The Vice President of Zimbabwe,
Emmerson Mnangagwa has appealed for cash from development agencies and the
private sector to ensure that the vulnerable are not exposed to hunger and
starvation, NaijaAgroNet
reports.
Nontheless, the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID) funded Famine Early Warning System Network
cautioned that, “the lean season humanitarian assistance is expected to be
lower than average due to a challenging funding situation,” while the World
Food Programme (WFP) said it will start distributing food at the end of
September to recipients who will work on projects including building small
dams, repairing roads and starting vegetable gardens.
IolNews quotes WFP
information officer, Tinashe Mubaira as saying, “Because of the poor harvest
this year, food security levels are deteriorating earlier during the lean
season than usual. Consumption coping strategies at the moment are reduction of
portion sizes and eating fewer meals. Communities in districts bordering
neighbouring countries are crossing over to Mozambique and Zambia for casual
labour.”
Recently, villagers in Zimbabwe
began to skip meals and foraging for wild fruit as food stocks run out after a
poor harvest blamed on drought and controversial land reforms.
A resident ofMusana district northwest
of the capital Harare, and a mother of four, RabianChidamba, lamented that
nowadays, even if the children complained of hunger, nothing could be done. She
went on to say that when the children get hungry between meals they go and look
for wild fruit.
“Our harvest came to 10 bags of
maize instead of the 30 bags we usually get,” Chidamba decried, saying that
normally, she could sell the surplus corn to raise money for her children's
school fees among other necessities, but this year's harvest is not enough even
to feed her own family.
NaijaAgroNet
recalls that Zimbabwe was once a major producer of corn, and became a perennial
importer of food in the wake of a fallin agricultural production blamed on
President Robert Mugabe's land reforms, which saw the seizure of land from
white commercial farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.
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