Hope in Adversity – Fighting Famine in the Horn of Africa: Jeffrey D. Sachs

By: Jeffrey D. Sachs   Date: 15 August 2011

About The Author

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Professor of Economics & Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Special Adviser to

Jeffrey D. Sachs, EconomyWatch Contributor

 

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Once more, famine stalks the Horn of Africa, where more than ten million people are fighting for survival, mainly pastoralist communities in the hyper-arid regions of Somalia, Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. But the current crisis could yet mark the start of regional recovery and development.

Hope in Adversity – Fighting Famine in the Horn of Africa: Jeffrey D. Sachs

Africa Dreams:Despite One of the Worst Famines in Decades, There is Still Hope For Africa
Photo Credit: CharlesFred

NAIROBI – Yet again, famine stalks the Horn of Africa. More than ten million people are fighting for survival, mainly pastoralist communities in the hyper-arid regions of Somalia, Ethiopia, and northern Kenya. Every day brings news of more deaths and massive inflows of starving people into refugee camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia.

See the Slide Show >>> Fastest Growing Countries in 2011

The immediate cause of this disaster is clear: the rains have failed for two years running in the dry regions of East Africa. These are places where water is so scarce year after year that crop production is marginal at best. Millions of households, with tens of millions of nomadic or semi-nomadic people, tend camels, sheep, goats, and other livestock, which they move large distances to reach rain-fed pasturelands. When the rains fail, the grasses shrivel, the livestock die, and communities face starvation.

Pastoralism has long been a harrowing existence in the Horn of Africa. The location of life-supporting pasturelands is determined by the unstable and largely unpredictable rains, rather than by political boundaries. Yet we live in an era when political boundaries, not the lives of nomadic pastoralists, are sacrosanct. These boundaries, together with growing populations of sedentary farmers, have hemmed in pastoralist communities.

The political boundaries exist as a legacy of the colonial era, not as the result of cultural realities and economic needs. Somalia, for example, contains only a part of the Somali-speaking pastoralist population, with large numbers living across the border in Kenya and Ethiopia. As a result, the Ethiopian-Somalia border has been war-torn for decades. 

A massive drought this year was not exactly predictable, but the risk of famine was easily foreseeable. Indeed, two years ago, in a meeting with US President Barack Obama, I described the vulnerability of the African drylands. When the rains fail there, wars begin. I showed Obama a map from my book Common Wealth, which depicts the overlap of dry land climates and conflict zones. I noted to him that the region urgently requires a development strategy, not a military approach.

Obama responded that the US Congress would not support a major development effort for the drylands. “Find me another 100 votes in Congress,” he said.

I don’t know whether Obama’s leadership might have found those votes, but I do know that the US has not mustered the national effort to respond effectively to the Horn of Africa’s needs. The US is far too focused on expensive and failed military approaches in the drylands – whether in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia – to pay heed to long-term economic development strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of these countries’ ongoing crises.

Related: Afghanistan is Broke, US Drowning in Debt – So What About a War Ceiling?

Related: Doomed for Disaster – America’s Dangerous Debt Deal: Michael Mandelbaum

This year’s drought came at a time of political and economic turmoil in both the US and Europe. America’s distorted political system gives the rich everything they want in the form of tax cuts, while slashing programs for the poor. There is no interest in Washington, DC, in addressing the needs of America’s poor, much less the needs of the world’s poor.

Fastest Growing Countries in 2011
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