The heads of nine UN agencies and ministers from around 20 African countries will meet from tomorrow to Friday in Livingstone, Zambia, to assess progress in the battle against Aids.

The conference will be chaired by Koichiro Matsuura, the director general of Unesco, which is currently chairing the UN Aids agency Unaids.

Unaids estimates that in 2003, five million people joined the ranks of the 60-million affected by HIV/Aids since the start of the pandemic.

Twenty million are believed to have been killed by the virus, which continues to infect 13 500 new persons every day, Unaids says.

Six thousand of the new daily infections hit people aged 15 to 24. Southern Africa is particularly badly hit, with a rate of infection of up to 40% in some countries.

Matsuura proposed holding the meeting in sub-Saharan Africa to "highlight the region's plight" and "focus attention on the country level, where the need for capacity-building and effective national coordination is crucial," the United Nations said.

The meeting in Livingstone, at the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River, is to be opened by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa.

It will focus on access to treatment; prevention education; impact on human capacity and capacity building; and orphans and vulnerable children, the United Nations says.

In Rome, meanwhile, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said yesterday that drought, Aids and conflict had combined to create serious food shortages in half the countries in Africa.

In eastern Africa, inadequate rainfall has left 7,2-million people facing shortages in Ethiopia and 3,6-million in Sudan, the FAO said.

Another 1,9-million were affected in Eritrea, 1,6-million in Tanzania and as many in Uganda, 1,2-million in Kenya and 580 000 in Somalia, it said.

"Overall, the food security situation of a large number of people affected by civil strife and drought in the region is highly precarious," it said.

Shortages loomed in all other regions of Africa, except the countries around the rim of the Sahara desert known as the Sahel.

Around the world, in many countries, "food shortages are being compounded by the effect of the HIV/Aids pandemic on food production, marketing and transport," the report said. – Sapa-AFP.