Category Archives: Drought

Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / Europe / Food Security / Ireland / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Vulnerability

Ireland’s longstanding support for Somalia’s poor and its current fight against another ‘Great Hunger’

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Statue commemorating The Great Hunger in 18th-century Ireland (photo on Flickr by munksynz). Carl O’Brian in the Irish Times yesterday (26 Jul 2011) asks: ‘When does a food crisis become a famine?’ Irish journalists, people, government officials and aid agents have a particular passion for fighting famine, which so devastated their country in the mid-1800s, killing … Continue reading →

Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Nutrition / Pastoralism / Pro-Poor Livestock / Vulnerability

Does Africa’s modernizing Horn no longer have room for 20 million drought-adapted livestock herders?

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Letting the herd down to water at the Omo River at Kangate, in southern Ethiopia (photo on Flickr by Carsten ten Brink). Helen de Jode, editor of Modern and Mobile: The Future of Livestock Production in Africa’s Drylands, argues in the Guardian last week that ‘underneath the high visibility famine in the Horn of Africa lies … Continue reading →

Climate Change / Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Vulnerability

United Nations upgrades drought in southern Somalia to famine status

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An elderly Somali woman arrives at Dadaab refugee camp, in northern Kenya; despite the dangers, thousands of refugees every week are making the journey south from Somalia into Kenya, walking for weeks across the desert and braving attacks by armed robbers and wild animals; Dadaab is now the world’s largest refugee camp, supporting more than 370,000 … Continue reading →

Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / Food Security / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Vulnerability

Drought bites harder in pastoral regions of Africa’s Horn

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Map of drought-afflicted areas in the Horn of Africa as of 28 June 2011 (map credit: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, web-posted on the ReliefWeb website). ‘. . . [A]fter the worst drought in 60 years, more than 10m people in the Horn of Africa need emergency food aid. Livestock have … Continue reading →

Drought / East Africa / Kenya / Somalia / Vulnerability

‘I never thought I’d lose all my cattle; I never thought I’d be a refugee’–Abdi Farah Hassan

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A kilometre outside Waridaad village, in Somalia, carcasses of dead sheep and goats stretch across the landscape; this and other regions of the Horn of Africa are suffering from one of the driest years in memory; severe shortages of food and water, along with spiralling food prices and the deaths of livestock, have plunged many … Continue reading →

Drought / East Africa / Pastoralism / Somalia / Vulnerability

Exodus from rural Somalia; long drought depletes families of last crops, animals, food

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Despite the dangers, thousands of refugees every week are making the journey to Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, walking for weeks across the desert and braving attacks by armed robbers and wild animals; Dadaab is now the world’s largest refugee complex, currently supporting more than 370,000 people (11 July 2011) (photo on Flickr by Oxfam International). In … Continue reading →

Climate Change / Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Southern Africa / Vulnerability

Coping with weather variability–urgent in Africa whether or not it is due to climate change

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The worst drought in 60 or so years is biting deeper into countries in the Horn of Africa; artists from around the world painted canvases illustrating the human impact of climate change in their countries; 16 of these canvases were being exhibited at the UN Climate Negotiations in Poznan, Poland, in Dec 2008 (image credit: … Continue reading →

Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / Report / Somalia / Vulnerability

Massive livestock deaths in drought-ravaged Horn of Africa increase conflicts and close schools

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Food shortages are affecting some 10 million people in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa in July 2011;  Oxfam reports that in some parts of Kenya and Ethiopia, 60 percent or more of the livestock herds have perished (image credit: UNHCR and USAID). >>> The humanitarian news service IRIN reports yesterday on the severe drought ravaging the … Continue reading →

Drought / Food Security / Kenya / North America / USA

Improve US food aid by adding animal-source protein–Oxfam

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An undernourished child in Kenya drinks store-bought ‘maziwa lala’ (sour milk) (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). Eric Muñoz, a policy adviser for Oxfam America, blogs in the Guardian about a new report that takes a hard look at the commodities the US uses to respond to disaster and food insecurity, such as is unfolding in the Horn of … Continue reading →

Climate Change / Drought / Ethiopia / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Uganda

Deathly drumbeat of another drought in Africa’s Horn

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A cow felled by disease is skinned and left by the roadside in rural Ethiopia (picture credit: ILRI/Habtamu). ‘A drought in the Horn of Africa, triggered by the same La Niña episode that caused massive flooding in Australia last year, is plunging millions of pastoralists closer to food insecurity. ‘Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and … Continue reading →