Horn of Africa drought drives 20 million towards hunger

Horn of Africa drought drives 20 million towards hunger

NAIROBI: From southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya and Somalia, swathes of land across the Horn of Africa are being ravaged by a drought that has put 20 million people at risk of starvation. A donor conference last week raised almost $1.4 billion for the region, which the UN says is facing its worst drought in 40 years. In the afflicted areas, people eke out a living mainly from herding and subsistence farming.

They are experiencing their fourth consecutive poor rainy season since the end of 2020 — a situation exacerbated by a locust invasion that wiped out crops between 2019 and 2021. “The number of hungry people due to drought could spiral from the currently estimated 14 million to 20 million through 2022,” the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said last month.

Six million Somalis — 40 percent of the population — are facing extreme levels of food insecurity and there is “a very real risk of famine in the coming months” if current conditions prevail, the UN humanitarian response agency OCHA said last week. Another 6.5 million people in Ethiopia are “acutely food insecure”, it said, as well as 3.5 million in Kenya.

Across the region, one million people have been driven