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Ghana: 10m People Go Hungry
Posted: 05 Jul 2010 07:14 PM PDT
Ghana: 10m People Go Hungry
Oxfam, an international aid agency, last week reported that some 10 million people in West Africa, including Ghana, have fallen victim to food shortage. This has been buttressed by food research groups in Ghana which recently predicted that there was going to be a food crisis in the country. According to the researchers, farmers in the food basket areas of northern Ghana, the Eastern and Volta regions have missed the March-April planting season because the rains failed to come down.
The over 10 million people affected by this phenomenon across West Africa are facing severe hunger and malnutrition because of drought, poor harvests and rising food prices, Oxfam says. It is for this reason that Oxfam has recently launched a £7 million emergency appeal to help more than 800,000 vulnerable people.
“Worsening conditions in the Sahel region of West Africa – a semi-arid belt, which stretches across the Southern Sahara – have seen malnutrition rates soar as families struggle to find enough food to eat,” the agency stated in a press release last week.
Apart from Ghana, Oxfam continues that Niger- the world’s least developed country- is at the centre of the crisis, with more than 7 million people, almost half the population, facing food insecurity; 3.3 million, approaching a quarter of the population, are severely food insecure. Another two million people in Chad, more than 600,000 in Mali and more than 300,000 in Mauritania are at risk. Parts of Burkina Faso and the extreme north of Nigeria have also been affected.
Oxfam has spent £3 million from its reserves to start emergency work in the most affected areas. It is currently facing a funding gap of £7 million to tackle the crisis.
“We are witnessing an unfolding disaster which can be averted if we act quickly,” said Mamadou Biteye, who heads Oxfam’s work in West Africa.
Credit: Felix Dela Klutse/Business Guide
