Here we go again: famine in the Horn of Africa
This week, yet again, the spectre of famine in the Horn of Africa has reappeared on our television screens and in our newspapers. Across large parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, livestock are dying in huge numbers because they cannot get water and pasture. Ominously, no rains are due until September, so even if the next rainy season is a good one pasture won’t recover until October at the earliest. Until then things can only get worse, and the cruellest irony of all is that the first rains bring a cold shock that many of the undernourished surviving animals won’t be able to survive.
