Famine in the Horn of Africa

Famine in the Horn of Africa


How have things changed?


Sep 5th 2011, 17:27 by J.L. | NAIROBI

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IN THE worst hunger crisis the world has seen this century, in the Horn of Africa, 29,000 children may already have perished. More are certain to. But apart from hand-wringing, what have been the reactions to the famine?



The world might think it has moved on since the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. But charities are using the same emotive photos they used then to pitch for money. Television cameras are just as intrusive—perhaps more so. Camera crews have been thrown out of a hospital in the Dadaab refugee camp, in Kenya, in an effort to preserve the dignity of the patients. "Without pictures it is difficult to get action," laments an Ethiopian government official. Even so, the media cycle has changed since the pre-internet days. So has Africa itself.



The celebrity appeal for this famine is coming from Africans themselves. An organisation called Africans Act 4 Africa says it wants to gather together African stars to raise money and awareness. It claims Kenyans have already texted in $2m in donations on their mobile phones. If it continues to have a voice on Facebook and Twitter, Act 4 Africa's bigger influence may be to compel African governments to be more generous. The United Nations says it has only $1.3 billion of the $2.4 billion it needs to assist the 12m people in need in the region. However ambiguous those numbers are, there is no doubting the miserable response of African countries so far. Only a handful have pledged anything. The biggest contribution has come from South Africa. But it has given just $1m and a planeload of food, though its farmers profiting from rising food prices. More positive has been the response of African businesses. Kenyan companies have given $4m in famine relief. Abdirashid Duale, the owner of Dahabshiil, Somalia's biggest money transfer company, has given $100,000. "Just the beginning," Mr Duale says.



The famine has prompted a shift in American foreign policy, for now at least. Robert Paarlberg, a food policy expert at Wellesley College, argues that the American administration has focused on counter-terrorism in Somalia at the expense of investing in agriculture or helping the people. Now the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, says America will not prosecute charities who deal with the al-Qaeda-linked Shabab militia as long as they are engaged in "good-faith" efforts to help the dying. Mr Paarlberg argues that the famine in the 1980s coincided with a drop in official American funding for farmers in Africa. Again, Mrs Clinton seems determined not to make the same mistake. She underlined the importance of spending on long-term recovery in the Horn of Africa during a visit to an agriculture think-tank in Washington. DC.



The Ethiopian and Kenyan governments have been particularly torn in their response to the famine. Ethiopia says it needs more cash from donors to feed 5m of its 82m people. But it is also desperate to avoid being defined again by hunger. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi made a state visit to China last week to extol investment opportunities. A $163m deal by a Dutch brewer, Heineken, to buy up two state-owned Ethiopian beer labels, with ambitions to replace German malt with local malt, is just one example of the bustle away from the famine.



For Kenya, the hundreds of thousands of Somalis drifting into the country is a national security issue. Kenyan officials worry that the Dadaab camp, which already has over 400,000 registered refugees, is going to mutate into a Somali city inside its borders. Fundraising aside, the famine has not been an urgent issue in Kenya. The pressure on food and fuel prices for those in the cities is more politically charged. The World Bank says the price of maize is getting more attention: a competing news story this week was the opening of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kenya.



The famine has conveniently underlined the existing views of many experts. In inflated prices and stolen food anti-corruption campaigners see proof of how aid rots everything it touches. Climatologists see evidence of climate change. The Indian Ocean is warming up, they venture, and the poorest Africans will suffer the consequences in drought and volatile rains.



Today, in contrast to 1984-85, the argument against deathly images is stronger. Majka Burhardt, a climber and motivational speaker who works to promote a positive impression of Ethiopia, argues for interspersing the negative with positive images. "What would happen if an image of a lush coffee forest was flashed on the screen?" she asks. "A lake? A working clinic?"



For better or for worse, the famine is useful platform. Many of the world's development ministers have made the trek to Dadaab, in part to boost the profile of their ministries. Deborah Doane of the World Development Movement, a lobby for "fairer world trade", points out that donor money only buys half as much food as it did a decade ago. The steep rise in food prices, she argues, is the result of speculation in the futures markets; the famine is a chance for stricter financial regulation. In the end though, everyone looks to the sky. As one World Food Programme official notes, "aid cannot make it rain."





Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/09/famine-horn-africa-0