Drought, and the war in Ukraine, are causing the first famine of the global food crisis
decades Somalia has lurched between disorder and anarchy. The government controls only bits of the country. The rest is in the hands of jihadists adept at blowing themselves up in crowded places. For many Somalis life is poor, brutish and short. They live in the fifth poorest and eighth most-violent country. Their life expectancy is the world’s sixth lowest.
Somalia imports nearly 80% of its food. By January higher shipping costs had sent local prices close to levels last seen during the famine in 2011. Russia’s invasion and higher fuel prices have also fanned food inflation. As a result it is now much costlier for Somalis who live off the land to buy food to supplement their diets, and for city-dwellers to lend a helping hand.
True famines are mercifully rare these days. The last “calamitous” one, meaning a famine that leads to at least 1m deaths, took place in Ethiopia in the 1980s. “Great famines”, those that claim 100,000 or more lives, have also become less frequent owing to improved early-warning mechanisms and more effective humanitarian interventions. There have been only three such famines this century, the most recent and deadliest of which was Somalia’s in 2011.
Decades of fighting have also destroyed infrastructure, stunted the economy, forced millions to flee their homes and left the state largely unable to provide basic services like health care and education. Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took office in June. He hopes to reverse a slide in security that occurred under his predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who almost rekindled the civil war when he tried to stay in office beyond his term.
After the sorghum and maize they grew withered on the stalk, Hawa Mustaf Hassan’s husband left the family farm in southern Somalia to find work. The $5 a month he sent her was not enough. The youngest of her three children, two-year-old Adan, fell ill. She scraped together money to take him for medical help just in time to save him. For weeks he hovered between life and death. “I felt there was no hope that he would recover,” she says.
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