African farmers have produced more than expected despite locust plagues and drought, but that is cold comfort to the continent's countless refugees with no cash to pay, or aid agencies whose funding has dried up. "We are looking at a very serious situation," United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Ramin Rafirasme, told Reuters from Senegal.
The WFP says it saw donations for Africa vanish almost completely in January, after the tsunami that devastated the Indian Ocean region, forcing it to cut back on how much food it buys - bad news for producers with surplus stock to shift.
The UN relief agency said it received $36 million in November and December prior to the tsunami, but $74 million was needed.
"We have already reduced food rations in Liberia because of lack of resources," Rafirasme noted.
Roughly 900,000 Liberians - mainly refugees returning to their villages following the end of a 14-year civil war in 2003 - rely on WFP handouts. The agency had intended to buy some 200,000 tonnes of food in 2005 for them and for refugees in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
In nearby Mauritania, the agency says it will need 187,000 tonnes of food to cope with consequences of drought and locust swarms, but fears the insects might have destroyed most of the crops in neighbouring countries were largely unfounded.
The WFP says it will also have to cut back its operations in southern Africa unless funding - which looked bad in December and has entirely dried up since Christmas - improves.
Traditionally, some countries, particularly the United States, have donated physical food to the WFP, but agencies increasingly want cash donations so they can buy food on the continent, boosting African agriculture.