The US to offer DRC $414 million in humanitarian aid

The United States said it will offer the DR of the Congo $414 million to help the country address its worsening humanitarian crisis.

The DRC is a vast country where at least a quarter of its population depends on humanitarian aid, notably in the war-torn east, where rebel groups have taken vast sqathes of territory.

Reuters, citing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, Jeffrey Prescott, said a significant amount of that money would go to United Nations agencies and aid groups providing urgent food assistance, healthcare and nutrition support, shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene.

This would bring total US aid to DRC since October to $838 million.

Nearly 65 per cent of the country’s population, or just under 60 million people, lived on less than $2.15 a day. Nearly one in six people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa live in the DRC, according to the UN.

A U.N. aid appeal for $2.6 billion for DRC this year is only one-third funded and the World Health Organization warned last month that more than one million children are at risk from acute malnutrition in Congo.