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U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
PRESS RELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC 20523
PRESS OFFICE
http://www.usaid.gov
(202) 712-43202002-109
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 23, 2002Contact: USAID Press Office
WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced today that it is providing $1 million to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to support its regional management and logistics coordination unit in South Africa. The regional coordination unit will monitor food supplies in the region and facilitate the movement of humanitarian shipments to avoid undue congestion on heavily used transport routes. Supporting a coordinated regional response is one of USAID's non-food emergency assistance priorities in southern Africa, which is threatened by growing food insecurity.
USAID is currently providing more than $10 million in non-food assistance to complement the U.S. government's food aid response to the drought in southern Africa. These USAID programs include activities to restart agricultural production in the hardest hit communities in the region. USAID is providing locally procured seed to disaster-affected farming families in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi so that they can plant crops before the October rains begin. The seed includes more drought-resistant alternatives to corn, such as sorghum and cassava. Other USAID emergency response programs are dedicated to health, supplementary feeding, and nutrition.
The U.S. government continues to provide food aid to southern Africa. The next shipment of food commodities, an additional 60,000 metric tons, will arrive in the region in early October. More shipments are expected.
Since February 2002, the United States has delivered or pledged approximately 500,000 metric tons of emergency food assistance, valued at $266 million, to the southern Africa region. This represents half of the humanitarian food requirements through December.
On September 16, WFP announced that an additional 1.6 million people are in need of food aid in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland. The number of vulnerable people has increased as households across the region have largely depleted their food stocks. This brings the total estimated number of people at risk to 14.4 million.
U.S. Agency for International Development is the government agency that has provided humanitarian assistance and economic development worldwide for more than 40 years.
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