NAIROBI (AP):
THE NUMBER of Kenyans who will depend on food aid this year may rise well past the current 3.5 million, the head of the United Nations food agency said yesterday.
Kenya - suffering from a prolonged drought - may also need food aid beyond February 2007, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director James Morris told reporters. He said the effects from the drought are not subsiding and it appeared unlikely Kenya would have the rain it needs for a good harvest.
The Kenyan Government, the WFP, the U.N. and other aid agencies carried out a study in January that found Kenya's number of food aid-dependent people had risen to 3.5 million, from 2.5 million in December.
Kenya needs 396,500 metric tons (437,000 U.S. tons) of food aid until February 2007, the study found. But "there is nothing that's happened in the last 60 days, to the best of my knowledge, that will cause us to think that this situation is getting better," Morris said.
Morris said the drought has stretched on for five to six years, and for 2006, "the weather forecast is not good."
He spoke after visiting the Kenyan village of El Wak, which the agency sees as illustrative of the effects of prolonged drought across the Horn of Africa region, where a total of 11.5 million people need food aid.
El Wak is on the border with Somalia and 675 kilometres (419 miles) north-east of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
