I hope it rains. In Africa, the difference between a plentiful wet season and a stingy one in precipitation is today a matter of life and death, literally. Over the past four years, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, that water shortage has ruined crops, wiped out livestock, and pushed up the prices of staple foods. But it would be a serious mistake to assume that we are facing a temporary crisis or that we are witnessing problems beyond the control of man and, especially, that of the citizen of the West. The perfect storm that is hitting the continent is the consequence of climate change and local and global conflicts (the war in Ukraine), wrong strategies, violence as a way of life and lack of solidarity on a planet fully capable of feeding to all its inhabitants. Voices from several humanitarian organizations warn us about the coming catastrophe.
La Niña is not the only culprit. Yes, this climatic phenomenon has influenced the lack of water resources that plagues the Horn of Africa, but the region’s hardships are due to political failure. Democracy has not found roots in this part of the planet and, in this period, wars have caused devastation especially in the Abyssinian region of Tigray, devastated by internal strife and cut off from international aid. Corruption is also another negative factor. The Risk and Compliance portal, which measures country risk, ensures that embezzlement of public funds is a common practice of the Somali ruling elite, in charge of recovering a state that collapsed three decades ago.
regional contests
The reasons for the catastrophe abound and are juxtaposed. The concatenation of disasters such as irregular rainfall, floods and locust plagues, has generated food insecurity in scenarios lacking public resources. “The severe drought affects 90% of the territory and has decimated crops and livestock, reducing the people’s ability to cope with it,” says Abdiaziz A. Adani, head of political advocacy for the NGO Oxfam in Somalia, a mainly livestock territory. “Some families that owned 600 animals, keep 4 or 5. The lack of water and pasture has weakened the livestock and the price of animals has fallen.”
The crisis takes place in desolate settings. It is not accidental and the reasons point guilty. The Ethiopian regime tries to promote its centralizing trend at the expense of regional conflicts and, in this regard, Amnesty International speaks of the probable commission of crimes against humanity and the displacement of millions of people for war reasons. On the other hand, armed groups such as Al Shabaab hinder the distribution of aid, try to seize part of the funds for their own benefit or directly assume its distribution in those areas under their control to obtain the legitimacy they crave.
Degradation is not a sudden process. Inflation soared with trade restrictions driven by the fight against Covid-19 and has worsened after the impact of the war in Ukraine and the trade blockade. “92% of wheat imports come from that country and Russia,” says the Somali spokesman. “This has pushed prices to stratospheric levels and the population cannot access them.” As he explains, twenty liters of oil cost 20 dollars in January and today, 52, while a sack of 50 kilos of wheat flour has gone from 26 to 32 or more in rural areas, due to the increase in fuel.
The survival of 7.7 million inhabitants of Somalia depends on humanitarian aid and 350,000 children are in danger of death according to the United Nations. The European Union, the FAO and the UN have announced aid programs, but the economic resources do not arrive. “Only 28% of the funds demanded have been covered,” laments Adani.
The loss of 2.2 million head of cattle has caused a widespread exodus among Ethiopia’s agropastoral communities. Insecurity already affects 25 million Abyssinians, almost a quarter of the population, according to the US Agency for International Development (USAID). From the field, Inés Lezama, coordinator of the Unicef food cluster, sends a message of hope. “There are low-cost, high-scale answers when early detection is applied,” she argues. “We can promote access to adequate food, vaccines, drinking water and social protection mechanisms.”
The insensitivity of the North seems to be the biggest obstacle to carrying out this urgent action. “We are not sufficiently informed, we are not interested in what happens and why, or what does not cause us a direct impact. We value what is similar, what affects people with lifestyles like ours and we forget about the rest of the planet », he denounces. “But it is something that has to do with us and how we have modified the climate. The world is changing and we prefer to close our eyes.
Exotic Kenya is also affected by the disaster. The priest and doctor José Luis Orpella has spent thirty-two years in the northwestern county of Garissa, the most desert area. “Fuel has increased 60% and inflation is 14%. The communities suffer a lot due to this situation and the local and national government do not do much to alleviate it, perhaps because it has gotten out of hand and there is a large population to attend to or because of the political climate, since there are general elections in August », he explains and regrets: «People complain but do nothing».
More arranged marriages
Hunger causes unimaginable consequences from Europe. “The lack of food is deteriorating the health of 1.5 million people living in this country with HIV,” she warns. Others are irreversible. Girls as young as twelve are being forced to undergo female genital mutilation and child marriage so that the family can benefit from their dowry. Forced marriages have increased by 119% in this region, according to Unicef statistics. In addition, young people take up arms to get a salary, regardless of creeds and ideologies. “It has always been like this,” warns the missionary, who has the support of the NGO Manos Unidas. “Poverty and corruption favor Al Shabaab trying to recruit followers.”
Summer is a time of anguish in the Sahel, that strip between the Sahara desert and the savannah. The previous harvest has already been consumed and the next one will be harvested in October. Meanwhile, the men emigrate in search of a transition livelihood and the women remain in the village, with an average of 7 children and without resources, waiting for remittances that, perhaps, will never arrive.
This year, the situation is even more serious. Andrés Conde, Executive Director of Save The Children, has just returned from Niger. “We are in the first stage of a colossal food crisis,” he says. “Many children with acute malnutrition are already arriving at care centers.”
The price of fertilizers, generally imported, has doubled and its inaccessibility is the chronicle of a predicted disaster. “Without them, the land, which is very poor, will be much less productive. The previous one was already scarce, but the next one is surrounded by greater uncertainty », he warns. “The cattle, which were fed on scraps, are dying because there is nothing left for the maintenance of goats and chickens.”
Enrolling in criminal gangs or radical guerrillas is, again, a way of subsistence. “Hunger is the fuse of conflicts and scarcity triggers violence. Let’s not forget that the large-scale death of so many innocent people will not go unpunished,” says Conde. Many of the accusations point to militias ethnically associated with the Peul or Fulani, a nomadic ethnic group spread throughout the region that has accessed illegal arms trafficking, another of the triggers of insecurity.
next year worse
The numbers of the disaster are overwhelming. In the Sahel, 38 million are in a situation of food insecurity and 6.3 million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition. Paloma Martín de Miguel, regional director of Action Against Hunger, advocates the implementation of United Nations Resolution 2417, approved four years ago, and which aims to document the use of hunger as a weapon of war and promote aid to those affected independently of the fight against terrorism and immigration control policies. “That the work of NGOs be respected beyond whoever exercises authority in the territory.”
But the viewer does not stop at Africa. “Ukraine is monopolizing attention and donors,” she argues, pointing out that the funds committed do not reach 20% of those programmed. “We fear that next year the needs will be even greater and the financing less,” she points out and reproaches that there is no response to a perfectly manageable problem. “We must address the causes and ways to combat this threat. We have to guarantee services and provide local actors with a greater capacity for resilience in the face of adversity. Hunger is predictable.”
Ramata Santo only has one goat left
Ramata Santo only keeps one of his goats, although he once had twelve, and he only keeps ten of the twenty-four hens that used to riot in his corral. It is even more dramatic that three of his seven oxen have survived to date. Some have perished, others have been sold at a loss to survive. But the fact is that this farmer from Burkina Faso has lost her pasture, she lacks food and can no longer pay her children’s school fees. Meanwhile, grain has shot up 40% due to low local production and the risk of supplying supplies in a country at war. “Our region is facing the worst famine in a decade,” said Assalama Dawalack Sidi, Oxfam’s regional director for West Africa.
Political measures drive, in his opinion, the drama of Santo and millions like her. “The International Monetary Fund has used Covid loans to aggressively impose on West African states an austerity plan worth $69.8 billion over the next five years.” In addition, the regulations imposed to contain the pandemic implied the prohibition of transhumance and the concentration of livestock in small areas.
Inequality is amplified by other public initiatives that are no less unfair, in his opinion. “38% of the region’s workforce are farmers, but they don’t have access to credit, insurance and property registration,” he alleges. “State programs favor large landowners who farm for export.” The result is the breakdown of the self-consumption system and the fickle dependence on the acquisition of foreign grain. “The war in Ukraine has accelerated its devastating impact.”
The specialist points out that the urgent call of the UN to help the Central Sahel and the Lake Chad basin has only obtained, to date, 20% of the requested resources. “On the contrary and scandalously, the billionaires of the food industry have increased their fortune by 38.2 billion dollars in the last two years.”
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