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afrol News, 10 June - UN agencies report of an estimated 30,000 Cape Verdeans hit by food shortages due to poor harvests. Prime Minister José Maria Neves has recognised there is a "malnutrition problem" and asked the international community "to assist these poor communities" now suffering from food shortages. The UN agencies FAO and WFP have already begun to channel aid to the affected populations. WFP has approved an immediate emergency response operation worth US$ 199,000 to provide maize to around 30,000 people. FAO is to provide maize and bean seeds and farming tools to over 80,000 people under a US$ 229,000 agreement signed last week with the Cape Verdean government. According to the WFP office in the capital, Praia, cereal harvests in 2000/2001 and 2001/2002 have been only half those of 1999/2000 due to poor rainfall. Classified as a least developed and low-income, food-deficit Sahelian country, even in years of good rain Cape Verde's cereal production usually covers less than 20 percent of overall needs. According to the latest World Bank survey, over 30 percent of the population live below the poverty line and 14 percent live in absolute poverty. Adding to the current crisis, financial difficulties this year had prevented the government from providing necessary funds for the state-run poverty alleviation structures. Tens of thousands of Cape Verdean thus already have consumed the grain they would normally have kept for planting, and some have been reduced to eating one or two meals a day instead of three, the UN agency reported. Prime Minister Neves, speaking before departing to the World Food Summit in Rome, on Saturday recognised that "there exist some problems of malnutrition in Cape Verde, especially in the years when the harvest is bad." One of the main problems was that one had not build up a stock of basic food staples for emergency situation in the archipelago, he said. He however held that the percentage of poverty over the last years had been lowered from the 30 percent level, and that the problem therefore was diminishing. His government was also involved in several poverty reducing programmes. WFP is already involved in Cape Verde, providing support to feeding programmes in over 500 primary and pre-primary schools in Cape Verde in partnership with the government. The agency's programmes in Cape Verde however still lack sufficient donor funding. FAO is also involved in several projects in Cape Verde. One includes the development of a national food insecurity information system. The programme, which covers 17 municipalities on 9 inhabited islands, also monetises high per capita amounts of food aid within the framework of cash-for-work in public work activities.
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