Worst Southern Africa Food Crisis Risks Being Forgotten, UN Says

(Bloomberg) -- Southern Africa is struggling to get attention from donors for its worst food crisis yet because of disasters elsewhere and multiple conflicts, the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.

About 27 million people across seven nations are assessed as food-insecure in the wake of an El Niño-induced dry period, it said. While the organization needs $370 million to respond to what it describes as the worst drought in 100 years, it’s raised only a fifth of that.

“With all the competing emergencies going on across the world, we risk being forgotten,” WFP Southern Africa Regional Director Eric Perdison said in a virtual briefing Friday.

While the drought slashed corn harvests across the region by as much as 70% in the case of Zimbabwe, the relief drive is competing with similar appeals elsewhere.

In the Sahel region of west Africa, where floods and Islamist insurgencies have boosted hunger, tens of millions of people are in need of aid while conflict has created near-famine conditions in parts of Sudan. At the same time, the war between Israel and Hamas is driving appeals to support starving Palestinians.

“There are so many competing emergencies around the world,” Perdison said. “There is a toll on donor resources.”

The drought has left the region with the need to import 3 million tons of grain, the WFP said.

That comes at a time when the war between Russia and Ukraine has driven up food inflation because of limited grain supplies from the Black Sea region. Attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels are also forcing suppliers to use more costly routes around Africa.

That’s compounded the effects of repeated climate disasters in some parts of southern Africa, such as the cyclones that hit Mozambique and Malawi in recent years.

“There is a recovery deficit,” WFP Country Director for Mozambique Antonella D’Aprile said at the briefing. “Communities cannot stand up or get up back on their feet like they could before.”

With the small harvest completed in April and May, hunger levels are expected to worsen from now until the crops are reaped next year unless more assistance arrives, WFP officials said.

While the region has experienced periodic droughts in the past, they appear to be becoming more frequent.

“We cannot point hands to any other factor other than climate change,” Perdison said.