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The Food is There, but Where’s the Political Will?

by Jules Van Os
Despite a record 1990 cereal harvest worldwide, famine looms again in parts of Africa World events leading to further East-West cooperation simply deepened the divide between the well-fed North and the impoverished South, overburdened with foreign debt and struggling to support an ever-growing population.
Figures are expected to show that food production overall rose by about 2.6 per cent in 1990 four per cent higher than in 1989 when output was lower than in the year before. For the first time in four years, the world will produce more food than it consumes and can begin to refill cereal stocks.
However, the increases are mainly in the developed countries. The situation in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa is deteriorating.
Following a second year of insufficient rainfall and continuing civil wars. Ethiopia and Sudan will need massive International help to avert famine In 1991. Angola. Mozambique and Niger will need emergency food aid as well.
More than 10 million people are threatened by starvation in the Horn of Africa. The extent of the famine will be more severe than In 1984-1985 which triggered a massive response in aid from the West.
This time Sudan will be badly hit by famine. The situation is deteriorating fast. Almost certainly tens of thousands of people will starve to death even if the Sudan government and all relief agencies start working with maximum effort now.
The Sudan military government has only Just acknowledged that severe famine threatens and is still most reluctant to turn to the West for help.
At the local level, though, aid can get through, according to Sarah Hughes of Christian aid, who recently visited Sudan. She said: "The local government is very helpful. The central government will accept de facto the help coming in. Most of us aid agencies are going ahead anyway and will battle through bureaucracy."
The combination of civil war between the Muslim north and the Christian south and the drought wiped out almost the whole harvest of 1990 and threatens eight million people with famine.
The areas most affected by drought are the provinces of Red Sea Hills, Kordofan and Darfur, which are controlled by the Khartoum government. If the government lets aid agencies launch a fullscale relief operation more practical barriers such as poorly maintained roads, lack of spare parts for trucks and disorganisation have to be faced.
An estimated 1.2 million tons of food are needed to avert famine In Sudan this year. All of this would have to be imported. The only chance of reducing deaths from starvation is a rapid change in the policy of the Sudan government. In Mozambique, suffering from a 15-year-old civil war, about 1.9 million people will need food aid. An estimated 200,000 tonnes are wanted this year
The provinces of central Mozambique and Zambezia are particularly affected. One million people are displaced by war. Many are without medicine or salt and so vulnerable to easily preventable illnesses such as measles and diarrhoea, which can be as lethal as starvation.
Among recently displaced peasants, levels of chronic malnutrition are reaching 20-50 per cent in children under five Drought cut the 1990 rice harvest by more than 50 per cent. Mozambique currently produces only about 15 per cent of the food It needs. The rest, depending on the amount of International food aid. will have to be imported.
Agreement to end the civil war could exacerbate the crisis. It would bring back nearly a million refugees, now living mostly in Malawi, and increase the number of people facing starvation.
In Angola famine is already raging in the south. About two million people face severe malnutrition, most of them in the central and the southern provinces. UN reserves in Angola are in imminent danger of running out and this. combined with an extremely poor donor response under $1.6 million -is worsening the situation.
Aid agencies have become embroiled In countless hours of negotiations with the rebel UNITA movement.
The government has no effective control over much of the country, so no reliable Information on malnutrition levels, war and drought victims, is available.
In the Sahel. Niger faces a sharply deteriorating food supply. Below-normal and badly distributed rains since the middle of the growing season have severely affected crops and the 1990 cctcal output Is poor for the second year running.
Prospects for off-season crops are also unfavourable. The most affected areas are Deffa, Tahoua. Tillabari and Zindar departments. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), one to two million people are at risk. Farm stocks are already low and food needs will be 100,000 tonnes.
Adequate food supplies are available to avert famine in Africa this year. The key obstacles are the lack of political will of some donors to deliver the food and in some cases, the reluctance of African governments to accept that there is a famine and to receive foreign aid.
As Edward Saouma, FAO Director-General said in his year-end message: "If the world has been capable of breaking down the political barrier between East and West it should be able to attack the economic divide between North and South.' -GEMINI NEWS.