Sub-Saharan Africa is in the grip of an extraordinary hunger crisis, with more than 40-million people needing emergency food aid across 36 countries, according to United Nations figures.
The crisis has been made worse by East Africa experiencing an unusual drought that has coincided with Southern Africa’s ”hunger gap”, or the lean time between one harvest and the next. The number of people being sustained by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has risen to 40-million, from 21-million in 1995.
Kenya, where three million need food aid, has seen a steady decline in rainfall during the past decade. In Southern Africa, the HIV/Aids pandemic has crippled subsistence farming, leaving adults too sick to work in the fields and others struggling to cope with orphans.
In Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where civil wars continue, the WFP says 6,1-million and three million people respectively need emergency aid. The problems have been compounded by the political failures in those countries.
Care International on Wednesday issued a renewed appeal for Niger, which is again threatened with starvation, partly because of the knock-on effect of last year’s crisis.
Fiona Turnbull, a Care spokesperson, said: ”In Niger, our figures show that 60% of people got into debt as a result of the food crisis last year. When the harvest came in, they had to sell most of that to pay off debts. People are getting poorer and poorer, and have less to fall back on.”
The charity is appealing for funds to distribute food to the most needy, as well as to replace lost cattle and set up seed banks in an attempt to ward off further crises. — Guardian Unlimited Â