The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) says the present drought is the worst there since 1984. . . . At least 17.5m people . . . may face starvation. The WFP is trying to feed 14m of them. High food prices, together with civil strife, the assassination of aid workers by jihadists, and piracy against food convoys sailing from Kenya to Somalia have combined with drought and desert to create a catastrophe. Some 12m of the hungry are in Ethiopia, 3m in Somalia, 2m in Kenya and Uganda, the rest in Eritrea and Djibouti.
From The Economist.
Meanwhile, in West Africa there are an estimated "43,000 inherited slaves in Niger, . . . [and] tens of thousands of others in west Africa, notably in Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania." They are just starting to get their freedom in policies driven by rulings of the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the binding supreme court to West Africa's answer to the E.U. which has its own multinational currency for the region.
The Africans need to fix this problem.
ReplyDeleteWhen Africa gets its act together, then I maybe willing to help.
We (non-Africans) can not fix this.
The world should know that about 17.5 million people are at risk of starving and dying.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the world is able to address the problem. This ability creates some level of moral obligation.
We don't have the ability to solve all the worlds problems, but we have the ability to solve some of them.
Doing something to prevent 17.5 million people from starving and dying is a worthy cause.