African Union under fire for poor response to famine

This extract is from Sudan Tribune, by Tesfa-Alem Tekle. Views expressed are the author’s own.

African leaders were mostly absent from a summit held in Ethiopia [last week] that convened for the purpose of raising funds to tackle the famine and drought driven humanitarian crisis in Somalia and neighboring countries.

Somalia’s president Sheikh Sherif Ahmed attends on August 25, 2011 at the UN complex of Addis Ababa a meeting gathering African leaders to pledge funds to tackle famine inSomalia and extreme drought across the Horn of Africa that are putting millions of people at risk of starvation (AFP).

Some 12 million people are affected by famine and drought in the Horn of Africa. War-torn Somalia is the worst affected but the drought has also hit millions in parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda.

Only the presidents of of Somalia, Djibouti and Equatorial Guinea were in attendance [on this day] along with the host Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

On top of that, the pledges made by African nations [were] nowhere near what was needed.

African Union (AU) Commission chairman Jean Ping told reporters that the donations included $300 million from the African Development Bank (ADB) in loans and grants for long-term development in the Horn of Africa.

There [have] been conflicting reports on how much individual African nations donated, though it appears that it was somewhere around $50 million.

Three African countries provided nearly half of the pledges – Algeria ($10m), Angola ($5m) and Egypt ($5m). Gambia, Mauritania and Congo-Brazzaville gave more than their proportional share, while Nigeria gave only $2m – less than some of its neighbours with smaller economies. South Africa was also tightfisted, with Oxfam pointing out that only $1.3m of its pledge came from government sources (the rest came from individual donations), about the same as from South Sudan, Africa’s newest state.

The AU said in a press release that the funding needs to address the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa has been put at $2.48 billion of which $1 billion has been committed so far.

The Pan-African organization itself has so far pledged just $500,000 from its emergency funds to a relief effort that aid groups say is still short of an estimated $1.48 billion.

The fundraising summit was the first of its kind by the 54 member continental bloc.

“This is the first time Africa is showing solidarity for an African cause,” said AU chairman and president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

Many aid experts, analysts and diplomats said they expected little from the 54-member organisation that has often been perceived as toothless and has seen its funding battered by the absence of its main financier, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

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