More than 14 million people, half of them children, are facing starvation across southern Africa, Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee said yesterday.
Political instability and three years of drought combined with flooding in some areas have led to massive food shortages in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and Angola.
The committee, which is uniting the fund-raising efforts of 13 British aid agencies, is launching a major appeal to help buy food, medical supplies, seeds and tools in an attempt to prevent "a major humanitarian catastrophe".
At the appeal launch, Ms Judith Melby, emergencies officer for Christian Aid, said she had just returned from Angola where an estimated four million people had been displaced after 27 years of civil war. She had visited demobilisation camps where 85,000 soldiers and 260,000 civilians were "desperate" for food.
"In the camps you see another sign of the war in Angola, with the number of amputees - children, soldiers, missing feet and legs. The war displaced some four million people. They have been forced from their homes, they have very little, they have brought nothing with them.
"We figure that there are a million people who are totally dependent on food assistance at the moment and the food assistance is not there. If they don't get it before March next year, we will have a million and a half people."
Angola's government and the UNITA rebels agreed in April to negotiate a peace settlement after the death in combat of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. The ceasefire has opened up areas previously inaccessible to aid workers, disclosing the extent of the food shortages.
She said that aid agencies were distributing mainly non-food items such as blankets, buckets, seeds and tools. "Seeds and tools are the key. If they can plant by September, they will be able to harvest a crop by December, but they need food to carry them over in that period." Ms Melby warned that if food shortages continued, the peace process in Angola could be jeopardised.
Ms Deborah Crowe, southern Africa regional director for Save the Children, said: "The numbers of children at risk of starvation is a staggering seven million - that's equivalent to the population of London."
Mr Paul Anticoni, head of international operations for the British Red Cross, said he had just returned from Zimbabwe where the food crisis was compounded by the "catastrophic" rates of HIV/ AIDS. "The situation in Zimbabwe is a complex food crisis, a combination of two years of poor rain, a very challenging political and economic environment, compounded by a catastrophic HIV/AIDS crisis which is now affecting one in four people there."