WEST AFRICA: Feeding needy in West Africa will cost over US $200 m in 2006

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

DAKAR, 16 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - The UN World Food Programme aims to feed 10 million West Africans in 2006 but it needs US $237 million from donors to do so, officials said on Monday.

To date donors have confirmed contributions of only US $18.4 million – less than 8 percent of the money needed.

Jean-Jacques Graisse, WFP’s senior deputy executive director, told IRIN he remained confident that the funds would be found.

“It is not a huge amount of money. Last year we raised 2.7 billion dollars worldwide and 700 million in Sudan alone, so it should be manageable,” Graisse said on Monday.

WFP estimates 300,000 metric tonnes of food will be needed for West Africa, the world’s poorest region, in 2006.

Hot spots include the northern Sahel region where drought and hunger are perennial problems, and the arc of conflict-prone countries that sweeps from Guinea Bissau to Cote d’Ivoire.

“The need for humanitarian assistance is in many cases overwhelming, but the ability to deliver is not always guaranteed,” Graisse told reporters in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, home to WFP’s West Africa regional office. “We need the resources to do so – as we’ve learned time and time again, delivering late costs far more than delivering now.”

WFP has requested US $59.2 million for emergency food assistance in Niger but the world’s largest humanitarian agency needs a further US $22 million if that programme is to be completed.

Without those funds, supplies for malnourished children and food-for-work programmes in some of the country’s poorest villages could dry up, WFP says.

Some 3.5 million people were affected by a food crisis in arid Niger in 2005 following successive droughts and a locust invasion in 2004.

Graisse said one particular concern in the region is the escalating tension between Chad and neighbouring Sudan, both of which have long accused the other of supporting rebel activity and carrying out cross border raids.

Caught in the middle are some 200,000 refugees from Sudan’s Darfur conflict living in 12 camps in the deserts of eastern Chad and dependent on WFP food assistance.

[ENDS]