UN World Food Programme Closes Southern Africa Bureau After US Aid Cuts

LUSAKA (Zambia), March 4 (Bernama-Anadolu) -- The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Monday that it was closing its Southern Africa bureau due to funding constraints after United States (US) President Donald Trump’s administration announced last week that it was terminating 90 per cent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts.

According to Anadolu Ajansi, the agency will now run both its Eastern and Southern Africa operations simultaneously from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, according to Tomson Phiri, a Johannesburg-based regional spokesman.

The WFP did not disclose how much funding it had lost from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), but nearly half of the WFP’s annual budget is US-dependent, although Phiri indicated that the bureau's closure would not affect specific in-country operations.

It, however, comes at a time when several regional states are grappling with severe El Nino drought-induced effects, with Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Namibia all declaring national drought disasters.

“The funding outlook has become constrained,” Phiri said of the Trump aid cut, with the US being the single largest WFP donor, providing nearly half of all contributions received by the organisation in a typical year.

The WFP provides food and cash assistance to people affected by conflict, famine, and other humanitarian crises. It is a leading humanitarian organisation that uses food assistance to help people recover from conflict and disasters.

-- BERNAMA-ANADOLU