretary for Zimbabwe's minister for agriculture, Simon Pazvakavambwa, said this week that the country would be "finished" if food was not imported soon.
"We have in our [ grain] silos three weeks' supply of food and if for some reason imports stop, we are finished."
The UN launched an appeal for $88m last week in an effort to assist the starving population of Malawi, considered the worst affected country. However, it is understood that little or no money has been donated to date.
According to a statement issued by the NGO Oxfam, while people in southern Africa are used to coping when rains fail, they are now "increasingly unable to do so because of the HIV/Aids epidemic and other economic factors".
The situation is considered so urgent that UN secretary general Kofi Annan recently wrote to 27 heads of state and the EU asking for immediate assistance to avoid "a catastrophe".