Africa Drought 'Worst in Decades'

Jeffrey Allen, OneWorld US Jeffrey Allen, oneworld Us Fri Oct 9, 4:26 pm ET

WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (OneWorld.net) - Aid organizations are appealing for global help as millions of families face hunger, water shortages, disease, and death across the eastern part of Africa.

What's the Story?

A multi-year drought has destroyed harvests, driving up the price of remaining food, and forcing people to drink and cook with whatever water they can find, even if it's unsafe. Animals are wasting away in some areas. Millions of people are suffering as malnutrition, cholera, and other maladies set in.

Staff of the Dago Dala Hera orphanage in western Kenya told OneWorld Friday that rising prices have forced them to decrease food rations for the children they care for. Their water storage tanks have been used up, meaning volunteer mothers and children must now draw unclean water from a nearby river for cooking and drinking.

"My biggest concern is the grown girls," said Edwin Odoyo, whose mother Pamela founded the orphanage for children who have lost parents to AIDS. "Going to the river alone late in the evening is making them more vulnerable to men who can sexually abuse them."

Odoyo is also worried because the children are starting to experience skin infections and stomach aches that could be signs of parasites. Since the orphanage's budget is already stretched by the high price of food, there is no money left to care for unexpected illnesses.

It's a story that's being told time and again across the region.

Masai elders in Kenya have said the current drought is the worst they've seen since 1961, when they lost almost all their cattle.

Dwindling food stocks have driven up the price of staple foods, making it increasingly difficult for those living in cities to buy enough to eat, says the Church World Service, which is supporting communities in the region.

Some parts of the country haven't seen rain since May 2008. Rivers and reservoirs have dried up, leading to water rationing in urban areas. [» Read more about Church World Service's efforts and concerns.]

Failed Harvest After Failed Harvest

"If you have one bad year, people can survive. They sell some assets to buy food and make it through the hard times, and hope to make it back the next year," said Mohammed Khaled, CARE International’s Regional Emergency Coordinator for East Africa. "But three bad years? People can’t recover."

CARE is among the local and international groups helping people cope. The group is building and maintaining boreholes and water distribution points, providing extra nutrition to young children and mothers, distributing seeds for farmers, and helping pastoralists diversify their herds and sources of income. [» Read more about CARE's efforts and concerns.]

Save the Children estimates that 20 million people will need emergency assistance through the end of the year.

"In Ethiopia, millions of subsistence farmers are dependent on weather patterns they cannot control," said the group's vice president for Global Humanitarian Response Ned Olney. "Now their children face not only hunger, but the increased vulnerability to deadly disease that accompanies severe malnutrition."

Cases of acute diarrhea -- one of the top killers of children worldwide -- are on the rise in Ethiopia, Olney's group said. [» Read more about Save the Children's efforts and concerns.]

In nearby South Sudan, Action Against Hunger has documented a spike in the number of kids suffering from severe acute malnutrition -- a life-threatening condition -- and expects a further deterioration of the situation in the coming weeks and months.

"The consequences of two failed harvests in a row are dire in a region reliant on subsistence agriculture," the group said, noting that its staff have seen entire families forced to eat leaves as the situation becomes ever more desperate. [» Read more about Action Against Hunger's efforts and concerns.]

And older people, who are particularly vulnerable, are often overlooked by aid groups faced with limited resources themselves, notes HelpAge International, warning that the situation in northern Kenya has become "survival of the fittest."

"Older people have either lost their livestock to the drought or are too weak to walk for days in the blistering heat in search of pasture for their family's remaining animals," reported HelpAge's Stephen Barrett. "They have no choice except, as one older woman told me, 'to wait and hope that food aid will come.'" [» Read more about HelpAge International's efforts and concerns.]

Climate Change to Blame

Drought and hunger are not new to this region of Africa, where many live on less than $1 a day earned through subsistence farming or animal herding. But climate change has made the situation worse, says CARE, which has been working in the region for decades.

Shorter and unpredictable rainy seasons and more severe weather have led to years of failed harvests and dead livestock this time, forcing many pastoralists and farmers to give up their land or animals altogether, the group says.

Rains that are supposed to finally come later this month are expected to bring some improvement to the drought situation, but may also cause flooding and kill weakened animals.

It's the severity and unpredictability of weather in recent years that has turned the situation from difficult to disastrous.

Omar Hussein owns 20 cows in northern Kenya. He used to have 200 cows, camels, and goats, but in 2007 there was a huge storm and most of his animals drowned. Since then, there has been a crippling drought.

Hussein is among the African farmers gathered by in Cape Town, South Africa this week to testify about the impacts of climate change on their lives.

Most of the farmers don't use the words "climate change," said Oxfam International, the humanitarian group that sponsored the gathering, but they blame weather patterns that are caused by the changing global climate.

"They say – we can't sow the same seeds we used to because they don't grow any more or -- the weather is getting unpredictable or -- the rains are getting shorter and the droughts are getting longer. We have less time to recover." [» Read more about the Oxfam climate hearings.]

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OneWorld partners are responding to the drought in East Africa.

ACDI/VOCA

ACDI/VOCA’s Kenya Maize Development Program seeks to boost household incomes to help address household food insecurity by increasing farmers’ maize productivity, improving the effectiveness of farmer organizations like cooperatives, and expanding farmers’ access to agricultural markets and business support services. To date, the program has tripled – and in some places quadrupled – smallholder farmers’ yields and increased the net earnings of some 370,000 farmers – nearly 30 percent of whom are women. [» Read more and support this work.]

GlobalGiving

GlobalGiving is an online marketplace that connects you to the causes and countries you care about. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates -- so you can see your impact. [» Read more and support this work.]

Lutheran World Relief

LWR is working with partners on the ground in Kenya, Tanzania,Uganda and Sudan to help families grow food, improve access to water, and protect their land and income for the future. LWR and its partners are:

• Helping farmers plant drought-resistant crops
• Applying improved growing methods to increase crop yields indrought conditions
• Training communities to conserve water
• Helping to dig boreholes and install irrigation systems
• Helping farmers access credit to purchase tools, seeds and fertilizers to grow food

[» Read more and support this work.]

Oxfam America

Oxfam America is responding to the new crisis with a multi-part relief plan that aims to help about 350,000 people in Tigray and Oromiya. The initiative, which needs the financial support of donors to reach all the intended beneficiaries, includes supplemental feeding for mothers and children, meals for school children, a cash-for-work program that provides families with money to buy food in exchange for labor on community projects, and veterinary care for livestock. The latter will help to ensure cattle, goats, and sheep can weather the drought and continue to provide critical food and income for herding families. [»Read more and support this work.]

Millions More In Horn Of Africa Could Face Food Shortages This Year, FAO Says

Monday, September 21, 2009

Millions of additional people in the Horn of Africa could face food shortages this year because of poor harvests from a lack of rain, worsening conflicts and the El Nino climatic effect, the U.N. Food and Agriculture organization (FAO) said on Monday, Reuters reports. The agency indicated "that from Uganda to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia a drop in cereal production was likely to increase the nearly 20 million people already dependent on food assistance in one of the world's poorest regions," the news service writes (9/21).

FAO said that the potential of heavy rains caused by El Nino in the coming months might destroy crops, livestock, infrastructure and homes. "In Uganda, the production of the first season crops is forecast at below average levels, the country's fourth successive poor harvest, the agency said. The maize crop in Kenya is estimated at 1.84 million tons, about 28 percent below normal levels," the Associated Pressreports. Forced migrations, resulting from water searches, have increased disease outbreaks and worsened conflicts in the area, according to FAO (9/21).

Several news outlets reported on related stories about food security, malnutrition and food aid:

• Despite the invention of techniques to "stave off famine ... more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one billion people this year for the first time, according to the United Nations," the New York Times writes in an article examining causes of world hunger. "The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet." Some advocates say that "the tools for success are within reach provided the financing and political will persist: those tools include seeds fine-tuned to local conditions, fertilizer and better roads and other infrastructure improvements" (Martin, 9/19).
• The Mail & Guardian reports on the recent Food Agriculture Natural Resources and Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) regional dialogue in Mozambique, where delegates "agreed that if agricultural development is not placed at the core of Africa's agenda, there will be no development on the continent." The dialogue, which "brought together about 200 representatives ranging from government ministries, the private sector, farmers and researchers from 28 countries around the world," encouraged continued investment in agricultural subsidies and in smallholding farmers in Africa, the newspaper writes. Delegates also discussed subsidy programs and other issues related to agriculture (Fofanah/Kalideen, 9/21).
• TIME examines the global economic recession's effect on some of the world's poorest people with a focus on the situation in Bangladesh and the World Food Programme's (WFP) budget shortfall. "We're looking at an unprecedented situation," according to WFP spokesperson Gregory Barrow. "We're having to make extremely difficult calculations that involve real people, real lives." TIME writes: "The WFP rarely amasses the entire annual sum it requests, but this year's shortfall has been particularly acute. Even when grappling with the onset of recession in 2008, the U.S. donated $2.1 billion. This year, it has given a bit more than a quarter of that sum" (Tharoor, 9/21).
• One in four children worldwide are underweight and 32 percent or 178 million are chronically malnourished, Dianne Stevens, a UNICEF nutrition specialist, said at a recent seminar organized by the College of Community Physicians, the Asian Tribune reports. Another 10 percent or 55 million children worldwide are acutely malnourished and 2 billion have vitamin A, iron, iodine and zinc deficiencies, she said, adding that South Asia has the highest burden of malnutrition in children. Stevens said, "There is shift towards highly refined foods and towards meat and dairy foods containing saturated fat especially in low and middle income countries." She discussed some of the reasons for the change in diets and also outlined effective interventions that could prevent malnutrition (Peiris, 9/21).

The Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report is published by the Kaiser Family Foundation. © 2009 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.