“Large numbers of smallholder farmers and their families are in the grip of what is set to be one of the harshest hunger seasons of recent years,” said the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Deputy Regional Director for Southern Africa, Brenda Barton.

“With the help of governments, donors and regional organizations, we’re mobilizing resources to help the most vulnerable, not only with food distributions,” she added, “but also with innovative solutions like cash transfers via mobile phones so people can buy their own food.”

Erratic rainfall during the last planting season meant that harvests in many areas were not sufficient to sustain the nutritional needs of farming communities this year and, even where food is available in local markets, it is often too expensive for the poorest households, according to WFP. To add to this situation, communities already struggling to feed their families are now bracing for the onset of the so-called ‘hunger season’ which traditionally lasts from December until harvest time in March.

The UN agency notes that southern Malawi, southern Zimbabwe, and the southern highlands of Lesotho face particularly severe food shortages, while the prices of staple foods are increasing. Over the past year, the price of maize has increased 60 per cent in the markets of Lesotho and nearly 80 per cent in Malawi.

WFP is working with the Government of Malawi and partners to distribute food to more than 1.8 million people living in rural communities in the southern part of the country, and has also launched a programme to transfer cash via mobile phones to more than 100,000 people, allowing them to buy food on local markets.

In Zimbabwe, some 1.6 million vulnerable people face food shortages. While most of these are being assisted through food distributions, some 300,000 people are receiving cash to enable them buy their own cereals from local markets.

In Lesotho, WFP is working with the Government and other UN agencies to find longer-term solutions to the food crisis caused by two consecutive years of crop failures, while assisting more than 200,000 people in farming communities.

The current shortfall for WFP’s drought relief operation is $14 million for Malawi and $4 million for Lesotho.

“Today, Kenya’s Minister of State for Defence assured me that the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) would do everything possible to minimize the impact of their ongoing military operation on civilians,” the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said in a news release.

“The Minister also told me that the KDF would help ensure humanitarian access to all people in need,” Bowden added after his meeting.

The humanitarian official had met earlier Wednesday with Kenya’s Minister of State for Defence, Mohamed Yusuf Haji, and its Chief of Defence Forces, General Julius W. Karangi, to discuss the protection of civilians during ongoing military operations near Somalia’s southern port city of Kismayo.

Despite recent advances in Somalia’s peace and national reconciliation process, after decades of warfare, the African nation is still dealing with the impact of the Al Shabaab militant group, which has been pushed out of capital, Mogadishu, but still controls parts of Somalia, primarily in its south-central regions, including Kismayo.

In addition, UN humanitarian agencies and their partners have been helping Somalis deal with the impact of drought, as well as the after-effects of famine in some areas; while famine was officially declared over earlier this year, many Somalis are still in desperate need.

Along with Somali Government troops, the UN-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) – under which Kenyan military forces in the country now serve – has been engaged in an intense offensive against the Al Shabaab, making inroads in some of the areas surrounding the capital. According to an AMISOM news release issued on Wednesday, troops from its Kenyan contingent have captured a string of towns leading to Kismayo.

Following reports of Al Shabaab militants fleeing the port city, AMISOM has called for calm among Chimayo’s residents, with its Deputy Force Commander stating that the African Union force’s objective is “to liberate the people of Kismayo to enable them to lead their lives in peace, stability and security.”

The Deputy Force Commander also appealed to humanitarian agencies to come to the aid of the people fleeing Al Shabaab-controlled areas, and said that AMISOM troops “stand ready to facilitate any efforts to ease the suffering of the population.”

In his news release, Bowden noted that while humanitarian actors remain neutral and strictly independent of military and political processes, they rely on all sides to gain access to those in need.

“I welcome Kenya’s assurances and reiterate my call for all parties to the conflict to make every effort to minimize the impact of conflict on civilians and to allow full humanitarian access to all people in need,” the humanitarian official said.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of Somalis receiving life-saving aid has more than doubled since July 2011, when famine had been declared, with more than 1.6 million Somalis now receiving food assistance, and 1.7 million people able to access clean water.

A spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP), Elisabeth Byrs, told reporters in Geneva that the UN agency already assisted six million people in the Sahel during the month of July – but cautioned that humanitarian needs still remained “huge” ahead of the October harvest.

“The increasing frequency of the droughts has had an eroding effect on the Sahel countries’ ability to cope and the local populations have barely had enough time to recover from the 2010 crisis and rebuild their assets before the situation degenerated again,” Byrs said.

Africa’s Sahel region, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and includes Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and parts of Sudan, Cameroon and Nigeria, has been regularly afflicted by food insecurity – UN humanitarian agencies estimate that there are currently some 18 million people facing food insecurity in the region, due to a combination of drought, volatile food prices, as well as political instability in some areas.

Byrs noted that many families were left with nothing to eat and had found their only sustenance in soups made from wild plants so bitter that animals often neglected to eat them.

“To make them edible, peasants boil the plants repeatedly so as to get rid of the bitter taste,” Byrs noted, adding that some households in the Sahel had been without food reserves for some seventh months.

Along with its partners, WFP is scaling up its activities to reach some 10 million people in the region with food assistance over the coming months, despite a $304 million shortfall in the $888 million sought in funding for its response activities in the Sahel.