This estimate could double the number of people in deep need of food assistance, which already affects 135 million people today because they live in countries with conflict or economic and political instability, to which must be added some 821 million people in chronic hunger, completing a scenario of great food insecurity on the continent.
"If we add this 130 million to the existing 135 million, it adds up to 265 million people suffering from acute hunger in 2020, which is a very large number to deal with," said Arif Husain during a videoconference seminar promoted by the Royal Institute of International Relations Chatham House, based in London.
Part of this most at risk group lives in war zones such as Northeast Nigeria, Burkina Faso or South Sudan, and already depends on humanitarian agencies to survive, and another part are other workers in the informal sector of the economy, such as services or tourism, who are paid in cash and are no longer able to buy food due to lack of income due to the economic crisis.
"The World Food Programme already helps 120 million [people], but we will need more funding because of the [pandemic] of covid-19, some 10-12 billion dollars," he said.
At the global level, according to AFP, the covid-19 pandemic has already caused nearly 184,000 deaths and infected more than 2.6 million people in 193 countries and territories.
The number of deaths caused by covid-19 in Africa has risen to 1,242, with almost 26,000 recorded cases of the disease in 52 countries, according to the latest pandemic statistics on that continent.
Among the African countries that have Portuguese as their official language, Equatorial Guinea leads in number of infections (83 cases and one death), followed by Cape Verde (73 cases and one death), Guinea-Bissau (52) Mozambique (41), Angola (25 infected and two dead) and São Tomé e Príncipe has three confirmed cases.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
The "Great Confinement" led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make unprecedented forecasts in its nearly 75 years: the world economy could fall by 3 percent in 2020, dragged by a 5.9 percent contraction in the United States, 7.5 percent in the eurozone and 5.2 percent in Japan.
Several international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank have advocated debt relief for the most vulnerable African countries, which are unable to service the debt and at the same time invest in health systems in order to contain the spread of covid-19.
