Expected Drought Fuels Famine Fear

The El Nino weather phenomenon is expected to force 5 million people in southern Africa to rely on foreign food donations during the 1997-1998 farming year, famine experts in Johannesburg said. El Nino, a weather system that develops with varying strength every two to seven years, is expected to bring extreme drought to southern Africa, where more than half the region’s population of about 140 million rely on farming to survive. To feed only the estimated 5 million “poorest of the poor” in the region will require 600,000 tons of emergency food aid at a cost of about $200 million through 1998, officials said.