President Kibaki yesterday formally declared the drought ravaging the country a national disaster - and spelt out the grim future facing the starving over the next six months.

The number of people facing the starvation in the country could rise to more than 4 million by the end of the year.

President Kibaki was today expected to launch an international appeal for food to help almost three million Kenyans facing starvation.

About 130,000 people need relief food urgently in Samburu District.

Namibia's land reform programme hit the headlines in recent months after the government announced it would expropriate farms, as too few had been offered for purchase and an estimated 243,000 "land hungry" Namibians need to be resettled.

More than 300,000 Liberians will go hungry at the end of this year while thousands more living abroad as refugees will be unable to come home unless donors provide US$ 33 million of additional funding in the very near future, two of the biggest UN relief agencies in Liberia said.

Federal Government has through the Small Scale Enterprises (SMEs) developed an indigenous brown sugar manufacturing plant capable of producing one million tons of sugar annually. Already an estimated N4 billion is projected from the new industry per annum.

For almost a 100 years now, tea picking and pruning have been done by hand and provided thousands of jobs to otherwise jobless Kenyans. But all this is bound to change as machines take over what has been traditionally a manual task.

We have been consistently calling to attention the spectre of food shortage in these columns and asking the authorities to make haste and arrest a potentially explosive situation.

Cashew nuts production will continue to decline if no new seedlings are replanted, a business official has said.

... Ahead of general elections

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Wednesday appealed for US $76 million to fund emergency relief operations to help some 3.3 million people affected by drought, saying crop failure brought on by inadequate rainfall amounted to "a national disaster".

In an effort to boost responsible commercial fishing as an important source of income and food for developing countries, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today announced a new project to promote the industry in Gabon, a fish-rich West African country that now has to import to meet its own needs.

After the ruins of successive civil wars that had a devastating effect on the civilian population, World Vision-Liberia is helping to meet the acute food needs and improve the household food security of war-affected families in the Western Liberian County of Grand Cape Mount.

Dealers are arbitrarily hiking the prices of the Nation's staple, rice.

PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma has called on the Kenyan government to allocate more money to agricultural research as the continent strives for self-sufficiency in food production.

Massive crop failure has hit several parts of the country posing a major food shortage.

Kenya will today appeal for food assistance from the international community due to an expected crop failure that is likely to leave millions of people starving across the country.

Hungry residents of the main town in Western Darfur, Sudan, have run out of food and now expect to receive some of the emergency supplies meant for people displaced by violence there, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Tuesday.

You should not eat treated seed maize even if you are starving, the Kenya Seed Company has warned hunger-stricken Kenyans.

Two companies exhibiting at the Nakuru Show yesterday unveiled new varieties of seeds for farmers.

A sugar importer wants the High Court in Mombasa to stop hearing a civil suit over imports until a similar one in Nairobi ends.

When Aro Koriang's photograph appeared in the newspapers in 1999, it shocked the nation and brought home the fact that there was a severe famine in Turkana District.

The Government wants the food security situation in Nyanza assessed.

The Government has been urged to open more maize buying centres in South Rift.