By the UN's count, the East African drought has already left 2 million infants malnourished and 30,000 people dead. And without much-needed attention from the international community, the crisis is only getting worse.
In a new report, the UN increased its estimate of the number of people currently at risk of starvation in East Africa to 13 million, from nine million just two weeks ago.
In Isiolo, an elder farmer stands in a field that hasn't produced since 1997 because of drought. (Frederic Courbet/Panos Picures/ActionAid)
ActionAid UK project support officer Hannah Burrows has been in East Africa for three weeks blogging on the ongoing drought in Kenya. In the eastern town of Isiolo(pictured above), Hannah visited markets emptied out by food shortages and exorbitant prices. In northern Kenya, Hannah reported on the social impacts of drought as families move closer to the few remaining wells, and children are taken out of school to help find water.
But nowhere have the effects of the drought been more apparent than in the town of Sericho, which hasn't seen rain since 2008. ActionAid has been working with the UN Food Programme in the town to provide relief for about 85 percent of the population.
Dahano Adan, a single mother of three, said her family lost all 50 of its goats during a drought in 2009 and has since depended on a small salary from her housekeeping job to feed her children. Like many of the women in Sericho, Dahano has been forced to go it alone since 2009, when her husband left the family because he was unable to cope with the stress of the drought.
ActionAid has been among a handful of international agencies leading emergency relief efforts in East Africa, working with local leaders to deliver food shipments and water trucks to the region. ActionAid is urgently asking its supporters for help with ongoing emergency relief efforts. For more information on the drought or to make a donation, please visit our Web site.
While ActionAid will continue to provide crucial emergency relief, we are also looking ahead to long-term solutions. In a region prone to droughts, developing a sustainable defence against drought-induced famine is absolutely critical. The solution? Providing support for women smallholder farmers like Dahano.
Our Fertile Ground campaign aims to gain international support for women farmers, who produce more than 60 percent of the world's food but are the hardest hit by food insecurity. ActionAid is calling on the Australian government to support women small-holder farmers the world over. To join our call, sign our online petition.
Sign ActionAid's Fertile Ground petition calling on the Australian Government to do more to address the long term causes of hunger and famine - not just provide emergency handouts.
