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Millions of Africans Facing Starvation
Submitted by jgehring on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 10:00am.
Story summary:
More than 14.5 million of the world's poorest people living in five countries across East Africa need immediate help, the United Nations said, 3.6 million more than during the last food crisis of 2006. Soaring world food and fuel prices, worsening conflict and disease have intensified the effects of chronic poverty and climate change which has brought ever-more frequent droughts. In Kenya's parched far north, close to Lake Turkana, a herd of more than 200 goats yesterday fought two dozen camels for space around a withering waterhole in Kaeris village, 47 miles east of the district capital, Lokitaung. "Our livestock are dying, there is no pasture, the little money we have cannot buy anything in the market because prices are now too high," said Lukas Ingolan, 55, a Turkana tribe elder squatting in the shade.
Millions of Africans Facing Starvation
The Telegraph
7-28-08
Aid policies of Western donors cannot all be blamed. Somalia's conflict has worsened to the point where aid workers are now almost entirely unable to reach the worst affected. Kenya's political crisis paralysed its crop planting season. Government investments in modern agriculture are woefully inadequate. And despite this, there have been some successes. In Ethiopia, the British Department for International Development has pumped in more than £93 million to fund a cash-for-work programme which has kept more than five million people off handouts this year. Half-a-day's drive south of the watering hole at Kaeris, Jecinta Nakoli, 37, and three friends pooled cash grants from Oxfam given in 2006 to open petty-trading kiosks in their village, Nachukwi. "When people give you food, it is not good," she said, as her cooperative colleagues, all women, nodded enthusiastically in agreement. "It is better to find money from your own sweat and hard work." But these are still the exceptions. Millions of others are still relying on charity to stay alive.