By Mukesh Kapila
Somalia
is on the brink of catastrophe. A recent assessment suggests that 7.7 million
Somalis need emergency aid right now, a similar number to those affected by the
Ethiopian famine in 1984, one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history.
About one million people died then.
The warnings have been coming for some time.
The
immediate trigger for the likely famine is three successive years of failed
rains leading to the worst drought in the Horn of Africa for four decades.
Underlying that are rising temperatures from climate change. Compounding
factors include longstanding political and social fractures, with decades of
conflict and poor governance.
Somalia is also strongly affected by the Ukraine-Russia war . It gets 90% of its wheat from that region which makes up two-thirds of the Somalian diet. The prices of cooking oil, beans, rice and sugar have also doubled from the conflict's secondary consequences: higher costs for fuel, transport and agricultural inputs like fertiliser.
