Aid for Zimbabwe Running Thin

The World Food Program is stressing that, given the current world economic crisis, it can no longer afford to support the crisis that’s long past spiraled out of control in Zimbabwe. According to the article from The Gaurdian:

The United Nations is to halve the food ration to millions of Zimbabweans, bringing it below what will keep an adult alive, as the numbers of people dependent on aid rises sharply and donations from foreign governments fall well short of demand.

The World Food Programme is to cut the core maize ration in February from 10kg to 5kg a month – or just 600 calories a day – for 7 million Zimbabweans, about 70% of the people left in the country. The recommended ration is 12kg a month.

The WFP says it has cut the ration to meet increased demand and cope with a shortfall in donations. It says it requires another $65m to keep feeding Zimbabweans until the end of March. But donors are reluctant to put more resources into the beleaguered African state and what aid there is has been partly diverted to the cholera crisis that has claimed 3,000 lives.

The illustration below shows just how dire the situation is…

According to this diagram and the information shared above, Zimbabweans will be surviving on nearly a quarter of the recommended daily caloric intake for a human being (between 2000 and 3000 colories) and even that food is not guaranteed as the WFP can only provide what it can raise enough donations for. Traditionally, the WFP diet was meant to be supplemented by other means (hunting, farming, bartering, gathering) but given the current state of things, even those methods are no longer guaranteed as the land has to fully support more and more mouths…

“Families are being stretched. They’re selling livestock, they’re selling household goods to buy staple foods,” she said. “People told us they were having a meal a day. Sometimes adults are skipping a meal so the children can be fed. They are supplementing what they have with wild fruits.

“But now it’s going to be a disaster because people have sold what they can sell. There’s very little they can do to supplement their rations. I think it’s going to be extremely hard for families, it’s going to make them incredibly vulnerable. You look at people and they are already thin, their frames are skin and bone. When you look at the fields you see there’s been no agricultural inputs. The soil is little better than sand.”