Nigeria: Famine – Millions of Africans Still At Risk

Feb 23rd, 2012 12:00 PM UTC
By ONE

Hugh Masekela joins our Hungry No More campaign

Jan 24th, 2012 12:04 PM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

As our Hungry No More campaign continues, famed musician and trumpeter Hugh Masekela joins us in calling on African leaders to focus investments in their agricultural sectors, which will contribute to growing their economies and reducing extreme poverty.

Hugh Masekela

Hugh’s support couldn’t come at a better time as the African Union Summit begins this week with our Heads of State in Addis Ababa. Now’s the perfect opportunity to continue our campaign and press our leaders to take action. We’ll be presenting your petition and signatures at the AU later this week!

Here’s what Hugh has to say:

Growing up as a musician in South Africa I witnessed first hand the man-made obscenity that was apartheid and used music to protest against injustice.

Apartheid is now consigned to the history books, but another obscenity still exists on our continent. A famine in Somalia that has killed 30,000 children in 3 months.

Yet the current crisis is a man-made disaster that could have been avoided.

As our leaders prepare to meet next week in Ethiopia to attend a critical summit, please join me in signing ONE’s petition:

The petition reads:

Dear African Leaders,
We are haunted by the famine in Somalia that has killed 30,000 children in 3 months. We respectfully request that you help make this the last famine by:  1) supporting delivery of promised emergency aid; 2) increasing effort on peace and security; 3) keeping the long-term promise toward spending 10% of national budgets on agriculture and food security; and 4) doing so transparently, so citizens can ensure this money is well spent.

With access to suitable seeds, technologies, and improved connections to markets, small-holder farmers can generate more income, send their children to school, help to keep food prices affordable and help lift their communities out of poverty.

When they meet next week our governments must show real leadership and ensure this is the last famine in Africa.

Please take action now.

Thank you for your support,

Hugh Masekela
Musician and ONE member

Join Hugh and our partners in signing the petition today.

The Last Famine

Dec 19th, 2011 3:42 PM UTC
By Festus Gontebanye Mogae

As we launch our Hungry No More campaign we are privileged to publish the following guest post from Festus Gontebanye Mogae, the former President of Botswana and Ibrahim Prize Laureate.

When I served as Botswana’s President I made it a priority to address poverty in my country and during my time in office, and in the years since, I’ve witnessed real progress. In Botswana and across the continent, African leadership has helped get millions more children into school, reduce deaths from diseases like malaria, and make concrete advances against HIV/AIDS.

But like other Africans I’ve been shocked by the recent images of suffering that we have seen from Somalia. In just 3 months 30,000 children have died. This figure is so large it’s hard to comprehend, let alone think about how behind this number are countless stories of human tragedy.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. With your help we can make sure this the last famine in Africa.

Please join me in signing ONE’s petition right now.

The petition reads:

Dear African Leaders,
We are haunted by the famine in Somalia that has killed 30,000 children in 3 months. We respectfully request that you help make this the last famine by: 1) supporting delivery of promised emergency aid; 2) increasing effort on peace and security; 3) keeping the long-term promise toward spending 10% of national budgets on agriculture and food security; and 4) doing so transparently, so citizens can ensure this money is well spent.

We have a moral duty to help save lives and encourage governments and donors to fulfil their promises, both the emergency aid now for the famine, and the longer term commitments made to invest in agriculture and food security – so we can together unleash the true potential of African agriculture and make this the last famine on our continent.

Please sign ONE’s petition now.

Thank you for your support.

Festus Gontebanye Mogae is the former President of Botswana and Ibrahim Prize Laureate.

Hungry No More in Africa

Dec 19th, 2011 2:43 PM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

Beyond being a season for being merry, this is also traditionally a season for giving. As we wind down the year, we at ONE in Africa are asking you to give a thought to the 13.3 million people in the Horn of Africa, who still face extreme hunger.  If this thought leaves you unsettled, you’re exactly the person who should join ONE in Africa today together with our partners, the National Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition in Nigeria and the Agricultural Non State Actors Forum in Tanzania, as we launch our Hungry No More campaign in Africa.

This campaign will be focused on challenging African leaders to demonstrate their resolve in tackling famine and other agriculture related problems on the continent by:

• Calling on African leaders to fulfill the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture, which called for 10% of budgets to be allocated to Agriculture and Rural Development
• Target investments in small-holder farmers (especially women) and encourage sustainable private resources for agricultural development
• A call for African Leaders to be transparent and accountable on progress to achieve the Maputo Declaration

As part of the campaign we have also launched a video featuring a host of African stars including Didier Drogba, Nameless, Habida Malooney, John Allan Namu, Sauti Sol, Camagwini, Tumisho Masha, Dady Owen, Omotola Jalade and Sipho Mabuse.  With their help we aim to focus the world’s attention once again this critical issue.

Farming is vital to African economies, where 70 % of the population derives its livelihood from the soil. At the same time, agriculture development is crucial to poverty reduction, where food security is tied to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and especially MDG-1, which is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. This campaign intends to elevate this issue on the global political and public agendas because there is a powerful connection between the Horn of Africa crisis and agriculture, and it is a shame that we still debate famine in the 21^st century. We also need to help ensure African governments keep the promises they have made so that we can break the cycle of famine on the continent.

While the food crisis in the Horn of Africa tragically illustrates the impacts of drought and conflict, it also brings to the fore the effects of neglecting agriculture and local food systems. Reports of an emerging food crisis in the Sahel region highlight just how important this issue is.

Got to one.org/africa, sign the petition, and let’s put an end to famine.

The Beginning of the End of AIDS

Nov 30th, 2011 8:17 PM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

Is it possible that the success Africa has had, in managing and treating HIV/AIDS, reduced the sting of the HIV pandemic on the continent? The fact is, according to UNAIDS’ latest report, there are more people living with HIV today than there were 10 years ago. Approximately 34 million people live with HIV today, up 17% from 2001. In parallel, deaths from AIDS-related illnesses have decreased by 21%  since 2005

This is chiefly because there is better access to antiretroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa, where 68% of all HIV cases worldwide are found. Gone are the gory images synonymous with AIDS, that often appeared in the 1990s to early 2000s, which left many with the sound conviction that contracting the HIV virus was as good as pronouncing a death sentence.

Much credit goes to Africa’s people, its governments and our international partners for sustained efforts in the relentless fight against HIV in Africa. A good example of such leadership among others is the government of South Africa — they are now financing as much as 80% of the antiretroviral medication for its people through its own health budget, bolstered by technical support from donors. Botswana achieved universal access to treatment in 2008, and since then has begun to see a further decline in new infections. The percentage of children born HIV-positive to mothers living with HIV in Botswana also declined from 21% in 2003 to 4% in 2010 — impressive progress thanks in part to sustained political leadership.

Today, 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have reduced new HIV infections by more than 25%, data shows that an HIV-positive person on treatment is 96% less likely to pass HIV on to others and clinical trials have proven that voluntary male circumcision reduces the risk of new HIV infection in men by roughly 60%.

These numbers tell a great story, but there are other numbers that could put to risk the great progress made by African governments, development partners and the private sector. UNAIDS statistics show that the availability of funding to combat HIV is generally on the decline while funding needed to fight the pandemic is increasing. According to UNAIDS, at the end of 2010 around US$ 15 billion was available for the AIDS response in low- and middle-income countries. Yet donor funding has been reduced by 10% from US $7.6 billion in 2009 to US $6.9 billion in 2010, and the Global Fund recently had to cancel Round 11 of grant-making due to insufficient or delayed donor funds.

This begs the question: How do you put millions of people on treatment, give them renewed hope, and then back off, knowing full well the catastrophic implications of such action?

We still have nearly 9 million HIV positive people who are still in need of treatment, 1,000 babies born with HIV everyday, and nearly two new people are infected for every one person put on treatment. This reminds me of what remains an indelible statement by Dr. Kihumuro Apuuli, director general of the Uganda AIDS Commission who said, “You cannot mop the floor when the tap is still running on it.”

For all the commitment and investment our governments and development partners have made much remains to be done if we are to make this period in history become the beginning of the end of AIDS. So what does this mean? Well, at ONE, we believe that, it means reminding ourselves to recommit to measurable goals. They include:

• Virtually eliminating mother-to-child transmission by 2015
• Accelerating access to treatment for 15 million people by 2015
• Implement innovative prevention techniques to drastically reduce new infections by 2015.

These goals are by no means new. World leaders have already committed to them in various international forums. If these commitments — including commitments to the Global Fund — are renewed, together, we can really begin to see the end of this pandemic.

Let’s make this the last famine

Nov 11th, 2011 6:30 PM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

While you don’t hear or see it in the news anymore, people are still dying in the Horn of Africa from a catastrophic famine. It’s a moral imperative to save these lives and encourage governments and donors to fulfill their pledges to Africa, both the emergency aid promised now for the famine, and the longer term promises made to invest in agriculture and food security – so we can beat back extreme hunger across the continent and finally unleash African agricultures transformational potential. In that light, we at ONE are launching our first campaign encouraging African leaders to keep both the short term promises they made to fight the famine, and the great long term Maputo Declaration commitment they made to allocate 10% of national budgets to agriculture food security, which would help unleash the transformational potential of African farmers. All this must be done through transparent budgets, so African citizens can help ensure the money is well spent.

As we launch the campaign, it’s important to highlight the hard work and efforts that African organizations are doing to keep their leaders accountable. One such organization, the Pan-African Farmers Forum (known as PAFFO) is working to make sure that farmers’ voices from across the continent are heard at national and international levels. In particular, PAFFO’s leaders have called on all [African] states to “…improve the quality of support and put in place policies to support agricultural producers.” Moreover, PAFFO and its affiliates are calling for African governments to invest more in agriculture and keep the Maputo commitments so famine never has to stalk the continent again.

The campaign starts today with the release of our first public service announcement (PSA) featuring African talent and artists telling us the “real obscenity” is famine.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll have more on the blog and our website about this campaign. We hope you will join us!

A different story to tell

Nov 2nd, 2011 2:54 PM UTC
By Nora Coghlan

For those of us that grew up in the 1980s, the word “famine” is almost synonymous with Ethiopia. In 1984-85, images of crowded feeding centres and emaciated babies from Ethiopia’s Tigray province were burned into the public memory.

Many of these images were the work of Mohammed Amin, the legendary Kenyan photojournalist who was one of the first outsiders to travel to Tigray in 1984. Amin’s photos outraged the world. What followed was Live Aid, Band Aid, and an international response that ultimately saved millions of lives.

Salim Amin meets a family in Tigray. Photo © Chip Duncan

A few weeks ago, I went back to Tigray with Mohammed Amin’s son, Salim. Thanks to more than two decades of investments in agriculture, the Tigray we see today is one that Salim’s father would barely recognize. Nearly 20% of the land in the region is now irrigated (compared to 6% nationally), meaning many farmers are no longer at the mercy of erratic rains. 1.4 million families are participating in the Productive Safety Net Program, which gives food or cash transfers to vulnerable families in exchange for work on community projects. What’s more, new technology and support for farmers growing tef (a nutritious type of grain), harvesting honey and raising livestock are helping people increase their incomes to one day graduate from the safety net.

During the visit we talked to dozens of people who are benefiting from these programs. People like Berimu Gebre-Micheal, who can grow vegetables now that his fields are irrigated, providing additional income and more nutritious food for his two children. And there’s Kelelom, a tef farmer who lost her father in 1984. She increased her yields thanks to better seeds, methods for planting and better access to markets.

Today, Berimu and Kelelom’s stories are just as critical as Mohammed Amin’s photos were in 1984. Because 27 years after world said never again, another famine is ravaging Somalia. Experts warn that this one could kill 750,000 people in the coming months. ONE’s campaign, Hungry No More, is calling on world leaders to put an end to famine for good by investing in the long-term solution: African agriculture.

Tigray is a model for what happens when governments invest in long-term solutions to drought and food insecurity. You can check out Salim’s video and sign our petition.

African Artists Say NO to Hunger

Sep 22nd, 2011 11:23 AM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

For the first time in our lifetime, a wide range of African artists and global celebrities with a passion for Africa, have united in a call for action to break the recurring incidence of famine and extreme hunger in the Horn of Africa.

In an open letter addressed to African and world leaders, 58 artists are appealing for the implementation of a three-part plan to beat the famine in the Horn of Africa and invest in long-term solutions to avoid future food crises.This prominent group of African voices together command an audience of more than 7 million people on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

This letter is published just before two crucial meetings:  the G20 finance ministers meeting in Washington DC this Friday, and a Ministerial Mini-Summit on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York this Saturday. ONE is campaigning to ensure that top of the agenda at both of these meetings are two key issues: ending the current famine and  avoiding future famines .

ONE’s members support these efforts, too. Nearly 220,000 supporters have signed a petition calling on leaders to urgently provide the full funding that the UN has identified as needed for the Horn of Africa crisis, and to keep their promises to deliver the long-term solutions which could prevent crises like this from happening again.

This is just the beginning of relentless campaigning on hunger and famine, and shining a spotlight on the opportunities of agriculture development in Africa, which ONE will be pushing throughout the next few months. Specifically, over the coming days and weeks, ONE will be advocating for three key promises from African and world leaders:

1. Fill the remaining financing gap for emergency assistance to help people in the Horn of Africa
2. Invest in longer-term agriculture and food security to stop the cycle of extreme hunger
3. Encourage a prominent and formal role for civil society in the peace-seeking process to stop the cycle of instability in the region

This will be tough given the state of finances of many economies. But what could be more important than preventing future  famines and ending hunger and its causes?

That’s why we at ONE are working with advocacy partners on a charter to end extreme hunger. This charter, along with the African artist letter, and ONE’s petition, will be presented to the gathering of leaders coordinated by the UN on Saturday.

80% of Africans depend on subsistence agriculture to ensure their families have something to eat. Investing in agricultural productivity in Africa gives Africans a real chance to lift themselves out of poverty. This is a cause worth fighting for!

Africans pledge $350 million for famine relief; long-term solutions to be discussed in Kenya next month

Aug 26th, 2011 11:48 AM UTC
By Nora Coghlan

African governments and institutions committed nearly $350 million for famine relief yesterday at the African Union’s first-ever pledging conference.  Coming together under the banner “One Africa – One Voice Against Hunger,” panelists and participants called for African solidary and united action to respond to the Horn’s worst drought in 60 years.

The collective effort demonstrated by the AU is a solid first step that should be applauded. The African Development Bank accounted for the vast majority of the pledge, committing $300 million for programs over a five-year period. Notable individual contributions were made by Algeria (pledging $10 million), South Africa ($10 million), Egypt ($5 million), Angola ($5 million) and the Democratic Republic of Congo ($5 million). Another nine countries made $1-3 million pledges (including Africa’s newest country of South Sudan), and a handful more made smaller cash and in-kind donations.

Though the AU is facing criticism for the size of its commitment, the precedent set at yesterday’s summit is an important one that should be applauded. As the BBC’s Martin Plaut points out, the AU was never designed to be a fundraising organization and the conference “charts a new course” for the institution.

Acknowledging that the AU is often criticized for its “slow and inadequate” responses to emergencies, AU Commissioner Jean Ping urged participants to take note of other important contributions made by African states, such Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti’s hosting of Somali refugees and troops sent to Mogadishu by Uganda and Burundi.

UN Deputy Secretary General Asha Rose Miguro also applauded African efforts, noting that “above all, this crisis is being tackled by local people and institutions.” She warned that a future generation is hanging in the balance, and commended the AU for taking its “rightful place at the forefront of the response.”

Similar to pledges made by traditional donors, clarity is needed around many yesterday’s commitments. This is especially true for South Africa (whose $10 million pledge included private donations) and countries that contributed to the $350 million commitment from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) last week (including Algeria, Egypt and Gabon). AU Vice-Commissioner Erastus Mwencha said the AU was working with outside institutions to track commitments and monitor their delivery.

In the months ahead, it is also critical that Africans lead the campaign to develop long-term solutions to prevent future crises. Many of yesterday’s presenters reiterated that experts were predicting the drought months ahead of time; Prime Minister Meles Zenawi dedicated most of his remarks to outlining the measures taken to prepare for the drought in Ethiopia, which he said kept the country from slipping into famine.

Since yesterday’s summit was designed to respond to the crisis, the lack of concrete commitments towards long-term food security was not surprising. There was also no mention of the pledges by many African governments to allocate 10% of their national budgets towards agricultural development  (known as the Maputo targets).

When delegates meet in Kenya next month to discuss long-term solutions to drought and famine, these targets should be on the forefront of the agenda. Doing so would demonstrate that African governments are not only stepping up to respond to the current emergency, but are also committed to providing the leadership necessary to prevent these crises in the future.

Maputo Declaration on Agriculture holds Key to ending Famine in Africa

Aug 24th, 2011 10:16 AM UTC
By Dr. Sipho Moyo

As I write, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa continues to worsen. Figures from the UN’s Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) show that the number of people affected by food shortages in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti has escalated from 10 million to 12.4 million. About 2.3 million of the region’s children are acutely malnourished and the UN Children’s Fund says more than half a million of them are at risk of death without urgent intervention. The United Nations has described the situation as the worst drought the region has seen in 60 years.  As dreadful as this situation already is, the fear is that the worst is yet to come. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network forecasts worsening drought conditions for the coming months, particularly in northern Kenya, which has 3.2 million people who are “food insecure”.

As a mother, my stomach churns when I hear stories of mothers having to choose between which children to drag along with them to refugee camps and which ones they leave behind to die. But this is the reality that many mothers affected by the famine are faced with. And these are the cold facts that face African Heads of State ahead of a conference to raise funds to support the humanitarian relief work convened by the African Union at its headquarters tomorrow.

As the esteemed leaders of our great continent make their way to Addis, I am earnestly hoping and praying that they will seize this opportunity to further demonstrate their commitment to forging African solutions to African problems such as the crisis that faces their fellow Africans at this time of great need.  We at ONE can already acknowledge the ways in which African leaders and their citizens have responded to the crisis so far.  When an 11 year old Ghanaian schoolboy determined to help children facing starvation in Somalia raises more than $500 in a single week I know there is hope.  Then there is the ‘Kenyans for Kenyans’ initiative, where ordinary citizens, contributing as little as 10 Kenyan shillings, pulled together a total of about $4m, and we’re still counting.  The Gift of Givers, all the way from South Africa, loaded 500 tons of food to distribute to the hardest hit in Somalia.  The governments of Sudan, Namibia and South Africa are amongst those that have responded to the call by the UN for funding.  The Kenyan government has generously opened its borders to Somali refugees, arriving daily on its borders by the thousands, even when it’s beyond government’s capacity to manage the crisis. The African Union’s peacekeeping force, AMISOM, is treating an outbreak of measles and other diseases such as malaria and diarrhea in a camp for people displaced from their homes, while the AU Mission is securing both the seaport and the airport in Somalia, thus making it possible to bring in the much-needed humanitarian supplies.  These stories attest to the generous spirit of us as African people and we at ONE are proud of the African engagement.  However, there remains a lot more work to be done. The Horn of Africa drought appeal is only 46 per cent funded, requiring an additional US$1.4billion. As an African citizen nothing would make me more proud than to see all of our African leaders stepping up even more to help our fellow Africans in the Horn of Africa.  Help is needed urgently and desperately.

Next to this immediate and short term agenda item at the AU Heads of State meeting today, should be the closely linked but more medium to long term agenda of accelerating the meeting of their commitments under the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security to spend 10 percent of national budgets on agriculture development.  In this declaration made during the Second Ordinary Assembly of the African Union in July 2003 in Maputo, African Heads of State and Government reaffirmed the need for ownership of their own development agenda and agreed to achieve 10 percent within five years.  However as of the 2008 deadline, only seven countries are currently meeting the 10 percent agriculture spending target. These countries are Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Niger, and Senegal.  A number of other countries are making reasonable progress in the right direction. The question we have to answer is not if another season of drought will recur on the continent.  Our experts tell us, it will.  The question is rather, how ready is Africa to deal with the next drought season? With the knowledge that we have, the next drought need not be another humanitarian catastrophe of people dying and being displaced due to hunger. In other words, we need not wait for the next pledging conference to address a predictable recurring problem.  The Maputo declaration gives us as Africans a fair shot at ending famine on the continent once and for all, in the long run.

Our last appeal for the AU agenda is  a more definite plan to deal with the refugee crisis.  An assessment by the World Food programme shows that the Dadaab refugee camp in north-eastern Kenya continues to receive large influxes of refugees mainly from Somalia. Kenya currently has about 447,000 refugees in Dadaab with 1,500 new arrivals every day.  These are not refugees of war as we more often see, but rather they are refugees of famine as they have been described by the World Food Program.  The Kenyan Government deserves commendation for its generosity in hosting these refugees and we thank them.  We hope that plans to open Ifo 2 are on track as this would help ease the congestion at Dadaab.  At the same time we call upon other African nations to consider opening up their borders to the hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees, looking for a place of shelter.

When all is said and done, and the Horn of Africa remains mired in the humanitarian tragedy of famine which deserves the spotlight of international media attention it is important to remember that it is but one part of the continent.  Let us therefore be mindful not to bundle the whole continent into a hopeless single image of starvation and penury. Let us also remember that despite Africa’s development challenges while many world economies have suffered a backlash in the economic recession that followed the global financial crisis, Africa countries escaped relatively unscathed.  According to the International Monetary Fund sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow by an average 5.5 percent this year before accelerating to about 6 percent in 2012. Growth will be driven by low and middle income countries such as Ghana and Ethiopia with oil exporters such as Nigeria and Angola lending support. These are phenomenal stories that ought to be told.