A elderly man takes a maize meal for lunch in Laikipia recently. Photo/ JOSEPH KANYI

Aid agencies estimate that a total of 14.6 million people are facing disaster by starvation, malnourishment and drought in East Africa

"The situation in the region is of extreme concern," Peter Smerdon, spokesman for the World Food Program said Friday.

"Rising food prices on top of drought this year means that more and more people than in previous years are falling over the edge into destitution," he said.

The British development charity Oxfam and UNICEF of the United Nations have each made similar predictions.

Oxfam said Thursday a "toxic cocktail" of crises was putting millions at risk.

UNICEF characterizes this toxic cocktail this way: "A lethal mix of drought, expanding conflict, rising food and energy prices, disease and high poverty is pushing children and their families in the Greater Horn of Africa to the brink of disaster."

Aid agencies estimate that a total of 14.6 million people are facing disaster if donors do not urgently release funds.

The crisis is especially dire in Ethiopia and Somalia, two of the poorest countries in the world.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) says it urgently needs $400m (£200m) to prevent starvation in the east African region.

The global food crisis is real and rising inflation in food prices due to drought and high oil prices have made things worse.

Several news genciees have highlighted this problem but Lucie Peytermann of AFP may have produced the most detailed work, part of which is reproduced below:

The situation is made worse by the pull-out of aid agencies from Somalia, where civil war has raged since 1991 and where aid workers have increasingly been targeted in the violence.

The World Food Programme has launched an urgent appeal for 254 million euros (400 million dollars) to feed people threatened with starvation in Somalia, as well as Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, until the end of the year.

In Ethiopia, where a rebellion is raging in the southeast Ogaden region, a serious drought has left about 4.6 million people in need of urgent food aid, the UN says. It has raised fears of a repeat of the devastating famines of the 1980s that killed almost one million people.

In Kenya, which is recovering from a bloody political crisis that left hundreds of thousands of people displaced, 1.2 million people are facing starvation.

The UN says 707,000 people in Uganda's rural region of Karamoja are in dire need of food, and a further 80,000 people face severe food shortages in Djibouti, which has been hit by numerous droughts in recent years.

In Eritrea, drought and rising food prices are also likely to have serious humanitarian consequences, but details are scant because the Asmara government has ordered at least nine NGOs to leave the country since the beginning of 2006.

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