5.3 The specter of famine is back in the Horn of Africa

Overview

On March 10, 2017, the United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General (USG) for humanitarian affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator delivered a statement to the UN Security Council about the ongoing humanitarian crisis, the largest since the foundation of the UN more than seventy years ago. The USG reported about the Lake Chad region and his missions to Yemen [1], South Sudan, Somalia, and Kenya, in particular northern Kenya where pastoralists are badly affected by the drought caused by the recent very atypical El Niño.

The region in focus here is the Horn of Africa (HoA), a region that is most eastern on the African continent and includes the countries Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda. As evidenced by the statement of the USG, a large part of the region is affected by a serious emergency situation.

The causes of the emergency are complex and their relative importance varies by country. Causes include, in no specific order: drought, climate change, desertification, and the recent El Niño. Agricultural governance is generally poor in the region, with agriculture already for a long time a low-priority sector, evidenced by under-investment and a resulting degrading of agricultural infrastructure. This poor agricultural governance can be seen as one of the root causes of the low resilience of the sector against drought in this region [2]. 

As will be explored in the following sections, the current emergency in the region is exceptional on several accounts. After a general overview of the situation and aid requirements, a more detailed assessment of the situation in individual countries in the HoA is described. 

Features of the emergency situation in the Horn of Africa

In the HoA, the focus of this section, the situation is worse than during the previous emergency of 2010-11 (OCHA 2017c) because several areas have experienced three consecutive drought years, “exhausting people’s capacity to cope with another shock.” The drought also affects watering points for cattle and river flow, traditionally a source for irrigation in the HoA. Worst affected by drought are Somalia, east and southeastern Ethiopia, and northwestern Kenya, in an area adjacent to South Sudan (Figure 5.3). With the exception of southern-central and southwest Kenya and the areas shaded in gray in the figure, most of which usually record abundant rainfall, most areas in the region are semi-arid lowlands and, more rarely, highlands that experience most of their rainy season sometime between March and June. Rainy seasons are short (sometimes just two months), making cattle the mainstay of the livelihood systems. In fact, cattle herding is an efficient system to collect dispersed biomass and concentrate it in milk and meat producing cattle. As will be mentioned below, the drought badly affected cattle, the quality and numbers of which are decreasing, thus reducing or erasing the income and overall prospects of pastoralists. As a result, cattle production and markets collapsed.

As mentioned, the HoA is part of a significantly larger spatial ensemble of insecurity (including food insecurity) that it interacts with, willingly or unwillingly [3].  Although several early warning systems for climate anomalies and food insecurity operate in the area at various scales (regional, such as AGRHYMET [4]  and ICPAC [5], and almost all countries), they are generally ill equipped to handle the extremely complex situations that arise from the interaction of abnormal weather and war. It remains that, according to OCHA (2017c), compared with the drought of 2011, governments were now better prepared and therefore responded efficiently to the deteriorating situation; they were proactive and led the relief efforts, especially in Ethiopia and Kenya. In addition, risk management systems for farmers have been established in several countries, including the “R4 Rural Resilience Initiative” in Ethiopia (WFP 2107a) and national agricultural insurance in Kenya (KLIP 2017).

Figure 5.3. Rank of dryness between June 2016 and May 2017 in the HoA.

In both Somalia and South Sudan, between 40 and 50% of the population is exposed to insecurity and hunger (44% in Somalia, 47% in South Sudan), while percentages of 5% to 10% prevail in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan, where drought victims and displaced persons constitute the bulk of the people in need. In Djibouti, a very small and climatically vulnerable country, the population exposed to insecurity and hunger climbs to one person in 3, while for the HoA as a whole, about 8% of people are affected.

It is stressed that all refugee movements of the size of those occurring in the HoA constitute a set-back in development, with a very slow recovery curve. To start with, depending on the timing of the movements, refugees often lose their crops and livelihoods (including cattle) at home. Only if the calendar permits—and if provided with land and tools—can they produce at least part of their own food at the location of their settlement in either home or host country. Moreover, due to a stressful life and shortages, overall health declines, especially in children, which may affect them throughout their lives. Also, despite the fact that usually every effort is made to ensure schooling, refugee children typically suffer a retrogression in education that reduces their chances in life. 

Short analysis of the situation by country

Djibouti

Insecurity in Djibouti stems partly from unfavorable rainfall and from the situation on its southwest border, which is contested between Djibouti and Eritrea. According to FEWSNET (FEWSNET 2017a), however, the situation in the country should improve from IPC phase 3 (Crisis) to 2 (Stressed) despite the fact that Qatar has recently withdrawn its peace-keeping force from the area. A contributing factor to this improvement has been generally satisfactory rainfall that has restored grazing lands.

Ethiopia

In June 2017, FAO listed Ethiopia among countries that face a “widespread lack of access to food,” stressing the impact of drought on local livelihood systems in southeastern areas and the lingering effects of the previous year’s severe drought in northern areas. Drought affected the secondary season (which is the first (February to June) Belg season) throughout the country, but especially crops and pastures in the south and southeastern areas (FEWSNET/WFP 2017). Meanwhile, the effects of the 2015 drought continued to impact local livelihoods in northern areas. Altogether, FAO estimates that 7.8 million people are food insecure (FAO 2017b), mostly in pastoral areas. The main season (Meher), which is to be harvested from August to October-November, is not particularly affected so far, or only in limited pockets. 

The problems are most serious in pastoralist areas, some of which have suffered three years of consecutive drought. As a result, some 5.6 million people in Ethiopia require emergency food assistance in 2017 (OCHA 2017c). FAO preliminary estimates suggest that up to three million cattle, calves, and milk cows have died, representing up to 90 percent of the total in some areas (Weblinks_3).

FAO (2017b) did not, however, rank Ethiopia among the countries in need of external assistance, as the main Meher crop is to be harvested between now and the end of the year, and because the country is large and diverse, with highlands usually well-endowed with rainfall. This may change, however, as about 150 thousand hectares of Belg [6] cropland are estimated to have been hit by fall armyworm, affecting 6 of the 11 states. The impact was most severe in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ State (SNNPS), where about 10,000 people are affected (ACAPS 2017b). The armyworms may also affect the main season crops, and the climate of uncertainty is affecting the price of maize. Over the last 3 months, the price of maize was up 9.2% (on average, it increases 5.1% over the same period), while for the last year the increase is 3.4% (instead of an average decrease of 0.7%) (FAO 2017c).

Eritrea

Eritrea is absent from virtually all accounts of the situation in the HoA, which is surprising given the similarities in climate with neighboring areas in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Sudan. According to the World Food Programme (WFP) Seasonal Explorer (WFP 2017c), most of the country did experience a wet spell (above-normal rainfall) in April, followed by about average rain and a bout of drought in July. In fact, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Outlook (CPC 2017) classifies parts of the country as suffering from “abnormal dryness.”

Kenya

At the beginning of the year, 23 out of Kenya’s 47 counties were affected by drought, and Kenya’s government declared a national emergency. Areas in the north of the country--in the north of Turkana district (which borders South Sudan and Uganda), north Hor Constituency (Marsabit district), and Mandera, on the border with Somalia and Ethiopia--are semi-arid; they usually cultivate some maize. Production fell dramatically (up to 100%), and large numbers of animals died in Turkana, Marsabit, Samburu, and Mandera counties. Data collected by UNICEF from 10 affected counties indicates that close to 175,000 children are not attending early pre-primary and primary schools, primarily due to the drought’s impact.

For poor pastoral households in the northern central and eastern regions, the crisis (IPC phase 3) may continue into 2018. This year’s long rains (March to May) were well below average in most of the country, except in the southern-central and southwestern highlands in an area from Central Region (where elevation usually exceeds 2,500 meter with moderate drought) to the regions of Nyanza and Western across the southern rift valley, where elevation is mostly close to 1,500 meter and where rainfall was average. Comparable to Ethiopia, maize prices are high and armyworm outbreaks are likely to worsen already stressed maize crops. 

Somalia

According to FAO (2017a), “The two consecutive seasons of poor rainfall in 2016 created a domino effect of losses” that also extended to livestock. About 5 million people in the country are affected by food insecurity with about 1.4 million in IPC phase 3 (crisis). The situation is expected to worsen and reach its peak during the Jilaal season (dry season from January to March).

Based on a survey it conducted in June 2017, FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) (2017a) assesses that security outcomes and humanitarian needs are expected to persist in most parts of Somalia through the end of 2017. In some areas where livestock is the mainstay of livelihood systems (mostly in the central-western and northern parts of the country including Mudug, Galgadud, Gedo (which borders northeast Kenya), Middle Shabelle and Lower Shabelle regions), food security may deteriorate between now and the end of the year. Depending on the amount and nature of the assistance that will be provided to Somalia, local famine (IPC scale 5) cannot be excluded.

Notes

[1] Although Yemen is not part of the Horn of Africa (HoA), it is geographically close and maintains close links to the region. The countries of the HoA are grouped in the regional development association IGAD (Inter-governmental Authority on Development, with headquarters in Djibouti). IGAD has recently established the IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI, 2016).

[2] Under-investment in agriculture was one of the main drivers of the 2008 crisis of high food prices (Mittal 2009, ATV 2010), even if several other local and global triggering factors can be identified (Evans 2008). 

[3] Previous large humanitarian crises were those of the West African Sahel (from the early sixties to the mid eighties), the Ethiopian droughts of the mid-eighties, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, several large earthquakes (for example, Haiti, 2010), and floods and medical emergencies (such as the West African Ebola outbreak, 2013-16).

[4] http://www.agrhymet.ne/eng/index.html

[5] http://www.icpac.net/

[6] Belg is harvested before or during July.

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