Drought and food crisis in Africa threatens millions with starvation

Ronan Scully

In my work with international development organisation Self Help Africa, who are so thankful to Irish Aid and the Irish public for their continuing support, I hear almost daily and see regularly on my trips to Africa the challenges being faced by communities, especially rural communities, who are being pushed to the brink of starvation and thirst by extreme climate events.

As I write, around 25 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya are on the verge of starvation, unable to access water, and struggling to grow the food that they need to survive. In Somalia alone over a million people have fled their homes in the past year. Across East Africa, extreme hunger is on the rise. The region is entering a sixth consecutive season without enough rainfall. This drought has now surpassed the failed rains of 2011, when an estimated 250,000 people died.

In its most recent update from Ethiopia, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the situation in the country “is still extremely dire and the urgency to further scale up the humanitarian response is high”. It added that spring rains have returned to the region, but “only provided temporary solace through replenished surface water sources and rejuvenated pasture” without having a “long-term impact on the restoration of livelihoods”.

The report said: “The same rains have caused floods leading to destruction of shelter, houses and public infrastructures, livestock deaths and further displacements” in some areas.

Successive years of drought and high food prices have weakened many people’s ability to grow crops, raise livestock, and buy food. The dramatic and severe food insecurity is expected to persist, driving high humanitarian needs well through 2023, with forecasts predicting a sixth failed rainy season in March-July 2023.

Harvests have yielded little and water sources have dried up. Conflict and insecurity continue to intersect with the drought emergency. As conditions continue to worsen, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee in search of safety and assistance. Several East African nations appeared in the recent UN report “Hunger Hotspots,’ with climate threats in some cases piled on top of political and economic vulnerabilities.

The region’s string of weak rainy seasons is now the longest in 70 years, with the current drought exacerbated by baking high temperatures that have parched the land. Vegetation has withered and watering holes have dried up, leading to the death of millions of cattle, sheep, and goats. In a region where most people are employed in agriculture and few communities have irrigation systems or long-term water storage, the consequences have been profound. Farmers whose crops fail often couldn’t afford to purchase new seed for the next season’s planting. Most herders have no access to insurance; when their cattle died, they were forced to abandon the livelihood that may have sustained their families for generations.

A litany of other issues compounded the crisis: local conflict, high food prices triggered by the war in Ukraine, ongoing conflict in Ethiopia, Somalia ,and Sudan, and global economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The environment in East Africa is burning. It's melting. It's flooding. It's depleting. It's drying. It's dying and is evoking a dystopian type of future. Addressing climate change is a human rights issue for everyone and there is still time to act and make a better, more equal, and safer world for all. But that time is now.

At Self Help Africa, with help and support from Irish Aid, we are responding as best we can to this crisis, supporting communities who are on the frontline of changing climate in both Kenya and Ethiopia, as they struggle to make ends meet against near insurmountable odds. We are introducing new crop varieties to small-scale farming households, promoting alternate drought tolerant crops and supporting irrigation development, as just some of the ways that can help families to survive.

‘Climate smart’ farming might sound complex, but it can be a lot simpler than it sounds! For example – leaving stems and stalks of grain crops in the field after harvesting is one simple, yet effective way to retain moisture in the soil and keeping the sun from beating down directly on the earth, while ‘zero tillage’ planting – a method that encourages farmers to dig just a small hole for each seed, rather than tilling an entire field, is another way of keeping whatever moisture does exist, in the ground.

Other simple farming approaches – like growing ground cover crops – like groundnuts or sweet potato vines – also shade the earth from the sun’s rays, while they provide important and nutritious crops for the family to eat and the farmer to sell. And activities like manure making, composting, and tree planting are all activities that help restore depleted nutrients from the soil, and keep farmland healthy and productive from one year to the next.

Science has a vital role to play as we plot our course and ensure that the generations of today and the generations to come have the resilience to cope with the challenges that we will face. And as science is finding answers in the west – with the adoption of renewable energy in all its forms – so too it will find answers that will protect the poorest and the most vulnerable.

At Self Help Africa, our newly published five year strategy expressly identifies the changing climate and the problems it can create as the context within which we must implement our work. Yes, we are a farming organisation that supports farmers in some of the poorest and most disadvantaged places on earth, and yes, we will retain our focus on supporting small-scale farming communities to grow more and to earn more on their farms in the years ahead.

Self Help Africa can't stop climate change, but we can help those who are suffering because of it. Together we can stop people from going hungry. Our team provides life-saving support and helps communities build resilience into the future. By donating to Self Help Africa you can help us to save more lives. Together, we can help protect those most vulnerable in various communities to the effects of climate change.

If you want to learn more about our work you can do so by visiting www.selfhelpafrica.org, or by contacting me at Westside Resource Centre on Seamus Quirke Road in Galway. You can also drop me a line at ronan.scully@selfhelpafrica.org if you would like to organise a fundraiser to support our much needed work.

*Ronan Scully is a Clara native working with Self Help Africa.