WCC NEWS: As severe drought hurts food security in eastern Africa, church and aid agencies call for urgent action

When droughts strike in eastern Africa, clerics, church experts and faith-based agencies move to the front to save the people’s food security and deliver humanitarian aid. The action is often inspired by a clear understanding that it’s the ordinary people— members of their congregations— suffering the worst impacts. Often, the droughts trigger food shortages, cause water scarcity and extinguish pasture for livestock. Arusha, Tanzania.  Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC 2018 21 April 2022 Now, the groups are moving again, or at least preparing to respond, as severe drought—the worst in 40 years—unfolds in the east and horn of Africa. Here, three successive rain seasons have failed. Scientists and relief agencies are blaming climate change for bringing droughts in a region battered by conflicts and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, in Garissa, a semi-arid county in Kenya’s north-east, church officials point at food shortages, mass death of livestock and difficulties in finding water to highlight the severe drought. “The people need support and we are walking with them in fighting the drought. We are preparing a response from different fronts which we hope to broaden in the coming days,” Anglican Bishop David Mutisya of Garissa Diocese said. A Finn Church Aid assessment in the area revealed that some of the main water sources—rivers, boreholes, water pans and shallow wells—did not have enough water for people and livestock. The people were walking for seven kilometres to collect water while one million heads of livestock had died in the county, according to the assessment. The organization—a member of ACT Alliance—is running a cash transfer program in Kenya and Somalia. The focus is children or pregnant or lactating mothers heading households. The funds are made to help the families until the arrival of the rain season. “This is another manmade crisis, just like Ukraine, except that the cause of the drought is climate change,” Jouni Hemberg, Finn Church Aid executive director, said. “Those who remember the famine in Ethiopia are haunted by it. This is a similar event across a larger scale, but we have means to prevent the suffering that the 1980s famine caused.” An estimated 15.5-16 million people are in urgent need of food assistance in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, according to the Intergovernmental Government Authority on Development, a bloc of eight countries in east and the horn of Africa. Of these, 6 to 6.5 million are in Ethiopia, 3.5 in Kenya and 6 million in Somalia. It is also anticipated that floods and insecurity in South Sudan will push another 8 people into acute food insecurity. In the region, 29 million are facing high food insecurity. “We have to act now on the basis of a ‘no regret’ approach,” Dr Workneh Gebeyehu, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Government Authority on Development, said. Gebeyehu called for upscaling livelihood programs to protect the lives and livelihoods of farmers, agro-pastoralists, and pastoralists. “This will help support their recovery and self-reliance in the immediate and medium term,” he said. Meanwhile, as he leads efforts to support drought-stricken communities, Mutisya says the motto, “better teach how to fish than to give fish” is ever alive. “Most of the time, we build the capacity of the communities.  We train them on how they can face the challenges,” said Mutisya. “We train on farming, provide facilities, build or buy water tanks or drill boreholes to make water available.” According to the bishop, women’s groups in the diocese are now able to grow their own food and get a surplus to sell. They are also telling others and transferring the knowledge.   * Fredrick Nzwili is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland