Day: September 22, 2022

Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia are facing the most severe food security crises in the world right now. Find out how USAID is working to save lives.

A Historic Drought and its Impacts

The worst drought in at least 70 years is devastating the Horn of Africa, a region encompassing the East African countries of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. This region has seen catastrophic drought before, most recently in 2016-2017, as well as in 2010-2011, when hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger.

What makes the current drought different, however, is its duration. While previous droughts were the result of two or three consecutive failed rainy seasons, the Horn recently experienced four back-to-back seasons of poor rainfall since late 2020–something that has never happened before. This means that for nearly two years now, herders have been losing livestock without even a moment of reprieve and farmers haven’t been able to produce anywhere near the amount of food needed to feed their families or their communities.

To complicate matters, many families are still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, desert locusts, and haven’t fully recovered from the 2016-2017 drought. Humanitarian actors warn that things could get even worse in the coming months, with an unprecedented fifth failed rainy season expected to take place in late 2022.

Now, more than 20 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia require emergency food assistance according to the UN; many communities lack access to reliable water sources; and a growing number of people are abandoning their homes to make long and dangerous journeys in search of food, water, and grazing lands. Conflict over increasingly scarce water resources is also on the rise, further endangering vulnerable populations.

USAID’s Humanitarian Response

As humanitarian needs continue to grow across the Horn, USAID is stepping up to save lives. USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance has provided more than $1.8 billion in lifesaving humanitarian assistance this fiscal year alone, and more help is on the way. To meet growing needs, USAID partners are delivering food and water, treating malnourished children and pregnant women, repairing wells, and preventing disease outbreaks in vulnerable communities. Take a look at where and how USAID is helping.

ETHIOPIA

Dry weather has struck southern and southeastern Ethiopia’s Oromiya and Somali regions particularly hard. Overall, drought has affected 24.1 million people countrywide, 8.2 million of whom are facing water shortages. Water pumps, wells, and canals in many villages lie in a state of disrepair due to intense bouts of dry weather and conflict in recent years. People in these areas are having to choose between drinking water or using it for cooking or hygiene purposes. This often leads to deadly disease outbreaks in communities where immune systems have been ravaged by malnutrition.

USAID is working with more than 20 partners across Ethiopia to meet urgent humanitarian needs. In one project, USAID partner GOAL is constructing water points, pipelines, and storage tanks in Oromiya Region’s West Guji Zone–an area that has some of the worst water infrastructure in Ethiopia due to recent conflict. Meanwhile, our partner Save the Children is repairing village wells and installing rainwater harvesting systems at health centers in Ethiopia’s Oromiya and Somali regions.

KENYA

In Kenya, drought-related food and nutrition needs have reached startling levels in the northern counties of Marsabit, Mandera, and Wajir. Across the country, approximately 2.4 million livestock have died due to water shortages and drying pasture lands as of August. These animals were the primary source of income and food for many households. Crucially, they also produced the milk that is a key source of nutrition for many children. As of August 2022, nearly 885,000 children under the age of 5 required urgent treatment for malnutrition.

USAID and its partners are helping communities in arid and semi-arid areas across Kenya cope with the worst effects of the drought. In Mandera county, USAID partner the Rural Agency for Community Development and Assistance (RACIDA) is screening and treating children for malnutrition in some of the region’s most remote villages. The NGO is also providing immunizations and vitamin supplements to enable these children to fight off life-threatening illnesses. To boost incomes and production of nutritious dairy products RACIDA has also dewormed and vaccinated hundreds of thousands of livestock in recent months.

SOMALIA

More than 90 percent of Somalia is experiencing severe drought, but food security conditions are particularly dire in central and southern parts of the country, including the Bay Region. Between October and December of this year, 6.7 million people are expected to require lifesaving emergency food aid, and more than 300,000 are likely to face catastrophic levels of food insecurity–including people at risk of famine in Bay’s Buur Hakaba and Baidoa districts–unless emergency food assistance is expanded dramatically in the coming months.

Six USAID partners are delivering food to meet needs that haven’t been seen in Somalia in decades. In July alone, the UN World Food Program (WFP), with support from USAID and other donors, delivered food to 3.7 million people in Somalia. WFP is also scaling up its food programming at sites in Bay Region and near Mogadishu that have received tens of thousands of people fleeing drought in recent weeks.

This is not just another drought in the Horn of Africa. This is a perfect storm of factors resulting in catastrophic levels of humanitarian need and long-term protracted impacts. Persistent malnutrition, high vulnerability to droughts, and the effects of climate shocks are increasing the challenges faced by vulnerable communities across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. As the largest single humanitarian donor to the Horn of Africa, the United States has stepped up to meet the majority of immediate funding gaps to save lives. We are committed to the people living in the Horn, but we cannot solve this crisis alone. We now need other donors to step up and join us in alleviating suffering for millions of people and prevent more lives from being lost.

Source: US Agency for International Development

ROME – The number of people facing acute food insecurity worldwide is expected to continue to rise precipitously, as the food crisis tightens its grip on 19 ‘hunger hotspots’ – driven by rising conflict, weather extremes, and economic instability aggravated by the pandemic and the ripple effects of the crisis in Ukraine, a joint UN report released today has found.
The ‘Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report – issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent famine in hotspot countries where acute food insecurity is expected to worsen from October 2022 to January 2023. The report lays out country-specific recommendations on priorities for anticipatory action – short-term protective measures to be put in place before new humanitarian needs materialize; and emergency response – actions to address existing humanitarian needs.

“The severe drought in the Horn of Africa has pushed people to the brink of starvation, destroying crops and killing livestock on which their survival depends. Acute food insecurity is rising fast and spreading across the world. People in the poorest countries in particular who have yet to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic are suffering from the ripple effects of ongoing conflicts, in terms of prices, food and fertilizer supplies, as well as the climate emergency. Without a massively scaled up humanitarian response that has at its core time-sensitive and life-saving agricultural assistance, the situation will likely worsen in many countries in the coming months,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu.

“This is the third time in 10 years that Somalia has been threatened with a devastating famine. The famine in 2011 was caused by two consecutive failed rainy seasons as well as conflict. Today we’re staring at a perfect storm: a likely fifth consecutive failed rainy season that will see drought lasting well into 2023. But the people at the sharp end of today’s crisis are also facing soaring food prices and severely limited opportunities to earn a living following the pandemic. We urgently need to get help to those in grave danger of starvation in Somalia and the world’s other hunger hotspots,” said David Beasley, WFP’s Executive Director.

The report spotlights the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa, where the longest drought in over 40 years is forecast to continue – with the fifth failed rainy season in a row on the horizon – adding to the cumulative, devastating effects that successive rainfall deficits, economic crises and conflict have had on vulnerable households since 2020. Water scarcity has led to below average harvests, livestock deaths, and forced hundreds of thousands of people off their land in search of sustenance, while increasing the risk of intercommunal and resource-based conflict.

Up to 26 million people are expected to face Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 and above) levels of food insecurity in Somalia, southern and eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya. With humanitarian assistance at risk of being cut due to funding shortfalls, the spectre of large-scale deaths from hunger looms large in Somalia, with famine likely to take hold in the districts of Baidoa and Burhakaba in Bay region come October. Without an adequate humanitarian response, analysts expect that by December, as many as four children or two adults per 10 000 people will die every day. Hundreds of thousands are already facing starvation today with staggering levels of malnutrition expected among children under 5.

Globally, an all-time high of 970 000 people are expected to face catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and are starving or projected to starve or at risk of deterioration to catastrophic conditions in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, if no action is taken – ten times more than six years ago when only two countries had populations in Phase 5.

Key Findings

According to the report, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen remain at the ‘highest alert’ as hotspots, alone account for almost a million people facing catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC Phase 5 ‘Catastrophe’) with starvation and death a daily reality and where extreme levels of mortality and malnutrition may unfold without immediate action.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Kenya, the Sahel, the Sudan and Syria remain ‘of very high concern’ with deteriorating conditions – as in the June edition of the quarterly report – but the alert is extended to the Central African Republic and Pakistan. Meanwhile, Guatemala, Honduras and Malawi have been added to the list of countries, joining Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Madagascar that remain hunger hotspots.

Violent conflict remains the primary driver of acute hunger with analysis indicating a continuation of this trend in 2022, with particular concern for Ethiopia, where an intensification of conflict and interethnic violence in several regions is expected to further escalate, driving up humanitarian needs.

Weather extremes such as floods, tropical storms and droughts remain critical drivers in many parts of the globe, and a “new normal” of consecutive and extreme weather events is becoming clear – particularly in the hotspots. Devastating floods have affected 33 million people in Pakistan alone this year and South Sudan faces a fourth consecutive year of extreme flooding. Meanwhile, a third consecutive season of below-average rainfall is projected in Syria. For the first time in 20 years, the La Niña climate event has continued through three consecutive years – affecting agriculture and causing crop and livestock losses in many parts of the world, including Afghanistan, West and East Africa and Syria.

On the economic front, the persistently high global prices of food, fuel, and fertilizer – continue to drive high domestic prices and economic instability. Rising inflation rates have forced governments to enact monetary-tightening measures in advanced economies which have also increased the cost of credit of low-income countries. This is constraining the ability of heavily indebted countries – the number of countries increased significantly in recent years – to finance the import of essential items.

In the face of these macroeconomic challenges, many governments are compelled to introduce austerity measures affecting incomes and purchasing power – particularly among the most vulnerable families. These trends are expected to increase in coming months, the report notes, with poverty and acute food insecurity rising further, as well as risks of civil unrest driven by increasing socio-economic grievances.

Humanitarian assistance is crucial to save lives and prevent starvation, death and the total collapse of livelihoods – the report notes, highlighting that insecurity, administrative and bureaucratic impediments, movement restrictions and physical barriers severely limit humanitarian responders’ access to people facing acute hunger in eleven of the hotspot countries, including all six of the countries where populations are facing or are projected to face starvation (IPC Phase 5), or are at risk of deterioration towards catastrophic conditions.

Humanitarian action critical to preventing starvation and death

The report calls for targeted humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods in the 19 hunger hotspots, noting that in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, humanitarian action will be critical in preventing further starvation and death.

Note to Editors

Photos from Hotspot Countries available here.

Identified through forward-looking analysis, the ‘hunger hotspots’ are areas showing the potential for acute food insecurity to increase during the outlook period. The hotspots are selected through a consensus-based process involving WFP and FAO field and technical teams, alongside analysts specialized in conflict, economic risks, and natural hazards.

The report is part of a series of analytical products produced under the Global Network Against Food Crises, to enhance and coordinate the generation and sharing of evidence-based information and analysis for preventing and addressing food crises.

Source: World Food Programme

There was a festive mood with music, food and decorations at Zimbabwe’s State House last Friday as Chinese investors signed a deal to build a $2.8 billion battery metals industrial park.
Zimbabwean authorities say the lithium, platinum and nickel production will be used to make solar batteries.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the project, about an hour’s drive northwest of Harare, would help turn around the decline of Zimbabwe’s economy.
“The mines-to-energy park will augment my government’s thrust of value addition and beneficiation of minerals, as well as bolster the crucial role that minerals’ value chain plays in the national industrialization agenda,” he said. “It is set to mark the inception of a lithium ion battery chain in Zimbabwe. It is set to place Zimbabwe among the world’s producers of lithium ion batteries.”
Zimbabwe’s government plans to provide the land and minerals for the park, while the two Chinese companies investing will bring in machinery and needed funds.
Mnangagwa is aiming for a $12 billion mining industry in Zimbabwe by next year.
Lionel Mhlanga, director at Hong Kong Eagle International Holdings, one of the Chinese investors, said the project “will revolutionize the mining and energy sector of Zimbabwe, ensuring optimum value addition for all minerals extracted locally. Zimbabwe is endowed with most if not all minerals needed in this clean energy drive. Eagle International Investment Holdings and Pacific Goal Investment are partnering with the government of Zimbabwe to set up this industrial park. This multibillion-dollar project, on completion, will have a turnover exceeding $13 billion annually.”
But critics note Zimbabwe has announced several multibillion-dollar projects in recent years that fell apart, include mining by Russian investors for platinum and Chinese for diamonds.
The projects that do go forward rarely benefit ordinary Zimbabweans, said opposition lawmaker and rights activist Daniel Molokele.
“The mining model that we have, which favors countries such as China, is a big disadvantage for the poor people of Zimbabwe because the investment method is called extractive mining,” he said. “It’s to the advantage of the investor [rather] than to local communities. So Zimbabwe is not benefiting — at least at common citizen level — until and unless we come up with a mining model that favors local communities, that allows for shareholding and profiting for local communities in all mining investments.”
Zimbabwe is home to valuable minerals such as gold, iron, diamonds, lithium, platinum and chrome. But the World Bank says half of Zimbabweans live on less than $1 per day.
Farai Maguwu, the director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, a group working to improve governance of Zimbabwe’s natural resources, said the metals park deal needs to be transparent and aimed at helping locals, or else Zimbabwe will remain a resource-cursed country.
“If the government is merely looking at creating jobs, then that’s a very minimal expectation that we can have out of this project,” he said. “What we see with the Chinese in Zimbabwe is that everything they are getting, they are taking to China. That’s why the influx of Chinese investors in Zimbabwe is not contributing anything, even to liquidity, in our financial sector, simply because the Zimbabweans are not involved in these projects. We are simply giving them access to our resources without any plan.”
The battery metals park is expected to be up to 50 square kilometers in size when completed in about three years.

Source: Voice of America