Famine in East Africa: governments’ failure

Rosebell Kagumire Kampala -Uganda Views expressed are the author’s own

On Tuesday this week, Daily Monitor newspaper in Uganda reported the death of two people in the eastern district of Bulambuli. Local authorities there said the two had died due to hunger. They also warned that the deaths could be more.

In a desperate pleas the local areas leader had pleaded,“ hunger is killing us, please we are asking government to come to our rescue, our children have abandoned school and can’t go back because there is no food.”

The district like many others has experienced drought since April. The magnitude of the drought in eastern Ugandan is still not yet known but these two cases say it all. Eastern Uganda is not in the drought affected map that I have seen aid agencies using for purposes of responding to the current crisis in the horn of Africa which shows parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. However the problem of food insecurity and failure of Eastern African governments to put in place measures to prevent death and devastation is also in areas outside the map.

Aid agencies have called the food crisis facing East Africa the worst of the 21st Century. Across Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya, 12 million people are in dire need of food, clean water, and basic sanitation. Just last week the UN declared famine in Southern Somalia. Nearly half of the Somali population – 3.7 million people – is now in crisis.

The main focus has been on the humanitarian needs for the worst affected. The UN estimates that and extra $1.2billion is required to meet immediate needs and of this so far less than $300 million has been provided.

Yet the discussion cannot just be about meeting the needs of today. This crisis was predicted, governments and international community had enough time to respond and had they responded we would not be seing images of children with bare ribs arriving in Dadaab.   I have seen statements slamming international community for its slow response to the crisis but I have not seen many questions put these African governments expect for Kenya over opening a new camp for Somali refugees.

The African Union made a statement its Committee on the Special Emergency Assistance Fund for Drought andFamine in Africa (SEAF) gave a grant in the sum of US$300,000 to UNHCR to support Somalis affected by the drought. The statement also indicated that Fund was actually dealing with dwindling resources because the governments have not put in money.

In a statement Oxfam explained  the drought problem that eastern Africa is facing.

“While severe drought has undoubtedly led to the huge scale of the disaster, this crisis has been caused by people and policies, as much as by weather patterns, the statement read. “If more action had been taken earlier it could have helped mitigate the severity of the current crisis. It is no coincidence that the worst affected areas are those suffering from entrenched poverty due to marginalization and lack of investment.”

In June, Uganda’s Finance minister told the country that the livestock sub sector grew by  3.0 percent while the food crop sub sector had registered 2.7 percent growth. The output of cash crops had declined by nearly 16 percent and overall growth in agricultural output had been 0.9 per annum, compared to 2.4 percent recorded in the previous year. At the same time the general price level of all items increased by 16.1 percent per annum in May 2011 while food crop prices saw the greatest increase at 44.1 percent over the same period.

The support for agriculture sector has been poor; efforts like credit facility have been tainted with corruption and do not necessarily help the poorest of the farmers. Our farmers still rely on unstable rain patterns with no support for irrigation from government.

Most of these areas in East Africa under crisis are marginalized areas, only responded to when the situation is already dire. These areas are not a priority for governments of the day and their development plans.

In Kenya, just like Ethiopia, the worst affected areas are Somali regions. Kenya has just set aside Sh10.5 billion to help buy food and water for the country’s hunger-stricken population.

I spoke to Kenyan journalist Kassim Mohamed who just returned from Dadaab. He said the plight of Somali refugees was still not being given urgency because of the coalition politics.

“I was in Dadaad, I met a woman who waited in security lines on the border for hours. She had two children, one 3 year old by hand and another strapped to her back,” Mohamed narrated, “The three year old was too malnourished, she had to choose which child to leave behind to die and she left her 3 year old, took a shortcut route into Kenya to save the younger one.”  But even within Kenya response to these refugees has been so slow.

Mohamed said that a second camp which the Kenyan government allowed to be put up last week had not been put in place due some provincial politics. In Kenya itself people in Turkana and Somali regions are dying of hunger.

“Why would Kenya, the largest economy in East Africa fail to feed its people?” Kassim asked, “Truth is the politics of the day have taken its toll. Those who are not represent well in government will ultimately be the one whose survival is not thought about until they are dying.”

There has been limited support for farmers and instead the country has been concentrating on the debate to bring in cheap GMO foods.

In Somalia in the first three months of 2011, more people had been displaced due to drought than armed conflict and aid agencies had predicted it would be what we are seeing. Early June I met Ms.Kelly David, the head of UN OCHA for East and Southern Africa she gave a talk on migration and displacement in the region at the Nansen Conference on climate change and displacement in Olso. She said “linkages between relief assistance, disaster risk reduction, rehabilitation and development are too weak and poorly funded.”

She pointed at how the Mozambican government in 2006 had appealed for a $3.4 million to prepare for floods but nothing much was given but the international community spent $98 million in response once the floods wrecked havoc. Governments in eastern Africa must act differently on  policies that can change how agriculture is done to ensure food security. The international community must support initiatives to reduce risk in disasters and not wait for a life or death situation. But in face of these droughts, farmers in Eastern Africa cannot only look to their government given the global effects of climate change.