By Chengetai Zvauya
(Bloomberg) — Zimbabwe’s government plans to declare a national emergency over food shortages as the United Nations warned the situation is worsening at an “alarming” pace and price-spikes for basic commodities are looming.
“We are going to announce to the world the hunger we’re facing,” Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa told lawmakers in the capital, Harare, on Thursday. “We have drought in this country and it is a pending disaster,” he said. President Robert Mugabe will make the announcement in days, he said.
Zimbabwe is facing the worst drought in almost two decades, which cut agricultural yields and farmers are losing their cattle as watering holes and pastures dry up. The government has earmarked $200 million for food imports and signed agreements to buy at least 100,000 kilograms (100 metric tons) of corn from neighboring Zambia, said Mnangagwa.
Read also:Â United Nations: Drought sees 14m face hunger in Southern Africa.
About 1.5 million of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people currently need emergency food assistance, and that number may triple this year, said Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira on Feb. 1.
“The situation is deteriorating at an alarming rate,” Eddie Rowe, an official with the UN’s World Food Programme, said in Harare on Feb. 2.
The drought has also affected South Africa and Zambia, the region’s biggest corn producers respectively.
From Reuters
HARARE, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has declared a state of disaster in most rural parts of the country severely hit by a drought, with 26 percent of the population said to be in need of food aid, the government said in a statement late Thursday.
Declaring a state of disaster allows international donors to raise money quickly to provide food aid to Zimbabwe, which has said it will step up imports of the staple maize by buying up to 700,000 tonnes this year to avert hunger.
