CAMEROON: Quarter of a million people face food shortages in north

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAKAR, 22 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - Almost a quarter of a million people in neglected northern Cameroon are faced with serious food shortages and more than US $1 million is still needed to ensure they all get emergency rations, the UN World Food Programme said on Thursday.

"For one month... WFP is providing an emergency ration of cereals to 237,700 people in the Far North province of Cameroon, the poorest part of the country," the agency said in a statement.

Free food will be handed out to everyone within affected communities.

Officials put the total cost of the emergency operation at US $2 million but so far they have only 43 percent of the funds.

The French government has stumped up nearly US $900,000 but another US $1.1 million is still needed.

Rains in northern Cameroon were poor last year, and food production fell about 200,000 metric tonnes, the WFP said.

For people in this already-impoverished part of the country that meant their harvests only covered six months of food supplies, instead of the usual eight. And buying in more food became difficult after cereal prices went through the roof.

"With the cost of cereals quadrupling, many people have simply not been able to afford to buy food on the market," the WFP said.

Several countries across West Africa have been hit by food shortages after drought and locusts combined to decimate last year's crops.

Hardest hit was Niger, where aid groups are still grappling with a crisis that is affecting some 3 million people and that has shocked the world with its images of malnourished infants.

Cameroon's suffering is on a much smaller scale. But with officials describing the affected area as one of the most neglected pockets of the continent, the pressure is on to secure the necessary funds.

"We're not even halfway there," said Marcus Prior, the spokesman for the WFP in West Africa. "It's an almost unknown corner of Africa and it's very difficult to make people aware."

Some villagers in northern Cameroon have been forced to sell off valuable livestock and others have resorted to eating leaves and wild fruits to fill their empty bellies to get through the so-called lean season before the harvest begins next month.

"The harvests cannot come soon enough," said Justin Bagarishya, the WFP Regional Director in Cameroon.

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