Enough with the Guilt Trips on Feeding, Helping Diseased Third World People Programs;

There is a Tax Already in Place that covers that.

Lesotho: a nation struggling to feed its people

LESOTHO, grappling with food shortages, is banking on South Africa to make good on its pledge to assist its landlocked neighbour.

Kingdom of Lesotho

Lesotho is in the throes of a food crisis, the result of weather shocks including flash floods and drought over the past two years. South Africa undertook to assist the mountain kingdom following a visit by Prime Minister Tom Thabane last month. However, the amount and extent of the pledge is not yet known.

The food crisis in Lesotho adds to concerns for its newly formed coalition government. The last elections, held in May, were hotly contested amid political tensions.

Lesotho has the third highest HIV prevalence in the world – just under one in four people in the country are living with HIV.¹ In 2009 there were around 23,000 new HIV infections and approximately 14,000 people died from AIDS.²Over half of the 260,000 adults living with HIV in Lesotho are women.³

“There are two types of people in Lesotho; those infected and those affected by HIV/AIDS”.⁴The AIDS epidemic in Lesotho has had a devastating impact on the country. Crippling poverty combined with AIDS has caused average life expectancy to drop to 48.2 years.⁵ The impact on individuals, families and the whole nation is being felt as adults become too sick to work, and children orphaned by AIDS are left to run households.  MORE

The opposition, led by the ousted leader Pakalitha Mosisili, has said that it believes the coalition between the Congress for Democracy and the Basotho National Party will falter and that it will return to power in the next elections in 2017.

Apart from competing with low-wage countries such as Bangladesh on clothing exports, Lesotho’s coalition has promised to increase the salaries of lowly paid factory workers, and is also considering a localisation strategy for the mining sector.
Lesotho

By the end of last month, just $8.4m of the required $38.5m had been received.

Last week, during a visit to the UN building in Maseru, the head of the country’s disaster management authority, Matshidiso Mojaki, said they were aware that “we may not even get close to the required funds”.

“At this time, we know that we may not get all of this, but however much comes will be welcomed,” she said.

The call for assistance from South Africa may put pressure on this country, which also has loan arrangements with Zimbabwe and Swaziland.MORE

1. What is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and who funds it?

USAID is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that provides economic, development, and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States.  USAID receives overall policy guidance from the U.S. Secretary of State.  In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act into law, creating by executive order what is now known as USAID.

With headquarters in Washington, USAID has field missions in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Near East, Latin American and the Caribbean, and Europe and Eurasia.  USAID operates in over 100 countries around the world and manages a budget of approximately $9.5 billion.

The American people provide funding for USAID through their taxes.

USAID funding is allocated from the U.S. Federal Budget approved by the U.S. Congress.

CRS:U.S. Foreign Assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa: The FY2012 Request

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