Millions of people across Africa face extreme hunger due to droughts: Humanitarian groups

By Hassan Isilow

JOHANNESBURG (AA) - Millions of people across Africa are at risk of extreme hunger due to worsening droughts caused by delayed rains and other climatic conditions, humanitarian groups have warned.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said some 25 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya may face extreme hunger as a result of severe drought.

“The region is entering its fifth season without rainfall,” Madiha Raza, spokesperson for the IRC, told Anadolu Agency via telephone from the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

She said many people in the horn of Africa region depend on rains, adding that their livestock have been severely affected.

The horn of Africa region has had four failed rainy seasons forcing pastoralist communities to leave their homes in search of pasture and water.

“As of May, 6.1 million people have been affected by the drought emergency, of whom 771,400 have been displaced from their homes in search of water, food and pasture: the majority are women and children,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Peter Ekayu, deputy head of OCHA Somalia, said in a video statement on Tuesday that the drought situation in Somalia is getting worse.

“We are actually moving from a drought response now into prevention of famine,” he said.

Ekayu appealed to the international community to pay attention to the situation in Somalia.

“This drought season is seen as much more intense as what we saw in 2017, so we are trying to increase that level of urgency. We are trying to document cases of mortality” he said.

The IRC said in a report on Wednesday that children, especially girls, are dropping out of school as the drought forces families to migrate in search of food, increasing the exposure of girls to perpetrators of violence.

“In Ethiopia’s Somali region, one teacher reported that the school’s enrollment dropped from 300 to 20 due to the drought,” the report said.

Experts blame climate change as the main driver for droughts in the horn of Africa region which has semi-arid conditions.

Many trees have been cut in parts of southern Somalia for coal.

The Sahel region and Madagascar are also faced with droughts. Madagascar was hit by six tropical weather systems from January to April 2022, killing at least 214 people and affecting about 571,100 across the country.