Food emergency in Africa TIM ALDRED


weeks, is just a few hundred kilometres from Nairobi. But, as you drive off the high ground from Marsabit and drop down hundreds of metres to the red rocky landscape that borders the Chalbi Desert, the skyscrapers and indus- try seem worlds away. News of the drought in the Horn of Africa


Horn of scarcity M


arsabit in northern Kenya, like


the Dadaab refugee camp that has become all too familiar on our television screens in recent


– the driest period in the region since 1995 – has reminded me of driving through this moonscape during an earlier drought season. James Galgallo of the Diocese of Marsabit, a large, energetic man, had blagged some diesel for the trip off a colleague, claiming with a “this isn’t actually true” grin that our party were from the BBC. His next trick was to do his level best to convince us that we would be spending the night in his battered Land Rover – before turning into a Catholic mission where the staff ran the only functioning clinic for miles (and blessedly, a solar-powered fridge). Marsabit is an ancient place where people continue a way of life whose roots reach into prehistory. Many villagers still wear traditional dress and shelter from the scorching heat in small wood and cloth shelters. They don’t do it for the tourists, because not many venture here. It is a way of life that is old, precious, and sadly, deeply fragile. For a living, pas- toralists keep livestock – cattle, camels or goats – moving them from drinking wells to rain-fed pasture and back again. When the rains fail, or are poor, the walk between pas- ture and well becomes longer and longer. Weaker animals start to die. Cafod’s Laura Donkin was in Marsabit last week, and explained how this affects children: “Usually women and children will keep a few cattle, which give milk for the children while the men take the main herd to pasture. In this drought, all the cattle must be taken to pasture far away, sometimes for months at a time, leaving the children without milk. We are seeing increasing levels of acute malnu- trition because of this.” Livestock also acts like an emergency bank account for pastoralists. When there is a dry year, excess cattle are sold or used for food – and that gets the family over the lean season. Over the next decade, the herd is built up again. Except, no one wants to buy your cattle when everyone else is selling too – this year,


12 | THE TABLET | 16 July 2011


Somali women displaced by severe drought stand in line to get food handouts at a centre operated by the Government and local non-governmental organisations, south of Mogadishu. Photo: CNS


livestock prices for pastoralists had dropped by 80 per cent by the end of May. The scenario now is akin to watching a bus sliding ever closer to the edge of a cliff. While livestock remain, food remains. When a fam- ily’s last cow is gone, there is a swift and calamitous increase in hunger – “food crisis” becomes “famine”. Fergus Conmee, Cafod’s Africa Emergency manager, describes the huge frustration caused by many government donors, with honourable exceptions, being slow to react to the calls for action that first came several months ago. “There are very good early warn- ing systems in the Horn of Africa,” he said. “It was known from early in the year that this


Community members


themselves are clear that the climate is becoming more erratic and extreme


situation was coming. It is good that the UK provided substantial funds, but government donors as a whole have been slow to react.” But what makes the region so vulnerable to food crises? Firstly, it’s a tough climate, and it’s getting worse. The gaps between drought periods are getting shorter all the time – a herder can no longer expect a five- or 10-year period to build up the “bank account” of livestock between droughts. Community members themselves are clear that the climate is becoming more erratic and extreme. On my trip with James Galgallo we were startled to hear one village leader refer to this, saying “Bush, [the former US President] has broken the computer of God.”


Conflict doesn’t help either. It was an impor- tant reason behind the 1980s famines, and it doesn’t help now. Somalia is shaped like a fig- ure seven on the Horn of Africa. In the south (along the vertical line of the seven), civil war has bedevilled the country since a series of ill-judged military interventions in the 1990s. Protracted war has destroyed livelihoods, made it harder for people to farm and trade, and brought health and education services to their knees. With little by way of government, there is no one to plan agricultural policies or invest in water supply. Aid agencies struggle to travel and work in a country where kidnap and killing of aid staff is common. So there isn’t much of a buffer before the bus reaches the end of the cliff, and it is indeed Somalia where the crisis is now at its worst. Thousands a day are arriving from Somalia at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Their livelihoods have been exhausted and the only option is to walk in search of help. By contrast, consider Somaliland, which sits on the top bar of Somalia’s “seven”. Having unilaterally declared independence from Somalia, it has had stable government for some time. In 2010 a Progressio observer mission declared the presidential elections free and fair. Much of Somaliland sits well within the drought’s danger zone. As Suad Abdi, Progressio’s country representative, explained to me last week: “Scarcity of water has posed a continued threat to the lives of the rural nomads for the last five years. In the last year alone, thousands of animals were lost.” However, there is a functioning stable gov- ernment that is interested in making a difference. Ms Abdi continued: “The


The British public has responded generously to a combined appeal launched by Cafod and other UK aid agencies to help people suffering from the drought in the Horn of Africa. But will it be enough to save the thousands ravaged by the effects of climate change?


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