Ethiopian food processing firms bid to supply food to Darfur

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 08, 2004 (dpa) — Three Ethiopian food processing companies are jointly bidding to win a World Food Programme tender to supply 2,000 tons of protein-enriched food to Darfur, reports said Sunday.

The companies Fafa Children’s Food Complex, Healthcare Food Manufacturers Plc and East African Holdings already won a WFP bid and delivered a similar amount of foodstuffs worth 800,000 dollars, the business weekly Fortune reported.

The food was needed for about 26,000 women and children and thousands of displaced people in seven localities near Fur Buranga, about 150 kilometres south of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, the WFP office said in Addis Ababa.

It said the bid was being assessed at the WFO headquarters in Rome, Italy, and its approval was expected shortly.

The 2,000 tons of food from Ethiopia would be transported via the border town of Metema in north-western Ethiopia to Khartoum, from where it would be airlifted and dropped to the needy.

Previous attempts at delivering food by trucks had been frustrated by looting, the WFP said.

Only last week armed men identifying themselves as members of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) stopped two trucks headed for Nyala, the capital of southern Darfur, and stole 50 tons of food, the WFP said quoting information from its office in Khartoum.

It said the incident occurred near Labadu village and was the second in 10 days. Armed men claiming to be SLM/A members stole 60 tons of food from two trucks on July 20.

Looting, rain in Darfur and lack of funds were hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid to the needy in Western Sudan.

WFP had set a goal of delivering aid to about 1.2 million people by the end of August.

It had earlier indicated that it needs 195 million dollars to cover the food requirements in Darfur until the end of 2004 and only about one-third of this had been contributed so far.