Africa > East Africa > Agribusiness / Food

Agribusiness / Food in East Africa

  • U.S. warns South Sudan: Continued chaos is not acceptable, aid may be pulled

    UNITED STATES, 2017/09/03 The top U.S. official for humanitarian aid has delivered a stern warning to South Sudan’s president that the Trump administration is reexamining its policy toward one of the world's poorest and most dangerous countries as the African nation slides into lawlessness. Mark Green, the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development, met Friday with President Salva Kiir Mayardit. Green said he raised U.S. concerns over the dangers humanitarian aid workers face in delivering food and medicine in the country as well as a pervasive climate of criminal activity by government forces, criminal gangs and opposition forces. Since civil war erupted almost four years ago, a third of South Sudan’s population has become internally displaced or fled the country in Africa’s worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
  • Africa: How to Adapt to Beat Crippling Droughts

    BOTSWANA, 2017/07/17 Right presently, 14 million people across southern Africa face going hungry due to the prolonged drought brought on by the strongest El Niño in 50 years. South Africa will import half of its maize and in Zimbabwe as a lot of as 75 % of crops have been abandoned in the worst-hit areas. With extreme weather, such as failed rains, and drought projected to become additional likely as a result of climate change, some farmers are by presently taking matters into their own hands, and pro-actively diversifying the crops they grow.
  • Africa And Middle East Famines: How China Can Do More

    CHINA, 2017/07/09 The unprecedented outbreak of famine early this year in Africa and the Middle East can be traced to conflict as the root cause. Can China step in to help mitigate the calamity through its Belt and Road initiative? Famine broke out in South Sudan in March 2017. At around the same time, the United Nations announced that Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen were as well on the verge of being hit by long draught, putting around 20 million at risk of starvation. The UN described this as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and appealed to the international community to donate US$4.4 billion — with little success.
  • Starvation looms as food runs out in drought-hit Ethiopia

    ETHIOPIA, 2017/07/01 The Somali people of Ethiopia’s southeast have a name for the drought that has killed livestock, dried up wells and forced hundreds of thousands into camps: sima, which means “equalised”. It’s an appropriate name, they say, because this drought has left no person untouched, spared no corner of their arid region. And it has forced 7.8 million people across the whole of Ethiopia to rely on emergency food handouts to remain alive. But by next month, that food will have run out, aid agencies say.
  • How to Produce More Food With Less Damage to Soil, Water, Forests

    WORLD, 2017/06/07 Massive agriculture intensification is contributing to increased deforestation, water scarcity, soil depletion and the level of greenhouse gas emission, the United Nations warns. To achieve sustainable development we must transform current agriculture and food systems, inclunding by supporting smallholders and family farmers, reducing pesticide and chemical use, and improving land conservation practices, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director-general on May 30 said in Brussels addressing European lawmakers.
  • Africa: Factbox-World's Major Famines of the Last 100 Years

    BOTSWANA, 2017/03/12 People are currently starving to death in four nations, and 20 million lives are at risk in the next six months The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said on Tuesday nearly 1.4 million children were at "imminent risk" of death in famines in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. Famine was formally declared on Monday in parts of South Sudan, which has been mired in civil war since 2013. People are by presently starving to death in all four nations, and the World Food Programme says additional than 20 million lives are at risk in the next six months. The United Nations defines famine as at the same time as at least 20 % of households in an area face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 %, and two or additional people per 10,000 are dying per day.
  • Ethiopia: Don't Forget Ethiopia Starvation Risk, Says German NGO

    ETHIOPIA, 2017/03/12 The Menschen für Menschen charity has said 5.7 million Ethiopians could die of a lack of food. Part of the problem is that other nations are faring even worse and thus getting most of the publicity. Some 6 % of Ethiopia's people of 98 million suffers from food shortages resulting from a catastrophic drought in the eastern African country. But that doesn't qualify as a risk of famine for the United Nations, which defines the term as 20 % of a country's people having fewer than 2,100 kilocalories of nutrition per day.
  • Kenya: Govt Sets Aside Sh154mn to Mitigate Drought Effects in Schools

    KENYA, 2017/03/12 The government has set aside Sh154 million to be disbursed to various institutions to bolster the school feeding program in parts of the country experiencing drought. Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi urged the education officers to monitor the situation and ensure school heads are not stressed as a result of the effects of the drought. He maintained that teachers should not send children home and indicated that the relief food will be distributed in collaboration with the National Youth Service.
  • Zambia: Eight Die in Zambia As Food Handout Turns Into Stampede

    ZAMBIA, 2017/03/12 Some 35,000 people turned up to the event organized by a church group in Lusaka. Droughts across southern Africa have caused a sharp uptick in food prices in a country where poverty is by presently rampant. Authorities in Zambia said eight people died in the capital Lusaka next a stampede broke out during food handouts. Police spokeswoman Esther Katongo told the press that six women, one man and one boy were killed at the same time as tens of thousands turned up to the event at the Olympic Youth Development Center.
  • Somalia: Antonio Guterres Raises Alarm As Hunger Crisis Worsens

    SOMALIA, 2017/03/12 The UN chief has urged international support to alleviate Somalia's worsening hunger crisis during an emergency visit to the country. Antonio Guterres issued the appeal on Tuesday next witnessing the suffering of malnourished Somalis and cholera victims during his initial field trip since becoming the UN chief. He said the hunger crisis requires a massive response as six million people, or almost half of the people of the Horn of Africa country, need assistance.