The United Nations food agency said Monday it has scaled down food distribution in Zimbabwe, where more than 1 million people are in critical need, because of a shortage of donor funds. It said further reductions might be necessary across southern Africa. The World Food Program said the poor donor response followed repeated assurances by the government that the nation would be able to feed itself ahead of the next harvests in March. The agency estimated 1.4 million Zimbabweans are in critical need of food aid now and predicts the number will rise to nearly 2 million in coming weeks because of soaring inflation and shortages of food on the local market.The agency said it has had to resort to cutting back its urban feeding and school feeding programs and suspend mobile feeding in rural areas. About 65,000 tons of emergency food was budgeted at a cost of $35 million for the "lean" period, from October to March, when the previous year's harvest is running low and before the new harvest is ready. The agency received pledges for only 39,000 tons.
The worst current food shortages were being reported in arid areas of western, southern and far northern Zimbabwe. In its operations across southern Africa, the agency said it faced a $60 million funding shortfall and aid cutbacks were affecting 4.3 million chronically vulnerable people, 35 percent of them in Zimbabwe. "Further feeding operations may be cut back across the region if resources do not improve," the agency said.