By Staff Reporter
Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe- Villagers in Mangwe district, Zimbabwe are struggling for food after the World Food Programme (WFP) finished distributing aid for the lean season.
WFP and the government have been providing lean season food assistance to targeted hunger-stricken districts across the country.
While WFP partnered with the government to provide food to vulnerable communities, village head Joseph Nleya says many in Madabe village missed out. With poor harvests last year and worse conditions this season, Nleya estimates 2,000 households desperately need assistance.
“The donors look for the most vulnerable in communities and most community members have been left out.
“We have about 2000 households in this ward, and no one got anything from the fields, so people desperately need food as last year the harvests were inadequate and this season it is even worse,” he said.
WFP country director Francesca Erdelmann acknowledged dwindling stocks and said they are in the process of mobilizing resources.
“The distributions we are doing now are related to last year’s harvests, what we do need now is to do advocacy, our stocks are running out, by the end of March we will have completed all the stocks that we had mobilized.
“We have just started the preparations with the food and nutrition council for the next rural livelihoods assessment round which will take place in April so that hopefully we will know by May that we have a better understanding of realistically what the production has been like and how many people across the country may be running out of food sometime between now and the next agricultural season,” Eldermann said.
WFP with US$11.27 million financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has assisted a total of 230 000 from the most drought vulnerable districts which include Mwenezi, Mangwe, Chivi, and Buhera.
