Two Stories About Famine in Somalia

This post isn't going to be full of insightful commentary- at least, not mine. I've been too busy with class prep work for that. But here are two stories on an issue I'm quite interested in: the possibilities and risks for addressing famine in Africa through foreign aid.

The first story breaks my heart. Food aid has been stolen in Somalia and is now being resold in market places where children don't have anything to eat.

And the aid is not even safe once it has been distributed to families huddled in the makeshift camps popping up around the capital. Families at the large, government-run Badbado camp, where several aid groups have been distributing food, said they were often forced to hand back aid after journalists had taken photos of them with it. Ali Said Nur said he received two sacks of maize twice, but each time was forced to give one to the camp leader.

The second story is both compelling and discouraging. While food aid addresses the (critical) symptoms of the famine problem, helping farmers become self-sufficient addresses the root of the problem and fights poverty alongside of famine. But apparently this aid to farmers has been reduced- by 2009, it "declined by 85 percent at a time when the number of hungry people in Africa was doubling."

There are many countries in Africa that haven't seen any military conflict, that don't have corrupt governments, where there haven't been cycles of devastating drought, and the productivity of their farmers remains very low - below a dollar a day - and they would be making more money if the productivity were higher. But it won't be until they get access to the same things that farmers around the rest of the world have used, and that includes fertilizer, improved seeds, irrigation, basic infrastructure.