WFP seeks food aid for Zimbabwe

The World Food Program (WFP) has appealed for 10 million U.S. dollars from donors to help fund food relief and nutrition programs in hunger-stricken Zimbabwe. Visiting executive director for the UN agency Ertharin Cousin told a press conference at the end of her two-day visit to the country on Friday that her organization was facing serious funding challenges and was seeking to widen its donor base for food aid support to Zimbabwe. She said the WFP estimated about 2.2 million people in Zimbabwe require food aid between January and March this year. "We are in a deficit for finance to support our emergency food aid program in Zimbabwe and are asking for help from donors and the international community," Cousin said. The UN agency faces a funding gap of 60 million U.S. dollars for food aid, nutrition and health programs in Zimbabwe until June. Funding constraints have since forced the organization to scale back its relief activities and support 1.2 million instead of the 1.8 million Zimbabweans it had targeted to support during the leaner period. Cousin reckoned that the simultaneous humanitarian needs in several conflict-ridden countries around the world had posed great difficulty for the WFP to secure adequate humanitarian funding for Zimbabwe. She, however, appealed to donors to make tough decisions and ensure the "less visible crises, like that in Zimbabwe, are not forgotten." "We are in a time where we are seeing increased challenges in Syria, the Central Africa Republic, South Sudan, the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa and there are competing needs around the entire global community," she said. Cousin said there was guarded optimism about next month's harvest because of incessant rains in some areas which had resulted in flooding and crop damage. Unreliable weather patterns as well as high input costs have impacted negatively on Zimbabwe's food production in recent years, forcing it to import cereal from neighboring countries. Cousin said the WFP stood ready to support Zimbabwe to strengthen its agricultural systems to boost food security and improve malnutrition. During her visit, Cousin met with Acting Vice President Joice Mujuru and visited some of the beneficiaries of relief programs by the WFP.