African Famine

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for some months, you will realise that people are starving in the Horn of Africa.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation considers 12 million people at risk in a region that includes Ethiopia (82m), Kenya (39m), Somalia (9m), Uganda (32m) and little Djibouti (1m). The figures in brackets are national populations and imply that 12 million is only only about 7 per cent of people in the region.

But you know the risk to each and every one of them is serious when Bob Geldof is wheeled out in a suit. Geldof, in a recent press conference, felt compelled to remind people that those at risk are intelligent, creative and resilient people who are suffering enormously.

Continue reading "Make boverty history" »

Here’s a question – why are people rioting in Britain but not in Africa?

Why are we seeing violence and vandalism on the streets of London, where an entire government bureaucracy has been built up around giving money to the poor, but not on the streets of Mogadishu, where there is no government assistance at all, barely a government, and whatever aid is provided by other countries is often pilfered by unscrupulous local officials?

Here’s another question. Why are we seeing more panic and hysteria on the floors of the western world’s stock exchanges and among investors than we are in the Somalian camps, where according to the latest figures one in every 10 children under the age of five will be dead by November?

Continue reading "First world problems and the crisis in Africa" »