Food crisis leads WFP to extend West Africa operations

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday it was expanding operations in West Africa to feed an extra 1.4 million people in the region hit hard by rising food prices.

"WFP is taking vital steps to ensure the poorest people in West Africa are not pushed over the edge by the impact of high food prices," Thomas Yanga, WFP's Regional Director for West Africa, said in a statement.

The new beneficiaries are in addition to the 3.6 million people the WFP had planned to assist in Guinea, Mauritania, Liberia, Burkina Faso and Senegal this year.

"West Africa is a chronically vulnerable region, highly dependent on food imports," said the statement.

"Increased fuel prices and poor harvests influenced by floods and droughts are an additional challenge," it added.

Across West Africa the food agency is stepping up general food distribution to those worst-affected with special attention for malnourished children, pregnant and nursing women, primary school children and people affected by HIV and AIDS.

In rural Guinea Conakry, many families are surviving on mangoes and cassava, it said.

To alleviate the situation there WFP started distributions to an additional 600,000 people in the country but said it urgently needed 14.3 million dollars (9.6 million euros) in funding cover the costs.

In Mauritania, a vast desert country that depends on imports for 70 percent of its food needs, the food agency is assisting an additional 197,000 people since May.

The WPF is also searching for additional funds of 12 million dollars (7.6 million euros) for Senegal, where it is planning to give food aid to 540,000 people this year.

In the past six months, food costs for WFP operations in West Africa have risen by almost 60 percent, while overall operational costs are 30 percent higher, the United Nations has said.

Increased fuel prices have also pushed up transportation costs, as many regions in need of assistance are landlocked.