The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has appealed for an additional US$250 million to support a rapidly expanding emergency operation for millions of people at risk in Zimbabwe.
Development Diaries gathered that the WFP projections indicate that by the end of the year the number of food-insecure Zimbabweans would have surged by almost 50 percent to touch 8.6 million, a staggering 60 percent of the population.
The Regional Director for Southern Africa at WFP, Lola Castro, said, ‘Many Zimbabwean families are suffering the ravages of acute hunger, and their plight will get worse before it gets better. We need the international community to step up now to help us prevent a potential humanitarian catastrophe’.
It was learnt that the nationwide lockdown had precipitated massive joblessness in urban areas, while rural hunger was accelerating because the unemployed migrants were now returning to their villages.
It was also learnt that subsistence farming families, who make up three quarter of Zimbabwe’s population and produce most of its food, are also hurting because of a third successive drought-hit harvest this year.
With maize set to be an increasingly untenable crop in many arid regions of the country as temperatures rise, WFP is promoting the cultivation of drought-resistant, nutritious and indigenous alternatives like sorghum and millet as a part of a broader campaign to help vulnerable communities build resilience to increasingly frequent and severe climate shocks.
Source: United Nations World Food Programme
Photo source: USAID in Africa