Africa's Silicon Valley in the heart of Sub-Sahara

To find the African version of Silicon Valley, you don't go to its richest nation in South Africa. Instead, you head to the heart to the Sub-Sahara in Kenya. The nation that still has quite a bit of poverty now has over 6 million broadband connections and 18 million internet users.

For more on how this internet expansion happened we read this article from the Guardian and writer David Smith.

Kenyans enjoy faster broadband connections than their counterparts in Africa's economic powerhouse, South Africa. And the government plans to build a $7bn (£4.36bn), 5,000-acre technology city that is already being branded Africa's "Silicon Savannah".

How did Kenya – a nation that still has its share of poverty and ethnic conflict – get here? "It started as a joke," said Dr Bitange Ndemo permanent secretary at the information and communications ministry. "We said we wanted to beat South Africa – and we did it."

For years Ndemo, a workaholic whose typical day runs from 5.30am to 11pm, found himself bogged down in talks with other African countries about linking to an undersea fibre optic cable that would bring high-speed internet access to millions of people.

"I did a calculation: we were spending more on hotel rooms discussing it than laying the cable," the 52-year-old recalled. "So we broke away and went it alone. South Africa thought we were joking. We didn't know anything about cables; I stayed up overnight reading about it on the internet."

That was 2007, Ndemo said, and two years later Kenya landed the cable in record time.

Since then the country has gone from fewer than 6,000 broadband connections to 6m, and from fewer than 3m internet users to 18m.

In Ndemo's grand vision, technology is not an optional luxury but rather central to 21st century education, development, economic growth – and ending Africa's reliance on foreign aid. He has ambitions for "e-learning" in schools across Kenya. "After the cable landed, we gave unlimited capacity to all the universities.

"Access enables us to become more innovative. Broadband allows people to build things you never thought of. Four or five years ago you could not put the words 'Kenya', 'innovation' and 'research' in the same sentence. Now it is starting to happen."

A life-long struggle against poverty

The struggle against poverty can be decades long for some. Even looking to friends and family can be of no help, because they might be just as deep into poverty.

From All Africa, comes this profile of one woman who has struggled with poverty all of her life.

In a tiny six-by-six feet single roomed house in Githurai, Nairobi lives 52-year-old divorcee Teresiah Wairimu, with her five children.

Food, shelter and clothing have become a luxury she can barely afford.

A few dirty dishes lie scattered around the poorly lit room that has been subdivided into a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom.

Wairimu, who has danced with poverty most of her life, knows too well what it means to live from hand to mouth.

"We only eat when there is money because I cannot afford the upkeep. Meals here are not a guarantee and we make do with what we have," she tells Capital FM News.

Her back has become accustomed to the rigid and torturous panels of wood that form the support base of her bed.

Even though she has tried to improvise a thicker mattress by sticking old rugs and sacks to the old one, back pains have become the order of the day.

"When people give you help they tell you not to go back to them; in fact they stop picking up my calls because they think that I am asking for money," she says with a tinge of sadness.

Helping herders in Kenya to survive drought

Meteorologists are forecasting more drought like conditions for Kenya and Eastern Africa again next year. Many people who live there have not recovered from the last one in 2011. In the efforts to help withstand the next drought, an NGO has found one solution can be found with the sheep and cattle herders in the region.

From the Guardian, writer Peter Guest tells us about the effort to help pastoralists.

"If they could get the business component, poverty is not a word you could use in Turkana," says Desterius Mulama, financial officer for Cezam and Associates, a Kenyan firm working with the US African Development Foundation (USADF) to improve food security.

Mulama moved to Turkana a year ago to work on the project. He is amazed at the scale of the herds in the region. "There is one old man who has 3,000 camels and 10,000 goats, but he walks barefoot," Mulama says. "If he sold just half of them, he would be a millionaire."

A government census put the number of goats in the county at around 5 million, with 1.5 million cattle. All across Turkana, herders carrying crooks pick their way through acacia trees, guiding huge flocks.

In many cases pastoralists still view animals as wealth and, even when the pasture dries up and there is no water, they will not sell them. The animals die and people starve. Building sustainable trading structures and introducing pastoralists to the cash economy should, Mulama hopes, ease them out of cycles of drought and food insecurity. "For pastoralists, our biggest challenge is to educate them on holding capacity," Mulama says. "Why should I hold 1,000 goats when I can only feed 100?"

Traders from Nairobi are starting to visit the markets in Turkana. Under Mulama's guidance, and with seed funding from USADF, the district livestock marketing council now has offices and computer equipment, and its staff have been trained in bookkeeping and other management disciplines so they will be able to build better commercial links with the rest of the country. A recent sale of 1,000 head of goats for export has raised hopes that the model may work.

Trees and food return to Kenya's Rusinga Island

Agriculture is being forced to adapt to changing weather patterns that bring us more droughts and floods. A lot of that change is beginning in the under-developed nations that have been hit by the severe weather the hardest. Non-Governmental Organizations have been leading the way in teaching small farmers who to adapt.

A story from Reuters Alert Net today shows us some of that change taking place on an island within Kenya's Lake Victoria. The majority of the people of Rusinga Island fished for a living. A problem began to develop for the island when most of the trees were cut down to smoke the fish caught in Lake Victoria. The loss of most of the trees made it impossible to grow any other food on the island.

Writer Pius Sawa tells us how some agricultural concepts borrowed from Australia have helped to grow food on Rusinga Island again.

“You can just see around. We don’t have any trees on the land,” said Evans Odula, the director of Badilisha, a local NGO whose name in Kiswahili means “change.”

....

To deal with the worsening problems, Odula now trains farmers in permaculture (permanent agriculture), a concept that originated in Australia.

Odula describes it as “a way of farming where people are able to provide food throughout the year while protecting the environment.”

“We are trying to see people do farming that is eco-friendly and (with) no use of chemicals,” he said. “(We teach) eco-friendly activities that promote good soil, plants and organisms, and biological ways of pest control.”

On the compound where Badilisha trains farmers there are fodder trees, crops, animal sheds and water harvesting tanks. The shade of the trees is cooling and Odula points out the benefits of the lucerne tree.

“It provides shade (as well as) fodder for the animals, and at the same time firewood,” he said.
Shem Orwa Anditi, a member of one of Badilisha’s self-help groups for farmers, now practises permaculture.

“We are growing cabbages, kale and tomatoes,” the 63-year-old said. “We don’t use any chemical fertilizer, just compound manure. We don’t burn anything in the farm. We use (plant waste) for mulching which keeps water in the soil.”

Anditi, a retired civil servant, now is able to grow enough vegetables to sell as well as being able to feed his family.

Success of Kenya's Democracy in Debate

This article takes a look at Kenya's economic development with respect to its democratic government, suggesting that the presence of a democracy could be hindering it's ability to grow.

Is democracy bad for Kenya's economic development?

As Kenya has entered another election year, debates on the achievements of its democracy are likely to increase. A functioning democracy needs more than elections, but even the management of elections has proven difficult for Kenya in the past, which partly explains why the economic performance has often been weak in election years and beyond.

Video: Kenya's growing population

From Al Jazeera, a the world reaches 7 billion people, a look at how Kenya tries to deal with their exploding population.

From Concern Worldwide: Keeping Moyale Out of Danger: Promise Amidst Disaster

By Kirk Prichard, Advocacy Officer for Concern Worldwide US  and currently based in Nairobi on emergency deployment

You see a lot of heartbreaking events unfold working in an emergency: malnourished children lying in “stabilization clinics”; once-proud pastoralists newly dependent on food assistance for their survival; scores of cattle carcasses littering the parched plains of northern Kenya; camels who have survived the harshest desert conditions for millennia uncharacteristically dying.

And though these images continue to upset me, it is the stories of success that move me the most. Stories like those that have emerged from the district of Moyale where Concern launched an early intervention in 2010 in response to the impending crisis it had been tracking for months.


Moyale is in the far north of Kenya, right on the border of Ethiopia and a few hundred kilometers from Somalia.  This is the exact region where the current drought has had its most devastating impact, killing up to 40 percent of cattle, which are the lifeblood of these pastoralist communities. Reports indicate that 80 percent of the surviving livestock have left the north entirely in search of pasture.  And it is now estimated that over 75 percent of the population in the northern areas is “food insecure” and in need of emergency rations.

Despite being located in the epicenter of the drought, Moyale tells a different story.   Statistics aren’t the best way to describe a very human tragedy, but they illustrate a compelling point.

For example, in Moyale, the rate of “global acute malnutrition” (GAM) among children under five is 13.7 percent: a threshold of 15 percent indicates a humanitarian emergency. In neighboring Marsabit and northwest Wajir, GAM rates are at 27 percent, almost double the international emergency threshold.

Simply put, children in Moyale are better nourished and thereby healthier and more resistant to illness and death than their neighbors.

What has made this difference in parts of Moyale, an area that has similar economic, agricultural and climate conditions as its neighbors?  Early indications suggest that it is in part due to disaster risk reduction programming and early interventions by Concern.

Almost a year ago (in October 2010), the first warning signs of a looming disaster in Moyale began to appear.  When these warnings were first issued, Concern’s nutrition team immediately got to work with a network of local partners to begin scaling up nutrition programs. They launched a large-scale “early intervention” to prevent the situation from deteriorating into a widespread catastrophe.

In other words, instead of waiting until large numbers of children became severely malnourished, Concern designed a program to prevent malnutrition levels from reaching emergency thresholds in the first place.
Here’s how it worked.

Concern worked with the Ministry of Health to hire and train over 120 Community Health Workers (CHWs): these CHWs traveled to the remote arid and semi-arid pastoral lands of Moyale to find and screen children at risk of severe acute malnutrition—children who showed signs of moderate malnutrition, but whose condition was not yet life-threatening.

The Concern-trained CHWs identified all moderately malnourished children that they found during the screenings and outreach, and admitted them into a supplementary feeding program, whereby they received rations of special highly nutritious food and were referred to health facilities for checkups. Concern also provided the families of these children with food rations. Concern’s intervention effectively prevented these children from becoming severely malnourished, and therefore more difficult—and expensive—to treat. Training these CHWs to screen and refer children for treatment cost just 25 USD per worker, and they are improving the lives of children in their communities every day.

In addition to training and providing technical supervision of Community Health Workers, Concern partnered with the Kenyan Ministry of Health to set up and provide technical support for 25 health clinics and approximately 20 outreach sites to improve health and nutrition coverage in communities throughout Moyale District and prevent malnutrition.  To date, among an estimated total population in Moyale of more than 55,000, Concern-supported nutrition services have screened 7,000 children and pregnant and breastfeeding women, and treated 4,190 for moderate acute malnutrition. Of those treated, 89 percent of children under five and 85 percent of mothers recovered and were “cured,” and there were no deaths.

The Concern-supported outreach sites were particularly important in these pastoralist communities because the population is nomadic, moving from place to place many times a year with their herds in search of water and pasture. Communities may seek help at a health facility, but then move on and be unable to return. Outreach services ensure that assistance reaches those who may not be able to access services in the same facility multiple times.

Concern also worked with local partner organizations to assist families with little access to food and at high risk of hunger. Concern and partners provided vulnerable families with livelihoods support, agricultural training and support, and education to boost their income and food security. This early, integrated, multi-sector response helped prevent the most vulnerable from tipping over the edge into crisis.

Investments in scaling up nutrition, preventing hunger, and improving the capacity of the poorest to manage their natural resources and improve their access to food have huge potential. Recent studies on undernutrition published in the Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, and reinforced by the United Nations “Scaling up Nutrition” (SUN) Movement, provide clear evidence of the direct links between proper child nutrition and healthy physical and mental development. 

I am extremely proud of the work Concern has done in Moyale. But the fact that so many people in neighboring districts are facing extreme hunger is unacceptable: it highlights how much hard work remains to be done before we are able to scale up nutrition interventions to reach those at risk quickly and effectively. Investment in long-term development and emergency preparedness is a big part of the solution. We know that development and disaster risk reduction programs save lives—and cost much less than disaster relief. Early, integrated, multi-sector interventions that focus on preventing malnutrition rather than only on treating malnutrition are also vital. But despite their obvious impact and benefit, funding for these types of programs is quite scarce.

There is a saying that I’ve often heard here in Kenya: “Drought comes from God, but famine comes from man.”   The current crisis in the Horn of Africa has many underlying factors: dramatic spikes in food prices, extreme changes in weather patterns, severe drought, entrenched extreme poverty, lack of income opportunities, and poor water and health infrastructure. Regardless, in 2011, a regional food crisis affecting over 12 million people should not be happening. Preventing massive suffering from hunger and malnutrition is within our power—and it is our collective responsibility.

Non-traditional donors steeping up for Horn of Africa relief

Something unique is being seen in the donations coming in for Horn of Africa drought relief. Arab nations are stepping up to play a larger role in contributions. In the past they played a secondary role with smaller donations that the west. Their increase from Arab nations ise sorely needed as the EU and US are unable to help as much as they have before.

From the Guardian, the latest commentary from Jeffery Sachs takes a look at some of the economic factors behind the donations.

The "traditional donors", including the US and the EU, have fallen far short of promises they made at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, in 2009 to assist smallholder farmers, including pastoralists. Both the US and the EU are in a deep political and financial crisis, meaning that neither is likely to step forward with the scale of emergency and long-term aid to the Horn of Africa that they should normally be expected to fulfill.

In this situation, it is heartening that the Gulf countries, including members of the GCC, have demonstrated a readiness to step up their assistance to the Horn of Africa, just across the Red Sea. These countries are experiencing an impressive rise in export earnings this year, giving them the opportunity to scale up their regional and global leadership as well. The Islamic Development Bank, the leading financing institution of the 57 countries of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), has also shown impressive and inspiring dynamism as well as a commitment to the countries in crisis in the Horn of Africa.

New donors, in short, are stepping forward to help fill the urgent needs of the Horn of Africa. Time is extremely short and the needs are great. Generosity and speed are of the essence.

G-20 food ministers attend emergency meeting on the Horn of Africa

France called for an emergency meeting of food and agriculture ministers to discuss the drought in the Horn of Africa. Minsters of the G-20 nations met in Rome to talk about how to best combat the crisis and drum up some more pledges of support.

From the BBC, we find out more about what went on at the meting.

The meeting of ministers from the G20 nations at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation headquarters in Rome was requested by France, the current chair of the G20 group of powerful economies.

"Our meeting is a question of life or death for tens of thousands of people," Mr Le Maire said at the start of the meeting, AFP reports.

Bob Geldof and other celebrity activists are urging the international community to come up with more cash.

They accuse some countries - Italy, France, the Arab states and Germany - of contributing too little in proportion to their national wealth.
Ethiopia safety-net

Mr Le Maire told the BBC said the first aim of the meeting was to co-ordinate the aid and response to the crisis.

"The second goal is also to think about the future and the long-term perspective because what we see here in Africa is that people need to have their own food and to have their own agriculture," he said.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says many people at the heart of the current disaster - in Ethiopia - have emerged relatively unscathed.

This is because the government in Addis Ababa has such an extensive safety net in place, he says.

Why little effort goes into preventing the next crisis

We are seeing many comments today on prevention efforts for drought/famine with the news focused on the current crisis in the Horn of Africa. Weather patterns that occurred months ago predicted that this drought would happen. When the Horn of Africa began to dry up, none of the aid we are seeing pledged now moved into help. If climate change continues, another drought could occur in the region in a couple of years. We could see a repeat of everything we are seeing now shortly unless some money is put into prevention as well as emergency food.

Below is a round up on some of the prevention commentary. First, from the Guardian, columnist John Vidal talks about the repeting cycle the Horn of Africa seems to be trapped in.

Nor was the crisis unexpected. The rains failed early this year in Kenya and Ethiopia, and there has been next to none for two years now in Somalia. Aid agencies and governments have known for almost a year that food would run out by now. But it is only now, when the children begin to die and the cattle have been sold or died that the global humanitarian machine has moved in, with its TV shows, co-ordinated appeals and celebrities. Why did it not go earlier? Because it takes months to prepare properly for a disaster.

Just as in 2008, the war in Somalia is primarily responsible for the worst that is happening. As Simon Levine of the Overseas Development Institute says: "Wars don't kill many people directly but can kill millions through the way they render them totally vulnerable to the kinds of problems they should be able to cope with." In this case, he says, people have lost all their assets and can't access grazing grounds they need. But remember too, that Somalia has been made a war zone by the US-led "war on terror". It's our fault as much as anyone's.

But another, more insidious war has also been taking place across the region. This one is being waged by governments and businesses against the pastoralists. Over the years, they have been steadily marginalised and discriminated against by Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian governments, and now they are further jeopardised by large-scale farming, the expansion of national parks, and game reserves and conservation.

For the politicians in Kampala, Nairobi or Addis, the lifestyle of these people seems archaic and outmoded. They are said to be outside mainstream national development, and to be pursuing a way of life that is in crisis and decline. So the politicians think little of taking away their dry season grazing grounds or blocking their traditional routes to pasture land. However, as seen in major international studies, the pastoralists produce more and better quality meat and generate more cash per hectare than "modern" Australian and US ranches.

Instead of starving the region's people of funds and then picking up the pieces in the bad years – as governments must do now – Britain, the EU, the US and Japan must help people adapt to the hotter, drier conditions they face. With better pumps and boreholes, better vaccination of cattle, help with education, food storage and transport, people can live well again.

The facts are that people donate money when they see suffering on TV. They don't donate money when someone tells them that there hasn't been enough rain lately. NGOs and governments fall into the same trap, they move into action in times of crisis, not during times of preparation. Reuters Alert Net reporters George Obulutsa and Katy Migiro, touch on why charities and governments do little towards development that could prevent the next disaster.

"We have to invest much more in countries that are vulnerable to drought," said the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, Kristalina Georgieva.

"Droughts are going to come again and again."

In the northern district of Moyale, child malnutrition rates are half those of neighbouring districts thanks to investment in drought preparedness, Georgieva said.

At a cost of $20, it is ten times cheaper to identify and treat children who are at risk of malnutrition before they reach a critical state than to pay for life-saving therapeutic care.

"Prevention is not sexy. This is fundamentally what the problem is," she said.

"If out of this drought, we come with a commitment to look into the long term structural factors --if we are brave enough to talk about population growth, if we are brave enough to talk about adaptation to climate change -- then the people who are dying are not dying for nothing."

Finally, the Science and Development Network has an editorial that includes a host of links to stories they did months ago that pointed to the future disaster. We won't include a snippet here but suggest you read it at the following link.

Pad distribution program in Kenya

In a very conservative country like Kenya, even menstruation can prevent young girls from going to school. Especially if the girl comes from a poor family and cannot afford pads. Once class mates find out, they ridicule the girls to the point where they become emotionally scared.

Kenya's government has introduced a new budget item to keep girls in school. Starting this year, a four million dollar program will distribute pads to young school girls. From the Inter Press Service writer, Miriam Gathigah describes how women in the legislature put this on the government's agenda.

In their persistent lobbying, the women parliamentarians brought to the fore a problem that could have continued to hinder the education of young girls. Thirteen-year-old Dorothy Akinyi, a standard seven pupil from Kibera, which is arguably the largest slum in Africa, stays at home every time she menstruates.

"Without sanitary pads life at school is difficult. We are subjected to very embarrassing and humiliating incidences, especially from the boys. Tying a pullover around your waist to hide the soiled patch behind your uniform in case the tissue leaks is a dead giveaway. We choose to stay at home," explains Akinyi. But the situation is bound to change for Akinyi and other girls like her. But only if the money allocated for the sanitary wear is spent efficiently.

"This is gender responsive budgeting at work. Being sensitive to the distinctive needs of men and women, while allocating and spending public funds," explains Jacinta Nyachae, executive director of Kenya Aids Law Project and an advocate of human rights.

Her comments come just as Rwanda prepares to host a global high level meeting on increasing accountability and developing effectiveness through gender responsive budgeting in Kigali from 26 to 28 Jul. The meeting is held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the European Union.

But girls are not the only ones to have benefitted from a gender sensitive strategy. In a move that has seen women break socio-political economic barriers, the planning and budgeting for the establishment of the ministry of gender and children affairs remains government’s strongest show of its commitment to address gender inequality.

"But gender planning and budgeting is not enough, the rampant corruption across various government ministries is a clear indication that there’s need for tracking and monitoring how these funds are used," explains a source from the G-10 alliance, which is a coalition of women organisations fighting for women’s rights.

UN asks for another billion dollars for drought relief

The United Nations is asking for another billion dollars from its member countries to aid the drought in the Horn of Africa. The United States has so far given 28 million dollars for the humanitarian emergency.

From the Guardian, this Associated Press article details the plea for money from the UN.

More than 11 million people are estimated to need help in Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and South Sudan and particularly Somalia, which the UN World Food Programme executive director, Josette Sheeran, called the "epicentre of the famine".

Some mothers have had to make the "horrifying choice of saving the strongest" of their children while leaving the weakest behind to die as starving families make the long, desperate trek from Somalia to refugee camps across borders in search of food aid, said Sheeran.

Lady Amos, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said just under $1bn had been received from donors but "we need another billion".

Video: 'Worst drought in decades' hits Kenya

From Reuters Alert Net, this video gives us a summary of the events surrounding the drought in Kenya and Somalia.

"We either burn charcoal or die of starvation"

From IRIN, a story about one family who is struggling through the drought and livestock theft.

Veronica Erupe has lived in the village of Manyatta Chokaa, along the Isiolo-Samburu district border in northern Kenya, since 2008 when she fled drought and frequent livestock rustling at her Baragoi home, 600km away.

Erupe, a single mother of four, told IRIN how losing the family's livestock had forced her to flee her home and pushed her into a life of poverty selling charcoal.

"I was not born here; my family came to this village from Baragoi to escape the terror of bandits. It’s a miracle that we survived [so] many raids. The final raid, during which our 50 remaining goats were stolen, left us poor.

"It is sad that drought and livestock rustling uprooted us from our home. Baragoi was a place I loved; I had many friends [there].

"I still remember the journey; it took us eight days to reach here [Manyatta Chokaa].

"Life since 2008 has been full of hardships for me and my children; my husband quit the marriage.

"I have been relying on selling charcoal since my arrival here. It provided the first meal for my family and helped construct this house. I could buy food, paraffin and clothes.

"But now, life is expensive and it's difficult for charcoal traders to afford food and items like soap.

"[Recently], the population at our village and other settlements like it - Eremit, Attan, Manyatta Zebra and Ngaremara - has doubled with hundreds of desperate families, who have lost their animals to prolonged drought and cattle rustling.

"This village is now full of former wealthy livestock owners, who are now selling charcoal in Isiolo, so the price of a sack of charcoal has dropped to KSh600 (US$6.67) from KSh1,000 ($11.11) in January.

"But the cost of maize flour, cooking oil, vegetables, paraffin and transport to Isiolo, where we go for treatment, has increased.

"I have tried to adjust, but it's still tough. My children no longer take a bath; I have not bought them clothes this year. I give them bone soup once a month as they were used to eating meat.

"We have to walk over 30km to get good trees to make charcoal but we risk meeting dangerous animals like elephants along the way. Some women and young girls have been attacked, injured and killed.

"It’s meaningless to work for KSh600 a week [but] we have no choice. We either burn charcoal or die of starvation.

"Manual work is no longer available as those who used to employ us to do house chores are also affected. Some girls are selling their bodies, and it’s risky with HIV/AIDS.

"We need assistance to settle, start small businesses. Our children need scholarships to pursue an education, and they need health facilities.

"We [charcoal sellers] are considered a nuisance, enemies to the environment and our charcoal is often confiscated. But we deserve to be assisted rather than condemned."

Half a million children "at risk" in Eastern Africa drought

From IRIN, an update on the drought in Eastern Africa.

At least 500,000 malnourished children in the Horn of Africa's drought-affected areas risk death if immediate help does not reach them, Anthony Lake, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) executive director, has said.

These are the children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, whose clinical signs include swelling in the feet, legs or face caused by an extreme shortage of protein.

"This crisis is likely to deepen over the coming six months or so," Lake told a news conference in Nairobi on 17 July at the end of a visit to the northwestern Turkana region and Dadaab - home to thousands of Somali refugees - in the northeast.

Lake said: "I talked to a mother who was feeding her child pounded palm nuts, with no nutritional value, moistened in her mouth as the local wells have become saline."

Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates of 37 percent have been recorded in Turkana. Malnutrition is described as severe acute or global acute. A GAM value of more than 10 percent generally signifies an emergency.

Across the Horn of Africa, at least 10.7 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia need urgent humanitarian aid due to the drought, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In Somalia, thousands are fleeing the country or heading to the capital, Mogadishu. An estimated 3,200 Somali refugees are crossing into Kenya and Ethiopia daily.

Desperation

Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children UK, said: "Over the past few days, I've seen first-hand the enormous suffering the drought is causing in the Daadab refugee camp and across northern Kenya. Families I've met are absolutely desperate for food and water, and we know that the situation in Somalia is even worse."

Humanitarian actors have welcomed a recent statement by the Islamist opposition group in Somalia, Al-Shabab, allowing humanitarian access to south-central regions. Lake said this "will help us to ramp up support".

On 13 July, UNICEF airlifted emergency nutrition and water supplies to Baidoa, southern Somalia, the first time in more than two years, Lake said.

In Mogadishu, doctors with the African Union peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) are helping to tackle a measles outbreak at a camp for the drought-displaced. Some 9,300 people, who fled their homes in the central and southern regions, arrived in Mogadishu in June, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

Lt-Col Kaamurari Katwekyeire, head of AMISOM's Civil-Military Cooperation, said: "The need is great and we can only make small emergency interventions. We hope that humanitarian organizations will take advantage of the improved security situation to come to the aid of the Somali people."

In Kenya, communities neighbouring the refugee camps are complaining about the attention given to the Somali refugees when they are not faring any better.

Lake said: "They [the drought-affected] are suffering what is a perfect storm due to the drought, rising food prices, shortages of the food pipeline... these people live on the edge in any case. This is not just a question about lives being threatened but a way of life being threatened."

The drought has hit pastoral communities in the arid and semi-arid parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia the hardest [ http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93142 ].

On 17 July, the UK’s international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, pledged £52.25 million (US$84 million) in emergency aid for at least one million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

The aid is in addition to previous support for 1.36 million people in Ethiopia, announced on 3 July. The Ethiopian government launched an appeal on 11 July saying at least 4.56 million drought-affected people needed help.

The new UK funds are for programmes to prevent and treat malnutrition and improve care for refugees in the Daadab and Dolo Ado camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, respectively.

Mitchell called for more international engagement in the Horn of Africa crisis, saying there was a need to prevent a disaster turning into a catastrophe.

"It is a horrible thing in our world today that a baby should die due to a lack of food," he said.

La Nina blamed for causing the East African drought

While East Africa is suffering through its worst drought in sixty years many are blaming climate change as the cause. However, the scientific consensus is that the drought is actually caused by the effects of La Nina. Scientists do admit that climate change may have strengthened the La Nina pattern of pulling wet weather away from Africa and into southern Asia instead.

From this IRIN story that we found at the Guardian, we find the opinions of two scientists who have worked in the Horn of Africa.

Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.

He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate change impact in east Africa were "a problem" as the authoritative inter-governmental panel on climate change's (the IPCC) fourth assessment report "indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.

"But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that ... certain Indian Ocean effects in east Africa may not actually occur.

"Some people think that east Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time."

The IPCC's fifth assessment report will be released in 2014.

Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI's people, livestock and environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that "we don't understand".

What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. "The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from east Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of east Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia," according to the US government's National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

IRC says one in ten children are in danger of starvation at the Horn of Africa

The International Red Cross has issued a statement on what the organization has observed from the dire situation in the Horn of Africa. The Red Cross says one out every ten children living in the drought affected area are in danger of starving to death. The emergency level drought is gripping the countries of Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and others.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Stephanie Nebehay relays the information from the Red Cross.

"Levels of malnutrition have reached a new peak and are currently the highest in the world," the ICRC said in a statement.

The independent aid agency, one of very few with access to Somalia's worst-hit areas, said that even in the Bay and Lower Shabelle regions, the traditional breadbaskets, nearly 11 percent of children under five had severe acute malnutrition.

This meant they were at risk of starving to death. Rates were believed to be significantly higher in other areas.

"In some parts of Somalia, the number of children with severe acute malnutrition has almost doubled since March."

The disturbing findings were based on data from 39 clinics and 18 therapeutic feeding centres run by the Somali Red Crescent with its support. The ICRC said it was opening 10 new feeding centres in Bakool, Gedo and the Afgoye corridor.
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Somalia has had no effective central government for two decades, worsening the impact of recurring droughts. Islamist al Shabaab rebels have refused to allow food aid to be delivered in areas under their control, saying it encourages dependency.

The world body is looking into security guarantees to return to southern Somalia following an unexpected announcement by al Shabaab last week that it was lifting its ban. [ID:nN1E765198]

The World Food Programme (WFP), in a statement on Wednesday, said it could return to the south "if conditions allow and if the necessary security clearance from the United Nations is granted".

If you feel moved to donate to the Red Cross and their work of feeding the drought stricken Horn of Africa you can do so by going to this link.

Drought in Horn of Africa one step away from becoming famine

The United Nations says that the drought in the Horn of Africa has now reached an emergency stage. 10 million people are suffering through the drought which is very close to becoming classified as a famine. The UN is asking for emergency donations of money from their donor nations to bring food and aid into the region.

Reuters writer Astrid Zweynert gives us the latest details on the Eastern African drought.

Aid agency CARE on Monday launched an appeal for $25 million to scale up its response to the growing crisis. The agency said it is already giving emergency assistance to nearly one million people in the region.

"The current crisis builds upon years of consecutive droughts and deteriorating conditions," Barbara Jackson, CARE International’s humanitarian director, said in a statement.

"As livestock have died en masse, pastoralists are losing their main assets and means to survive," Jackson said. "They have nothing left to feed their families."

MASSIVE NEED FOR FUNDS

Donor countries have started mobilising assistance for the drought survivors, with Britain pledging 38 million pounds ($61 million dollars) in food aid to Ethiopia.

Swedish International Development Corporation Minister Gunilla Carlsson announced a 30 million Swedish krona ($4.7 million) contribution to the U.N. Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) work in the region, while Denmark said it will contribute 64 million Danish krone ($12 million) in humanitarian aid to Somalia to help ease the impact of the drought.

The United States, meantime, has deployed a disaster assistance response team, based in Kenya and Ethiopia, to help the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and other aid agencies there coordinate emergency aid operations.
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U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres spent Sunday visiting the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, where an estimated 1,300 people arrive every day, many of them Somalis, in the already overcrowed camp, thought to be the biggest in the world with a population of some 380,000.

Somali refugees seeking shelter in Kenya from extreme drought and hunger are the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable in the world, Guterres said.

Increasing numbers of malnourished young children are dying after trekking for weeks to receive emergency aid in Kenya in what has become the "worst humanitarian disaster in the world", the U.N. refugee chief said.

"We're in a crisis right now," Allison Oman, UNHCR's senior regional nutrition and food security officer told reporters at the camp. "We need extraordinary measures to help."

Video: Millions risk hunger in Horn of Africa

From Reuters Alert Net, this video gives us the latest on the drought gripping the Horn of Africa.

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Anesthetic shortage in Kenya

Many medical operations take place in rural Kenya without the proper use of anesthetics. A local NGO says that one person a week dies from lack of proper anesthetics to numb the pain.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Protus Onyango gives us more details on the shortage in Kenya.

In areas like Turkana in the Rift Valley, and the North Eastern, Eastern and Western provinces people are enduring painful operations without any anaesthetics at all. This is according to James Kamau, a civil society activist and the chief executive of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement, a local non- governmental organisation.

Kamau says anaesthetics are only found in Nairobi and provincial hospitals. "In our visits across Kenya, we have witnessed cases where many health facilities operate on people without using anaesthetics. Surely, we shouldn't be letting (people), and particularly our children, undergo surgery without the use of anaesthetics?" he asks.

Dr. Frasia Karua of Gertrude Children's Hospital agrees. She says she has carried out clinical research around the country and found out that the shortage of anaesthetics is real and rampant in rural areas. Dr. Japheth Akwabi, the vice chairman of the Clinical Association of Kenya, who works at the Western General Provincial hospital, adds "many patients are operated on without these essential drugs."

Both experts and civil society say that an insufficient health budget, corruption and bureaucracy are to blame for this.
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When Clare Anyango from Western Kenya broke her hand she was taken to a local nursing home for surgery and was operated on without anaesthetics.

"It was like hell. I was enduring the pain and thought the doctor would ease it. But when he started the operation, the pain doubled and I had to endure it for almost an hour. I wouldn’t undergo a similar exercise again," says Anyango.

Dr. Gilchrist Lokoer, who is in charge of Turkana District Hospital, says the situation is worst in Turkana.

"Many patients come to us for surgery but in most cases, we lack the anaesthetic machines, gas and sprays to numb their senses.

"For simple processes sutures, removing lumps or circumcision, we do them when patients are fully awake. For more serious cases, we refer them to mission or general provincial hospitals with good facilities and drugs," says Lokoer.