With more than 13m people now affected by east Africa’s food crisis, thousands fleeing daily from famine-hit Somalia and emergency response work still underfunded by hundreds of millions of dollars, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this disaster – and to lose sight of how it came about.
There are some clear answers. Yes, failed rains have contributed, because they reduce people’s ability to grow food and leave less pasture for their animals, which for millions in east Africa provide their main source of food and income.
Yet food crises happen only when drought combines with other factors. Over thousands of years, east Africa’s pastoral farmers have developed a way of life that is well adapted to the arid environments in which they live, moving their animals in search of pasture and water. But they are a minority, and all too easy for their governments to neglect. In recent years this is just what has happened: their land rights have been eroded, while many areas they have traditionally farmed have been converted into commercially irrigated agriculture.