WFP says drought, high food prices leave more than 5 million hungry

WFP says drought, high food prices leave more
than 5 million hungry in Horn of Africa

02 April, 2011 | By Malkhadir M. Muhumed, The Associated Press
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NAIROBI, Kenya — A

severe drought, high food

prices and conflict have

left more than 5 million

people hungry across the

Horn of Africa, the head

of U.N.'s World Food

Program said Saturday.

The drought began with the

failure of rains late last year

in northern and eastern

regions of Kenya, south-

central Somalia and eastern

Ethiopia, said the agency's

executive director, Josette

Sheeran.

Sheeran on Saturday visited

Nairobi, Kenya's capital, on a fact-finding mission.

"More and more people need help in the Horn and we're now on
high alert over the impact of the March to May long rains," Sheeran
said, adding that last year's rain failure increased the number of
people in need of assistance by 1.4 million.

Sheeran warned that the number of people in need of food
assistance could increase further if the region, which includes
Djibouti and parts of Uganda, continues to receive poor rains.

"The outlook for the rains in eastern parts of the Horn is worrying,
especially combined with rising food and fuel prices and conflict,"
Sheeran said in a statement. "If the latest meteorological forecasts of
below-normal long rains in the eastern Horn are correct, the crisis
will worsen in those areas and more people will go hungry."

Peter Smerdon, the agency's Nairobi-based spokesman, said the
price for a 110-pound (50-kilogram) bag of maize has increased
from 25 to 120 per cent in some remote parts of the Horn, while
cereal prices of the same size are expected to increase by 40 to 50
per cent in the next six months.

The global rise of food and fuel prices are compounding the
pressure on the poorest, many of whom hadn't yet recovered from
the brutal 2007 to 2009 regional drought in the region, said Sheeran.

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization said last month that
global food prices are the highest in 20 years and could increase
further because of rising oil prices stemming from the unrest in Libya
and the Mideast. The increase was driven mostly by higher prices of
cereals, meat and dairy products, FAO said.

Sheeran said WFP so far has 44 per cent of the resources it needs
to feed more than 5 million people in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia,
Djibouti and the Karamoja region of eastern Uganda from April
through September.

"The shortfall will hamper our efforts to provide food where it is
needed most," she said.

Courtesy