As we learn more about the Horn of Africa crisis, it’s clear that world hunger is a much larger issue than most people realize. To help illustrate this notion, Benjamin D. Henning, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, used data from the Poverty Mapping Project at Columbia University to create this unsettling map of hungry children across the globe. Take a look:
The map illustrates the estimated total number of underweight children under the age of five living in that area. As you can see, the problem of undernourished children is just as pressing in South and Southeast Asia. Take a look at some of Benjamin’s other maps on his blog, Views of the World.
Women are the backbones of Kenya. They are the ones who will feed the continent. They are the ones who will keep hunger at bay here. Their participation in the agricultural economy is vitally important to Africa’s future.
Imagine being a mom standing on a small farm in Elburgon, Nakuru County in the country of Kenya on the continent of Africa learning about Irish potatoes. You are welcomed with celebration and surrounded by the most beautiful countryside. There is so much to take in that at times it can be overwhelming. Then the farmer begins to demonstrate how she peels her potatoes and you discover that she does it EXACTLY like you! That is where I found myself today and I was invited to peel potatoes with Grace.
Action: 6. Time: 10 minutes. Level of difficulty: Easy.
This week, our ONE Moms — a group of 10 tech-savvy moms who blog and Tweet about motherhood, advocacy and women and children’s issues — are on a listening and learning trip to Kenya with ONE. You may have noticed their essays, photographs and stories on the ONE Blog and all over social media with the #ONEMoms hashtag.
Lauren Balog, who works on ONE’s communications team, is on the trip with our ONE Moms and has been using Twitter to share customized photo messages from the ONE Moms to moms here in the US.
Take a look. It’s a pretty cool way to use social media, right?
Behind Africa’s famine, more than just drought Famine isn’t inevitable – William Moseley argues that the change from “traditional practices,” such as herding, to the expansion of large-scale commercial farming has been “detrimental to the landscape” and has made the routes of herders “more vulnerable to drought” in East Africa. He calls on countries such as the US to “consider the underlying causes of the crisis as they seek longer-term solutions,” that are necessary to prevent a crisis like this from happening again. (Washington Post)
Militants Bedevil Famine-Relief Bid – “Fighting erupted in Somalia’s capital Thursday,” as African Union peacekeepers launched an offensive against “Islamist militants they say are preventing humanitarian aid from reaching victims of a deepening famine.” The country has reported that “the group has prevented aid workers from reaching more than two million people in the areas now classified as suffering from famine.” (Christopher Rhoads and Mustafa Haji Abdi, Wall Street Journal)
How can we avoid future food crises like the Somalia famine? According to Ali Goldstein from the World Food Programme, we must create long-term food security programs and open up our networks of connectivity and communication.
In the morning newspaper and on the nightly news, the images from the Horn of Africa now coming into your home are hard to ignore. You can tell this time it’s more than hungry children, more than people fighting, more than just a headline. This is a famine.
A family at the Dadaab refugee camp
More than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa are now in need of humanitarian assistance, and that number could rise. We could find a metaphor to put the number in perspective –- it’s equivalent to the population of this city or that state -– but still the magnitude of need would be incomprehensible. And at the epicenter of this regional crisis lies the famine in southern Somalia.
“Sacrificing for success” -– that was Tabitha’s motto.
I was thinking about those words today as I walked into Kibera, the largest slum in Africa (think Central Park, N.Y., with 1 million people living in squalor).
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
Photo courtesy of Chookooloonks.
Photo credit: Chookooloonks. 
A family at the Dadaab refugee camp
