The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that it is “scaling up to deliver life-saving food assistance to reach 450,000 people affected by Mozambique’s worst flooding in decades”. But that depends on funding. A Friday release from the WFP says the agency urgently needs 32 million US dollars for the next three months “to deliver vital food and nutritional support to families reeling from the floods”.
The WFP says that the flooding in southern and central Mozambique “has impacted nearly 700,000 people, forcing over 100,000 into temporary accommodation centres, submerging farmland and cutting hundreds of thousands of families from food and critical services”. The UN agency adds that around 1,500 kilometres of roads “are now impassable, disrupting key supply routes and isolating vulnerable groups”. WFP is using specialised amphibious vehicles, boats, heavy duty trucks, fixed wing aircraft and helicopters to take food and nutrition assistance to the endangered communities.
“We have the teams, logistics and capacity to rapidly scale up to provide food and nutrition assistance to flood-affected families”, said Claire Conan, the WFP Mozambique country director, cited in the release. “However, funding shortfalls are restricting our ability to support the increasing number of people in need”. The floods have doubled the number of crisis-affected people whom WFP is supporting, but with the same resources.
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“These floods are both an emergency and a threat to long term food security”, said Conan. “Large areas of farmland have been submerged, which will affect upcoming harvests, and likely lead to food shortages and higher food prices”. WFP is urging the international community “to support both the immediate response and the long-term food security initiatives”.
The WFP points out that it is also providing food assistance to 425,000 people affected by the war waged by Islamist terrorists in the far north of Mozambique. But WFP does not have the funds to meet all these needs. Funding shortfalls last year forced WFP to reduce the number of Mozambicans in the north receiving food aid by 60 per cent. The release warned that “without immediate funding, a further 40 per cent reduction will be implemented in March, and a complete halt in assistance is expected in May”.
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