Europe increases drought help

The European Commission has announced that it is to donate a further €5m to the aid effort for African drought victims, bringing its total response to the crisis to €78m. Around six million people are being severely affected by the situation in parts of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, with the rain in the region between October and December failing, and rain from March until May expected to be below average.

“The lack of rain in parts of East Africa has put the livelihoods of millions of people at risk. The problem is not the lack of food. It’s just that many farmers face losing their cattle and are just too poor to buy the food that is available”, commented Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid. “(The response) is not driven by the immediate crisis and the media pressure, it is driven by the needs. Thousands of hectares of forest are lost every year in the Horn of Africa, increasing the desertification, drought and famine”.

The Commission’s funding is based on providing immediate humanitarian aid to those most at risk, and establishing a longer-term support system to tackle the effects of drought on lives and livelihoods.

The latest €5m is being directed at around 3.5m people in Kenya, including some 500,000 school children, and focuses primarily on food aid.