by Ronald Imbayago
Even without guests, Tanzania needs nearly half a million tonnes of cereal imports to make up for production shortfalls for 1994/95. Now it has to feed an influx of refugees from neighbouring Rwanda and Burundi who outnumber their hosts by a factor of three in one area alone.
An estimated 450 000 refugees from Rwanda have streamed into Tanzania since mass killings triggered by the unexplained assassination of Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, four months ago.
The inflow of the refugees has caused insurmountable pressure on the Tanzanian government, currently battling to provide food and other basics to its own people, including another 200 000 refugees from Burundi.
The total number of drought victims who need emergency food assistance during the 1994/95 period is estimated at 600 000. The acute food shortage in Tanzania is due to recurrent drought, apart from other factors.
To avert the threatening starvation, World Food Programme (WFP) is already providing food rations to the Rwandan and Burundian refugees. An estimated 73,000 tonnes of food are needed for the refugees alone in the next six months. But the projected food supplies may change depending on the number of refugees.
Because of the rapid inflow of the refugees, Tanzania’s food reserves have gone down at an alarming rate. By 20 June this year, the country’s National Strategic Grain Reserve (NSGR) stocks had been reduced from 136,000 to 85,000 tonnes. The Tanzanian government has already requested donor assistance to replenish the NSGR, and financial help to procure more grain from areas with surplus food.
Tanzania’s agriculture minister, Jackson Makwetta, recently told The Express, a local independent bi-weekly newspaper, that food production would continue to deteriorate if the present climatic conditions persist. He says a serious food shortage is surfacing and the situation is expected to worsen between July this year and February next year.
According to the United Nations, for Tanzania to pull through this difficult period, immediate external support is needed.
The UN says Tanzania’s commercial sector may only be able to import about 66,000 tonnes of food, leaving a huge shortfall of 414,000 tonnes to be supplied as food aid. Of these, WFP is expected to provide 37,000 tonnes of cereals and other food as emergency aid to some 300 000 people in regions affected by the drought.
Prospects for a good harvest are uncertain in the north including Mara, Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Kagera. While in the central and coastal zones, sorghum and millet are doing well, maize has been badly affected by inadequate rainfall.
Since 22 June 1994, Benaco camp in Ngara district, western Tanzania, has become home to 350 000 refugees, putting heavy pressure on the regional food supply and more importantly, on Tanzania’s overstretched transport infrastructure. Life at the camp bustles with markets, where commodities sold range from furniture, fuelwood to foodstuffs.
All Africa Press Service, (APS), a Kenyan-based news and features agency of the Africa Church Information Service, says there is fear that a long-term damage to the environment of Ngara district is inevitable as the 15-kilometre radius of the area occupied by the refugees may be stripped bare of its trees if nothing is done to ease the pressure. The growing number of refugees may also result in outbreaks of diseases such as cholera if proper sanitation is not provided.
Those fleeing the war in Rwanda are virtually all Hutus, the ethnic majority blamed for killing thousands of people, mostly Tutsis. Of Rwanda’s pre-fighting population of eight million, almost five million have been displaced. Up to 700 000 people are estimated to have died in the carnage — massacred or dead from cholera and hunger.
Some Rwandan refugees have fled into other neighbouring countries, and have gone as far as Zimbabwe.
One million refugees have crossed the border into Goma in Zaire where about 11 000 of them have since died of cholera due to lack of proper sanitation.
More refugees are dying as aid agencies seem overwhelmed by this humanitarian catastrophe. But since world governments have started to respond to the UN call to give aid to the refugees in all neighbouring countries, human suffering may soon be alleviated. United States, Germany and Britain have already offered aircraft to airlift relief supplies to Rwandan refugees.
However, life seems to be returning to normal in Rwanda since the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) ousted the Hutu-Ied government from power two weeks ago.
In view of the stabilizing situation, the UNHCR and the newly installed Rwandan government are appealing to all the refugees to return home. (SARDC)
