Another humanitarian crisis is looming in the Horn of Africa as a result of drought and extreme increases in the prices of food and fuel. Ten million people in Ethiopia are in need of food aid, according to the World Food Program, and more than 4 million people in Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, northern Kenya and northern Uganda are also affected. The crisis arises as the combined result of a lack of water in the region and global economic events which have driven up food and fuel prices.
According to the WFP figures, 2.6 million people in Somalia are currently facing acute food shortages, and this could rise to 3.5 million by the end of the year. In Kenya, 1.2 million people need urgent food supplies. In Ethiopia 4.6 million need emergency food support and another 5.7 million need extra food or cash. In Uganda 0.7 million people are in dire need of food, and 80,000 people in Djibouti are facing acute food shortages.
Ethiopia normally maintains reserves of food, but the government has used almost all of the reserves already in the hope that food prices would fall so that replacement would be less expensive. However prices have risen, as have the costs of transporting and distributing food because of increased fuel costs. The local price of grain is nearly three times as much as it was one year ago.