Food Insecurity Seizes East Africa

Severe drought continues to plague East Africa, with Ethiopia, Kenya, Somaliland and eastern Uganda being areas of particular concern. The drought has intensified fears over food security in the region, as rising global food prices increase pressure on the poor. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet), a US agency, says the drought is “the most severe food security emergency in the world today”, with more than 7 million people in the region in need of humanitarian assistance. After failed and erratic rains, Fewsnet has said that “in the absence of a significant humanitarian intervention, crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity are expected to persist, if not deepen, through at least early 2012”. Governments in the region have reacted by declaring the drought and resulting food crisis national disasters.

"The climate’s changing"

The drought began with the failure of the short rains in December 2010, leading to severe food shortages for an estimated 8 million people. The region, which suffered a two-year regional drought in 2007-2009, has grown accustomed to unusual weather patterns disrupting harvests. Climate change has removed all stability. “We don’t always get rains when we expect them. Farmers used to get two harvests a year. Sometimes they only get one now because the rains don’t come,” Stephen Mwelu, an agricultural trainer in eastern Uganda explained. 

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the La Niña Effect, which was reportedly responsible for torrential rains in Australia, is now behind the poor rains in the Horn of Africa. The opposite of the well-known El Nino Effect, it is a process whereby the surface of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean cools, resulting in particularly dry periods across East Africa.

Similarly, the drought has led to repeated crop failure, the depletion of grazing resources and significant livestock mortality. Some 220,000 cattle deaths have been reported in the Borena zone on Ethiopia’s southern border with Kenya, resulting in many East African pastoralists being forced to embrace more nomadic lifestyles.

Malnutrition is also widespread across the region. In southern Somalia for example, one in four children are acutely malnourished. Levels in the Horn of Africa have been intensified by the collapse of milk production in the drought-affected areas. Up until October, when the next rains are expected, water sources will probably become increasingly limited.

Food security

The extended dry periods, coupled by increased food and fuel prices, have resulted in a food security crisis. The context surrounding the drought has ensured its effects are acutely felt: “Chronic vulnerability, poverty, social injustice and climate change are all responsible for recurring food insecurity in the Horn of Africa,” says Mohamed Khaled, CARE’s regional emergency coordinator for East Africa.

Increased food prices have the greatest impact on those spending most of their income on nutrition. Consequently it is the poor who feel the effects of the drought more intensely, as the price of staple foods soars. The price of maize in Kenya, for example, has increased by between 60% and 85% over the last year, meaning that many families are now unable to buy adequate supplies. Some of Somalia’s retail markets have seen record food prices this year.

The rate at which world food prices are increasing has left conservative predictions in ruins. For almost 20 years, scientists had claimed that in a worst-case scenario, climate change would mean food prices doubling by about 2080. And yet, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, world food prices have already more than doubled since 1990. By Oxfam’s predictions they are set to double once again by 2030.

The magnitude of the error was partly due to the belief that increased carbon dioxide levels would boost agricultural production by acting as a natural fertiliser. Instead, farmers must now compete with unpredictable cycles of weather, battling conditions as they seek to gain food security on both a local and international level. Rising demands require farmers to roughly double their production levels – yet in East Africa they are forced to battle ongoing water shortages and intense levels of heat. Tropical pests and diseases are also destroying crops, such as the Banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) disease currently devastating banana plantations across sub-Saharan Africa. New crop varieties and farming techniques are required to combat these adverse conditions, but the anticipated funding is yet to materialise.

In 2007 and 2008, grain stockpiles were low worldwide, resulting in prices doubling and often tripling, as well as the hoarding of food supplies. Unsurprisingly, this led to riots erupting in more than 30 different countries. Hans Timmer, the World Bank's director of development prospects, has suggested there are similarities with the situation in 2008, with protests in countries such as Uganda. Although Timmer maintained that the situation is “slightly different” this year (particularly as grain stocks are much larger), according to the Montpellier Panel of agriculture experts, which met last month, the world has now entered a global food state where food prices will remain high for all, and be increasingly volatile.

Crisis

To ease the food security crisis, East Africa requires urgent funding to protect and rebuild livestock assets, introduce seed varieties with increased drought resilience, and provide food and water for livestock. There are calls for better water management practices across the region, and for a greater emphasis on smallholder farming. Djibouti, Somaliland and Kenya have declared the drought and food crisis national disasters, while the Ethiopian government has revised its humanitarian requirements document in April 2011, hoping to mobilise a humanitarian response to the need.

Responses must be sustainable and long-term. As the food security crisis intensifies in the Horn, it seems ever more likely that a sustainable solution will necessitate involvement from outside. As Rod Charters, UN Emergency Coordinator for Eastern and Central Africa says, "the current crisis is not an unusual or chance event, but rather a chronic feature of the region."