Millions of people risk going hungry as Southern Africa enters lean season
Geneva - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is today calling for urgent assistance to prevent a wide-spread drought triggered by the El- Niño from deepening into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe.
A historic drought - the worst food crisis yet - has devastated more than 27 million lives across the region. Some 21 million children are malnourished. For many communities, this is the worst food crisis in decades. October marks the start of the lean season and each month is expected to be worse than the previous one until harvests next year in March/April.
Crops failed, livestock has perished, and children are lucky to receive even one meal per day. The situation is dire, and the need for action has never been clearer.
A record five countries, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have all declared the hunger crisis a state of disaster and called for international humanitarian support. Angola and Mozambique are severely affected, as well.
At the request of governments, WFP has started to provide food assistance and critical support in transport, logistics and food procurement. Against soaring global needs, we have only received one fifth of the US$369 million needed to provide assistance to millions in Southern Africa.
While the funding received so far has allowed WFP to begin relief food distributions, a significant funding gap remains, which threatens to jeopardise plans for a full-scale response through to the end of the lean season in March next year.
We had been hoping to have scaled up seasonal relief operations in the coming months with distributions of food and, in some areas, cash to more than 6.5 million people in the seven hardest hit countries until March 2025.
Our plans now hang in the balance due to massive funding shortfalls. Unless we receive additional resources, millions of people risk going through the worst lean season in decades without assistance.
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The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
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