Highlights
• An estimated 7.5 million people in highly-impacted Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe currently require assistance to meet their basic food & nutrition needs.
• By December, this figure is expected to almost double to 14.1 million people.
• WFP scale-up plans aim to target up to 8 million people during October.
• WFP’s emergency El Niño response have received confirmed contributions of some USD 113 million, including recent contributions from Japan, USAID, Switzerland, Andorra, European Commission, Government of Australia and the Government of Malawi.
• The overall requirement for El Niño emergency responses until April 2017 stands at USD 636 million.
• Continuing shortfalls limit WFP’s capacity to undertake essential prepositioning ahead of the rainy season.
SITUATION UPDATE
• WFP and partners are significantly augmenting operations to reach 13.2 million people by the peak of the lean season in January 2017. As the full impacts of El Niño and other shocks continue to deepen, this target may be revised.
• WFP is rapidly scaling-up priority El Niño-relief interventions. For example, in Zimbabwe, WFP and the Government launched an emergency school feeding programme. In Swaziland, where the impact of the drought required a new intervention, an emergency operation was launched to assist 150,000 people by the peak of the lean season. In addition to relief activities, WFP is continuing to support people’s longerterm resilience and livelihoods, particularly people living with HIV/AIDS and TB, pregnant and nursing mothers, and children under five.
• At the 36th SADC Summit, Heads of State appealed to the regional and international community for continued support closing the funding gap of US$ 2.5 billion for food and other humanitarian assistance, as detailed in the Communiqué.
• United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on El Niño, H.E. Ms. Mary Robinson also addressed the SADC summit, emphasizing the importance of early warning, the need to recognize slow-onset events, and the collective long-term responsibility to achieve greater climate resilience, including through the use of drought-resistance crops.
• The 20th Annual Southern African Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF) concluded that the SADC region is—on average—likely to receive normal to above-normal rainfall to March 2017.
• SACROF anticipated that northern areas of DRC, Angola and Mozambique, as well as most of Tanzania, the Seychelles and eastern Madagascar, are likely to receive normal to below-normal rainfall most of the season.
• Export-facilitation remains vital for the effective movement of relief commodities throughout the region. Cumbersome and time-consuming process accumulate costs and inhibit timely programming of food commodities. Recent export-facilitation measures proposed to the Government of Zambia are expected to enable bulk export permits once initiated. These measures are not yet in effect.
• Recent estimates from Mozambique’s Technical Secretariat for Food Security and Nutrition (SETSAN) demonstrate increased needs, with the number of people in need rising by 53 percent to 2.3 million people through March 2017.
• Refugees in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe are among the most heavily impacted communities. In Malawi, where the refugee caseload is expected to triple, lack of funds forced the suspension of distributions in July.
USD 3.6 million is urgently needed to restore assistance to vulnerable refugees through May 2017.