Abigail Lucas
9/9/09
7:23pm
Millions of people are at risk of starvation because of the drought across East Africa including countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania. There are approximately 6.2 million people in Ethiopia and 3.8 million people in Kenya who are in need of relief aid. In Somalia one third of its people need food assistance; one in every five children are malnourished because of the food shortage. Marcus Prior, spokesperson for World Food Programme in Nairobi said “this is the worst drought in nearly a decade. One in ten Kenyans is in need of food assistance”. Tanzania has recently sent forty thousand tons of cereals to regions that have been affected by the drought. Livestock in Uganda have also started to die due to starvation and lack of water. Officials fear that this will have a negative impact on meat and milk supplies to large parts of east Africa. Food prices in Uganda have increased in the last month as well as the cost of electricity because two key hydroelectric dams were shut down because of low water levels.
I think that it was interesting to see how the drought has affected the people of eastern Africa. The drought is definitely having a negative impact on the people’s health. I was surprised to read the numbers of people who are malnourished. The drought is not only having an impact on the health of the people where so many millions of people are at risk of starving. But it is also having an impact on the economy. The prices are increasing for food and electricity but people who mainly work as farmers are not able to raise the crops and livestock that they normally would to support themselves.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jDjxYVdJ420CiZHYU6JxiQdsyxKg
1 comment:
This article is the kind of thing that makes me go back to asking why we (or anyone else who has the capacity to) are not doing anything about this sort of stuff. In the same breath, I know why; the way our (i.e., "The") world works doesn't allow for unprofitable enterprise... This leads me to wonder how short-term the modern capitalist definition of "profitable" actually is. In the U.S., where we as a culture often struggle to start a sentence that contains the point "I am satisfied" and finish that same sentence maintaining the sentiment, the definition is inescapably shallow. But beyond raving, I wonder why the invitation to irrigate hasn't been pursued, as it sounds like a potentially promising endeavor. Even beyond that, what about attempting to create new jobs, not only in delivering aid, but in educating the afflicted regions so that handouts become unnecessary and outsourcing becomes undesirable, due to people being employed by their own local resource providers and no longer needing the extra $.03 a day that lacing Nikes once brought in. That may be a bit far fetched. Or maybe it has already been done. I certainly don't know as much as I think I do when it comes to the social cure-all.
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