Tearfund: East Africa Needs Urgent Food Aid

|TOP|In the midst of a major food crisis, Christian organisations like Tearfund continue to aid over 11 millions affected people across East Africa, where the poorest families struggle to exist on barely one inadequate meal a day. More aid is now urgently needed.

Tearfund is calling on international donors to honour pledges already made to prevent a shortfall of funds. In April a UN emergency appeal for $426 million has so far only raised around 20 percent - an amount to cover less than 50 percent of the need in Kenya alone. Food distributions have become limited to the affected regions across North and East Kenya, Somalia, Southern Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

In Somalia 1.8 million people require immediate emergency assistance and the malnutrition rate in some areas is 25%. And yet here - food, grain and seed are seen as ready currency in remote areas where militia forces ignore what thin fabric of governance remains in the country. With gunmen raiding communities, this often forgotten conflict hits the poor the hardest.

|AD|Shona Macpherson, is a disaster team advisor for Tearfund and was recently in north east Kenya. "We have seen the devastating effects of food insecurity before in this region, but few have experienced the severity and scale seen this year. Although the rains have begun in Kenya and other parts of the region, it is too early to say what impact they will have. With families loosing up to 80% of their livestock in the worst affected regions, these rains will not have an immediate effect on their food security and livelihoods. It will take months for surviving animals to produce milk and it will take years for families to restock their animals. The situation remains critical - with child malnutrition rates well above emergency levels."

Currently, Tearfund is providing assistance for some 31,000 people (about 4,500 families), so far committing over £100,000 to relief food distribution projects through partner agencies in north east Kenya. Tearfund's relief team is also starting an emergency feeding programme in Marsabit District, northern Kenya.

Over recent months aid has been reaching some villages, but these food distributions have been limited, set against the scale of the immense need. More emergency food aid with nutritional and medical support will help to sustain families and communities through this latest period of poor rains and failing harvests.

Recently, Tearfund has launched a photographic exhibition in London entitled, ‘Walk with Joyce’, which looks to document the way in which poverty affects a woman’s life in rural Tanzania.

The exhibition has been testified as highlighting the “everyday existence of Joyce Mbwilo and the village community to which she belongs.”

The photographs were taken by award-winning photojournalist Caroline Irby, and act as a reminder of the more-than-a-billion people that are living on less than US$1 a day.

Tearfund explains, “The exhibition tells a story that reflects how western lives can impact people in the developing world. Realities such as climate change and debt have meant crop failure and lack of funding for secondary education in Joyce’s village.”

In addition to the food crisis in East Africa, conflict and security concerns in some countries have made it increasingly difficult for aid agencies to operate. In Somalia there is a lack of development and basic services due to civil war and the border dispute continues between Eritrea and Ethiopia. But despite the challenges, agencies are continually working at ways to provide emergency food aid.