Malawi and Zambia will each receive $50
million from the World Bank within the next month to manage a severe hunger
crisis in their countries, Reuters reports World Bank Vice President for
Africa Callisto Madavo said. About half of the cash going to each
country would be grants while the balance would be concessionary loans,
he noted.
"Malawi's request for $50 million
to the board for approval on Thursday (October 24). Zambia's request will
go to our board within a month," Madavo said. "About a half of
the money going to each country, about $21 million or $22 million, will
be in the form of a grant."
Malawi and Zambia are among six southern African countries facing critical food shortages, notes the story. The others are Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland. In total, some 14 million people require international food relief in those countries. Angola and Namibia also face shortages but they are not listed as critical.
Madavo said drought was partly to blame for the hunger crisis in the region, but in some cases poor policies had also played a significant part. "The drought was unavoidable. But the policies followed by the countries should have anticipated these kind of disasters and avoided them and yet that did not happen," he said. The World Bank would work with Malawian and Zambian authorities on formulating policies that would in future help prevent such disasters, he noted.
The food crisis has put intense pressure on the governments of Malawi and Zambia, which now expect that they will spend more than their 2002 state budget provisions. Zambian Finance Minister Emmanuel Kasonde said last week the government had asked the World Bank for the cash and would also go to Parliament this month to seek approval for supplementary budget allocations to help it cope with severe food shortages. The money would be used to help deliver food and water to villages where wells and boreholes have dried up, as well as other logistics considerations, Kasonde said.
Zambia's central bank governor Caleb Fundanga said early this month the government had overshot its 2002 budget spending by $14.3 million. The central bank raised its 2002 inflation target on Monday because of the food crisis. Malawi has not provided any official adjustments forced by the food shortages.
Zambia's situation has been worsened by its refusal of genetically-modified (GM) food relief mainly from the US on the grounds that its safety is still questionable, the story notes. Malawi has said it will only accept milled GM-relief, raising its cost. Zambia will make known its final stand on gene-altered foods this week after the cabinet studies a report by Zambian scientists who conducted tests in the US and Europe.
Meanwhile, reports the Independent (UK), a UN human rights envoy has been accused of endangering efforts to save 14 million people from starvation after he questioned the safety of genetically modified food destined for southern Africa. Jean Ziegler, a UN special investigator for food, claimed that big corporations had more to gain from the use of GM food in the developing world than the poor countries that were trying to fight starvation.
"I'm against the theory of the multinational corporations who say if you are against hunger you must be for genetically modified organisms. That's wrong," Ziegler said this week. "There is plenty of natural, normal, good food in the world to nourish the double of humanity."