World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The African Development Bank has approved US $ 2 million for emergency humanitarian assistance for drought and floods stricken people in Djibouti, Mozambique, Togo and Zambia. According to the Bank statement, the grants from which each country will receive $500,000 will be used to purchase food for distribution to drought victims and the refugees, as well as victims to floods in the Southern African region. [...] The assistance to Mozambique will go to support the government's effort in alleviating the suffering of 250,000 flood and drought affected populations mainly in Zambezia, Tete, Maputo, and Inhambane. “The food assistance of 1,000 tons of maize to be purchased locally, will be channeled through the World Food Programme (WFP) to the affected households whose crops were damaged by the floods and drought and left without means of survival,” the bank said in the statement.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in Mozambique is seeking $5.5 million to feed about 100,000 people in the northwestern province of Tete, spokesman Peter Transburg said on Friday. Transburg said the WFP had helped 54,000 of the 97,000 in the region needing food. He added the number of people affected by drought could rise because of low rainfall in the central provinces. "WFP urgently needs $5.5 million to locally purchase roughly 6,000 tonnes of food commodities for assistance programmes across Mozambique in March and April, particularly in the northern province of Tete," he said

Unless March brings good rain, up to 100,000 people in Mozambique's western province of Tete will need emergency food assistance, but the weather forecast is sunny and dry. "The rains stopped falling regularly and in the past three weeks there has been no rainfall at all," World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Peter Transburg told IRIN. Small-scale farmers in Tete Province, which borders Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, have been hit particularly hard. "Should the situation persist in the next three weeks, it will become critical," Transburg said.

A drought in Mozambique has left around 350,000 people desperately in need of food aid. But the UN World Food Programme warned it is running short of funds as the southern African country heads towards its third consecutive year of drought. Central and southern regions of the country have had less than half their normal rainfall since October, meaning harvests have been severely hit. WFP spokesman Peter Transburg said: "We are $8.5 million (£5.8m) short for our programmes until April, we are talking to donors and if we don't get new contributions we will definitely be forced to cut the ration and discontinue the relief assistance."

A lost world has been discovered in the south-east African nation of Mozambique after explorers spotted an unexpected patch of green on Google Earth and mounted an expedition. [...] Mozambiqueans are returning to the area, long cut off by civil war. Pressure to log the forest for wood or clear it for people to grow food will be great, the scientists fear.