Food Crisis in East Africa Discussion

William Vazquez

Professor Craig

World Politics 001H

Date of Submission: 12 December 2011

As children, my siblings and I would always be told to finish our food and enjoy it. If we did not like it and did not want to eat, we were told to think of the starving kids in Africa who had little or nothing. Over time it became a token phrase for my grandmother, but the gravity of the situation never really hit me. On November 10^th, 2011, however, the horrors of this situation were brought to light. A discussion was held in the Battelle-Tompkins atrium to bring to light the ongoing issue of famine in Africa. The initial two presenters were Laura Birk from USAID and Jenny Coneff from FEWSNET.

The two presenters started off with a little background information about their organizations before starting the discussion. Ms. Birk was very concerned with the lack of attention on the issue that is affecting so many people. She is especially surprised at how ignorant much of the US is to the issue. Her organization is part of the Drought Task Force working in Somalia to provide aid for the people dealing with the famine. It focuses on improving the situation for the long term, and as such it tries to balance immediate aid with improving the resilience of the people and the land so that future famines could potentially be prevented. Ms. Coneff’s organization focuses on food security and takes information from field analysis, processes the various issues that are affecting the region being helped, and the proper response is deduced from there.

There was also a brief overview of the situation, courtesy of Oxfam America’s fact sheet. Across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, a severe drought and food crisis have ensnared more than 13 million people. Parts of the region are the direst they have been in 60 years. But punishing weather is not the only challenge families here face: deep poverty and decades of marginalization have left them with few resources on which to fall back as the price of food soars and water shortages persist. In Somalia, the crisis has escalated into famine.

According to Ms. Coneff, Somalia’s current situation fits all of the criteria for a famine, including the fact that it has an acute lack of food security and its death rate is greater than two percent per day. According to the fact sheet, the UN uses a five-step scale to assess a country’s food security, or the ability of its people to access sufficient food to meet their needs. A situation reaces stage five – “famine/humanitarian catastrophe” – when maltnutrition rates climb higher than 30 percent, when more than two people out of 10,000 die each day, when food is limited to less than 2,100 calories per person per day, and when each person has access to less than four liters of water a day. All of these can currently be seen in Somalia today.

A person is malnourished if he or she does not have the energy to grow, recover from disease, become pregnant, lactate, or do physical work. Many people in Somalia suffer from these conditions. Approximately 450,000 children under the age of five in Somalia are malnourished. Herders in Kenya have lost eight million animals as a consequence of the same drought. In Ethiopia, the price of corn climbed between 60 and 120 percent in the four months between February and May of this year. In northern Kenya, milk is rarely available and costs three times its normal price, which means children are making do with less than a quarter of their usual intake.

What both presenters agreed on is that while drought is inevitable, famine is preventable. So why is there famine in Somalia? One main cause of the famine is the frequency of natural disasters that have continuously damaged Somalia’s landscape and its people. On top of that, Somalia has gone without a solid, central government since 1992. With no governing force, it is near impossible for food security or any kind of rules to be enforced. And now Somalia has been suffering under one of the worst droughts it has ever experienced. Why is the US not assisting Somalia? Due to al-Shabaab’s bans on international governmental organizations getting involved, it became even harder to get involved in assisting. In 2010 the U.S. government ceased its aid due to al-Shabaab’s widespread influence.

Now due to the barriers that were set up not too long ago, it is even harder and more risky to get to the areas that are in dire need of aid. They have become near inaccessible and deadly for those trying to help. Even with the attempts of emergency food programs and resilience programs trying to help, is there really any way to reverse the already devastating effects? Earlier in the decade, Ethiopia dealt with a similar situation, but by utilizing aid from the outside it was able to provide food for the people. Meanwhile in Somalia, millions of children are going hungry and are now broken by the lack of nutrition and stunted for the rest of their lives.

Ms. Coneff pointed out that it would be cheaper overall to prevent the issues rather than allow them to arise and then try to resolve them afterward. Even though it is harder to preempt what might occur, by preparing ahead of time for whatever situation may arise, the people of Somalia and Africa overall have a better chance. What really needs to be improved is the agricultural system in Somalia and throughout the affected areas in Africa. Meanwhile countries abroad can begin developing new technology to aid in allowing their improved agricultural systems to thrive. Then people should be sent in to teach the people of Somalia how to utilize this equipment.

As far as media coverage on the famine goes, both Ms. Birk and Ms. Coneff were disappointed at the lack of media coverage on the issue. Ms. Birk stated that a survey was conducted in the U.S. that found that about 48 percent of the surveyed U.S. citizens actually knew about the famine. Ms. Coneff noted that it was not until March of 2011 that the word “famine” was actually used to describe the issue. She also noted that no stories or headlining news about the issue has been released since September of 2011.

What the presenters wanted to make clear is that the goal of their organizations and of most humanitarian aid to the affected areas is not to try and fix the Horn of Africa per se. What they want to do is try to support the existing governments there so that they can change for the better. By doing so, this can help global development as well as improve the effectiveness of globalization, showing yet another way on how it can be beneficial. Past events, such as the arming of different groups in Somalia by the US and the USSR during the Cold War, did nothing to improve the situation in Somalia. On top of that, once again due to the presence of al-Shabaab, aerial bombardments were orchestrated by the Bush administration in order to deter violence. This did not improve anything though.

The panelists all agreed that the most pressing issue is the security of the people as well as food security. In aiding, the right tools have to be provided for the right plan. Overall, despite the fact that the U.S. has been more inclined to use military methods when it comes to Somalia, humanitarian methods should come before we resort to violence. While there is a problem, this does not imply that it is impossible for the situation to change. What we need to do is understand the agricultural needs of the people as well as support small businesses and families with aid so they may thrive. By empowering the people, more progress can be made, as resilience at the community level can increase. It was suggested that to get involved, we should donate to their organizations as well as write to our congressmen to tell them to suggest sending more aid to the affected areas.

Food crises have continued to hit Africa with unsettling regularity in the 21^st century – in Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, South Sudan – even as we have the means and know-how to prevent them. Changing weather patterns, conflict, skewed trade rules, and poverty can all threaten a nation’s food security. But the debilitating hunger these circumstances fuel is no more inevitable than it is ethically acceptable. Our global challenge is summoning the will – political and financial – to tackle the root causes of these crises. Rapid donor support for emergency response, social protection programs back by long-term funding, greater investment in rural development, assistance for small-scale food producers – these are the steps we need to take to put an end to the disasters like the one now hitting East Africa.

Successive seasons of poor rain this year and recurring drought in others have eroded the ability of farmers and herders in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia to recover after each hit they take. Countless animals on which people depend for food and income have died. Cereal prices have spiked astronomically in some places, and people’s purchasing power has dwindled as the value of their livestock – equivalent to money in the bank – has plunged. Coupled with these hardships are years of neglect and economic underdevelopment in a region that sorely needs basic infrastructure such as the water systems, roads, and health care services that would help people weather crises like the current one. And in Somalia violent conflict has made the situation worse. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have made their way into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Dadaab, Kenya, is now bursting with more than 460,000 people, making it the largest refugee camp in the world.

This event was incredibly eye-opening for me. I barely knew just how severe the issue of famine was in Africa. I did not know that it was even so severe even to this day. I wonder what might be the best way to convince al-Shabaab that humanitarian aid is necessary, or even if that would be enough to really have a positive influence on the area. Hopefully with time tensions will defuse so that the people can be helped. If not, more and more people will be affected by the ever-growing, terrible issue. Despite fundamental disagreements on worldviews, even different governments and international groups must work together on this to help the people to survive and thrive.