Famine threatens east and central Africa

Catholic churches and charities in sub-Saharan Africa are leading efforts to aid millions of people in the region without food.

In Ethiopia nearly 10 million people face starvation, while in Malawi and South Sudan 2.8 million face chronic food shortages.

“This is a human disaster. We are greatly concerned,” Fr Chrisantus Ndaga, the deputy general secretary of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA), told The Tablet. “The justice and peace commissions are collecting data.”

On Saturday, a Malawian diocese stopped taking tithes, offerings and other collection from church members due to the increasing hunger. “We are very concerned with the way people are suffering,” Bishop Martin Mtumbuka of Karonga diocese was quoted in the Nyasa Times as saying.

In Ethiopia, facing its worst drought in 30 years, more than 10 million people are threatened with famine, according to the UN. Around “350,000 children are in need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition”, the UN children’s agency Unicef says.

There the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Government under Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has been accused of withholding food and fertiliser from its political opponents and hounding farmers whose crops have failed for loan repayments.

Desalegn was elected for a second term in May last year in elections condemned by observers and human rights groups as a sham.

Opposition candidates were prevented from registering, raising money and mobilising supporters. Half a million people died in Ethiopia’s 1983-5 famine that was largely created by policies of the then government.