Hunger stalks Africa
A deadly combination of crop failures, year-on-year droughts and the effects of climate change has left millions of people across East Africa hungry. We’re feeding the most vulnerable mothers and children, and we're treating children suffering from the deadly effects of hunger.
Mesgnaw, 66, examines his failed crops in Amid Kebelle, Amhara region, Ethiopia. In late October he only had food for around one more month. By late November, he will have to sell his animals to survive. Unless he receives some help, he and his family will have to leave his land to find work elsewhere once the money from selling his livestock runs out.
Scedhanna, 12, standing on a dried-up field in Ayub Kebelle, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. The drought and food price increases have left 6.2 million Ethiopians in need emergency of food assistance — half of them are children.
Children in the village of Jowhar, in Wajir District, north-east Kenya watch as the body of a two-year-old girl who died from malnutrition is laid to rest. Four consecutive years of poor rains, declines in food stocks and rising food prices have left 10 million people without enough to eat in Kenya.
A child eating Plumpy'Nut at a therapeutic feeding centre in Warakaye Kebelle, Amhara region, Ethiopia.
Tasfa, 13, feeds her younger sister Shishig, 14 months, Plumpy’Nut at the same therapeutic feeding centre in Ethiopia. The centre is part of a community-managed acute malnutrition programme set up by the Ethiopian government, and implemented with Save the Children’s support.
This year, in east Africa, a lethal mix of drought, falling food reserves and an 80% rise in average global food prices pushed millions of people over the edge into hunger. In north-east Kenya, for instance - where a quarter of people earn less than US$1 a day - it cost as much as US$9 a day
for a balanced diet.
“We don’t eat any food during the day,” Habiba, a mother of two, told us. “We usually have black tea in the morning and at noon. Then in the evening we might eat some boiled corn meal.”
In north-east Kenya we:
- fed the most vulnerable children and mothers, and treated children with malnutrition
- gave 1,500 families, with children under five, food vouchers so they didn’t have to sell their possessions to feed themselves
- helped maintain and improve the livestock of more than 25,000 people to get them through the crisis.
In Ethiopia, failed rains and rapidly rising food prices left 75,000 children struggling to survive. Teshfana Elias, a Save the Children community health worker in the village of Keshera, told the Guardian: “Many babies have already died here and I think many more will die in the months to come.”
In 2008/09 we helped make sure 414,000 children in Ethiopia had enough to eat. We delivered emergency food aid where it was most needed, gave families cash payments so they could feed themselves and kept livestock healthy.
An external evaluation of our livelihoods programme commended its excellent performance in providing life-saving cash transfers and help with livestock and veterinary care, so people could carry on earning a living once payments ceased. It described the programme, which reached 134,000 children, as “rich in substance and vast in scope”.
