How Horn of Africa drought became a deadly famine

AID AGENCIES have admitted their own failings in a report on the response to the famine in the Horn of Africa. Save the Children and Oxfam say that a "culture of risk aversion" meant it took nearly a year between the first warnings of an impending food shortage and the launch of a full-scale response.

However, the agencies say that the governments of Ethiopia and Kenya - and developed countries - must take their share of the blame.

WHAT HAPPENED?
Fews Net, a sophisticated satellite-based early warning system, predicted low rainfall and worsening food security in the Horn of Africa as early as August 2010. The system sounded a second alarm in February 2011, but the Kenyan government only declared a national emergency in May and it wasn't until July that the United Nations warnings were taken seriously.

The UK's Department for International Development believes between 50,000 and 100,000 people have died - more than half of them under the age of five - since the famine struck. The crisis continues in Somalia, where hundreds of thousands of people are still at risk, according to Oxfam.

WHO IS TO BLAME?
A culture of risk aversion appears to be the main problem; those in charge were scared of being wrong. As Oxfam's Duncan Green explains, "Decision makers are often not comfortable with uncertainty and forecasts, requiring hard data before initiating a response." People on the ground - aid workers and the communities themselves - tried to sound the alarm, but failed to get a meaningful response "further up the chain".

Apparently, more senior aid workers and government officials were worried that if fears of a famine turned out to be unjustified they would suffer reputational damage.

Famine 'fatigue' is also a factor, with some agency workers thinking "there are droughts every year". This encourages "an attitude of resignation to the high levels of chronic malnutrition".

Green points out that it is difficult to raise large sums of money to pay for a relief operation without significant media attention - which doesn't tend to happen until pictures of starving children are being broadcast across the world.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Governments must accept that money spent early when a drought is predicted can be more effective than waiting until a crisis has developed. Trucking five litres of water per day as a last resort intervention to 80,000 people in Ethiopia costs more than $3 million for five months. If water sources in the same area had been prepared for an oncoming drought, it would have cost just $900,000. 

As Green writes: "The principles of risk reduction and management are well accepted in other fields, such as insurance (where paying money upfront is regarded as a responsible approach to prevent high losses in the event of a crisis)."

Oxfam and Save the Children want governments to sign up to the Charter to End Extreme Hunger, which sets out how famines can be successfully tackled in future.

HAVE LESSONS BEEN LEARNED?
Possibly not. The Guardian reports that early warning systems suggest a new crisis is likely in West Africa and the Sahel, where food shortages are already being reported. In Niger, people are living on a third less food, money and fuel than is necessary to survive. ·