USAID denies authorship of report on northeast

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has denied authorship of a story with the headline: Food Shortage threatens 2.4 million people in northeast.

In a statement, Joe Lamport, who works for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), noted that Mr. Bruce Isaacson, who was quoted in the story, is not a USAID official but the Chief of Party of FEWS NET, and actually not an employee of the US government.

Lamport however, stressed that FEWSNET, which published the Alert from where the story emanated is funded by USAID, but not a USAID office. “Its office is independent of USAID.”

He said: ‘We do not attribute authorship of our reports because they actually involve inputs from a variety of sources . In this case, the Alert was a joint statement from The Permanent Inter-State Committee For Drought Control In the Sahel (CILSS), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and The U.N. World Food Programme, (WFP)”.

Lamport stressed that since The Guardian did not interview them, the proper protocol would be to attribute the quotes to Mr. Isaacson as reported by Thomson Reuters.