Food Crisis

            
Displaced Somalis await food distribution at a camp in Mogadishu. One in 10 children in parts of drought-hit Somalia is at risk of starving to death, twice as many as recently as March, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said (Source: Reuters)

Climate change impacts, political and economic irresponsibility have combined to plunge the Horn of Africa into the worst food crisis in decades. Christoph Mueller, Head of the German Red Cross in Eastern Africa, explains how to fight famine.
East Africa now faces its worst food crisis since the 1980s. How has this happened?
It is a combination of natural, political and economic reasons.

Due to changing weather as a consequence of global climate change rain has become quite unpredictable. Large parts of Somalia, northern Kenya and Ethiopia didn’t get the necessary rainfall which has had a devastating effect on the agriculture.

The political instability in the Horn of Africa region has lead to a massive influx of Somali refugees into Kenya and Ethiopia. Right now, more than 9,000 people from Somalia cross the borders of Kenya every day.

General economic under-development, combined with unusually high transportation and fuel prices, plays an additional role.