Somalia seems to be entering a drought worse than 2011 or 2017

[Thegoodshepherd]

FAO is predicting famine now that it is begining to look like this rainy season is going to fail, marking the fourth failed rainy season. https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...Key-Findings-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...ical-Release-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

This is the worst drought in over 40 years. 40 years ago Somalia had a population of ~6 million, Somalia now has 16 million people. Somalia's population growth means that the cost of averting famine in the country rises proportionately.

https://www.savethechildren.net/new...fourth-time-and-war-ukraine-sends-food-prices

The rainy season in Somalia is getting shorter, Gu used to be ~2 months long, Gu is now barely a month long in most of the country.

The Somali government/s should be buying as much cereals as possible. A disaster is headed for the country.

 

[GemState]

FAO is predicting famine now that it is begining to look like this rainy season is going to fail, marking the fourth failed rainy season. https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...Key-Findings-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...ical-Release-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

This is the worst drought in over 40 years. 40 years ago Somalia had a population of ~6 million, Somalia now has 16 million people. Somalia's population growth means that the cost of averting famine in the country rises proportionately.

https://www.savethechildren.net/new...fourth-time-and-war-ukraine-sends-food-prices

The rainy season in Somalia is getting shorter, Gu used to be ~2 months long, Gu is now barely a month long in most of the country.

The Somali government/s should be buying as much cereals as possible. A disaster is headed for the country.

Is there any way for Somalia to avoid these large scale famines in the future? Or can the country simply not sustain 16million?

 

[Aurelian]

FAO is predicting famine now that it is begining to look like this rainy season is going to fail, marking the fourth failed rainy season. https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...Key-Findings-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

https://www.fsnau.org/downloads/Som...ical-Release-(March-June-2022)-8-Apr-2022.pdf

This is the worst drought in over 40 years. 40 years ago Somalia had a population of ~6 million, Somalia now has 16 million people. Somalia's population growth means that the cost of averting famine in the country rises proportionately.

https://www.savethechildren.net/new...fourth-time-and-war-ukraine-sends-food-prices

The rainy season in Somalia is getting shorter, Gu used to be ~2 months long, Gu is now barely a month long in most of the country.

The Somali government/s should be buying as much cereals as possible. A disaster is headed for the country.

why can't we utilize the sea food in this problem? I don't know much about nutrition but I thing 700g of sea food each 4 days is good enough to sustain poor ppl. Though consuming a lot of big fish is unhealthy, due to high methylmercury in big fish flesh

Is there any way for Somalia to avoid these large scale famines in the future? Or can the country simply not sustain 16million?

this country is a curse semi desert, I can't sustain a lot of ppl, it made our population numbers in check.

 

[Maan]

It's raining in garowe

 

[ZodiaK]

 

[Woke1.4rm.Shibis]

Man this is hard to watch ,another failed rain season.
These corrupt politicians are all after the kursi and and not a peep from them on the dire situation we are facing today .
May Allah give Somalia abundance of rain and long rain season

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

It seems that this rainy season has also failed. Gu season is mostly MAM (March, April, May), June rains are fairly marginal. It is safe to say that there will be no Gu harvest to speak of this year. This year's Gu is worse than last year's.

This disaster combined with the fact that Somalia imports 90% of its wheat from Russia & Ukraine means that food price inflation will likely reach double digits this year.

https://reliefweb.int/report/somali...oor-rainfall-season-horn-africa-may-23rd-2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-wheat-set-to-push-somalia-inflation-past-10

 

[ZodiaK]

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

‘Only God can help’: Hundreds die as Somalia faces famine

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — No mother should have to lose her child. Owliyo Hassan Salaad has watched four die this year. A drought in the Horn of Africa has taken them, one by one.

Now she cradles her frail and squalling 3-year-old, Ali Osman, whom she carried on a 90-kilometer (55-mile) walk from her village to Somalia’s capital, desperate not to lose him too. Sitting on the floor of a malnutrition treatment center filled with anxious mothers, she can barely speak about the small bodies buried back home in soil too dry for planting.

Deaths have begun in the region’s most parched drought in four decades. Previously unreported data shared with The Associated Press show at least 448 deaths this year at malnutrition treatment centers in Somalia alone. Authorities in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are now shifting to the grim task of trying to prevent famine.

Many more people are dying beyond the notice of authorities, like Salaad’s four children, all younger than 10. Some die in remote pastoral communities. Some die on treks in search of help. Some die even after reaching displacement camps, malnourished beyond aid.

“Definitely thousands” have died, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, told reporters on Tuesday, though the data to support that is yet to come.

Salaad left behind another four children with her husband. They were too weak to make the journey to Mogadishu, she said.

Drought comes and goes in the Horn of Africa, but this is one like no other. Humanitarian assistance has been sapped by global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and now Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prices for staples like wheat and cooking oil are rising quickly, in some places by more than 100%. Millions of the livestock that provide families with milk, meat and wealth have died. Even the therapeutic food to treat hungry people like Salaad’s son is becoming more expensive and, in some places, might run out.

And for the first time, a fifth straight rainy season might fail.

An “explosion of child deaths” is coming to the Horn of Africa if the world focuses only on the war in Ukraine and doesn’t act now, UNICEF said Tuesday.


Famine even threatens Somalia’s capital as displacement camps on Mogadishu’s outskirts swell with exhausted new arrivals. Salaad and her son were turned away from a crowded hospital after arriving a week ago.

They were sent instead to the treatment center for the extremely malnourished where rooms are full, extra beds have been put out and yet some people must sleep on the floor. Mothers wince, and babies wail, as tiny bodies with sores and protruding ribs are gently checked for signs of recovery.

“The center is overwhelmed,” said Dr. Mustaf Yusuf, a physician there. Admissions more than doubled in May to 122 patients.

At least 30 people have died this year through April at the center and six other facilities run by Action Against Hunger, the humanitarian group said. It is seeing the highest admission rates to its hunger treatment centers since it began working in Somalia in 1992, with the number of severely malnourished children up 55% from last year.

More broadly, at least 448 people died this year at outpatient and in-patient malnutrition treatment centers across Somalia through April, according to data compiled by humanitarian groups and local authorities.

Aid workers warn the data is incomplete and the overall death toll from the drought remains elusive.

“We know from experience that mortality rises suddenly when all the conditions are in place — displacement, disease outbreaks, malnutrition — all of which we are currently seeing in Somalia,” said Biram Ndiaye, UNICEF Somalia’s chief of nutrition.

Mortality surveys conducted in parts of Somalia in December and again in April and May by the U.N.’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit showed a “severe and rapid deterioration within a very short time frame.” Most alarming was the Bay region in the south, where adult mortality nearly tripled, child mortality more than doubled and the rate of the most severe malnutrition tripled.

Deaths and acute malnutrition have reached “atypically high levels” in much of southern and central Somalia, and admissions of acutely malnourished children under 5 have risen by over 40% compared to the same period last year, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

One notable complication in counting deaths is the extremist group al-Shabab, whose control over large parts of southern and central Somalia is a barrier to aid. Its harsh response to Somalia’s drought-driven famine from 2010-12 was a factor in more than a quarter-million deaths, half of them children.

Another factor was the international community’s slow response. “A drama without witnesses,” the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia said at the time.

Now the alarms are sounding again.

More than 200,000 people in Somalia face “catastrophic hunger and starvation, a drastic increase from the 81,000 forecast in April,” a joint statement by U.N. agencies said Monday, noting that a humanitarian response plan for this year is just 18% funded.

Somalia isn’t alone. In Ethiopia’s drought-affected regions, the number of children treated for the most severe malnutrition — “a tip of the crisis” — jumped 27% in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, according to UNICEF. The increase was 71% in Kenya, where Doctors Without Borders reported at least 11 deaths in a single county’s malnutrition treatment program earlier this year.

At one of the overflowing displacement camps on the outskirts of Mogadishu, recent arrivals were anguished as they described watching family members die.

“I left some of my children behind to care for those suffering,” said Amina Abdi Hassan, who came from a village in southern Somalia with her malnourished baby. They’re still hungry as aid runs dry, even in the capital.

“Many others are on the way,” she said.

Hawa Abdi Osman said she lost children to the drought. Emaciated, and weakened by another pregnancy, she walked five days to Mogadishu.

“We had to leave some of our relatives behind, and others perished as we watched,” said her cousin, Halima Ali Dhubow.

More people come to the camp every day, using the last wisps of energy to set up makeshift shelters in the dust, lashing together branches with fabric and plastic. Some walked up to 19 days to reach the capital, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“Last night alone 120 families came in,” camp manager Nadifa Hussein said. “We are giving them all the little supplies we have, like bread. The number of people is so overwhelming that helping them is beyond our capacity. In the past aid agencies helped, but now aid is very scarce.

“Only God can help them,” she said.

 

[Sheikh Kulkuli]

Why is famine only in somali peninsular?
Is this manufactured.
Somalia is rich country.

 

[Thegoodshepherd]

Why is famine only in somali peninsular?
Is this manufactured.
Somalia is rich country.

There are various reasons.

1. Rainfall in Southern Somalia is becoming unpredictable
2. Somali farmers do not use improved seed or GMO drought tolerant seed
3. The best land that should be used to grow corn & sorghum (Juba River Valley, Hiiraan, Afmadow district etc...) are inhabited by pastoralists who don't farm, or lack infrastructure.
4. Population is growing much faster (3.5%) than the economy (2%), so the country gets poorer each year.
5. Governments don't understand what investments they should be making. For example, Puntland spends the vast majority of its budget on salaries instead of infrastructure.
6. Alshabab are impeding the transport sector. Importers get double taxed at Kismayo and Mogadishu.

I can go on and on. I am shocked that Somalia has been able to make it this far to be honest.

 

[Abaq]

Why is famine only in somali peninsular?
Is this manufactured.
Somalia is rich country.

In addition to what was said above:

1. Traditional resilience mechanisms have been lost: in the past, every farmer would have a bakaar (an underground storage of some of the harvest) to be used in times of drought. Farmers have stopped doing this.
2. Pastoralists used to make home-made powdered milk from their milk surplus in the rainy season to be used during the drought season (like industrial powdered milk, this homemade milk powder is mixed with water to make a drink). This practise has long been abandoned.
3. Although not very common, come pastoralists also used to farm sorghum in small tracts of land and store it in a bakaar for when the rains fail and the animals die. This has long been abandoned. Most pastoralists nowadays don't farm.
4. In times of extreme difficulty, people used to eat specific fruits and berries that grow wildly. This practise was known as arrahdoonasho. Although not fulfilling, in dire circumstances, this was enough to keep people alive till the rains arrive. No one does this anymore.

Also, insecurity preventing farming, farmers being discouraged to plant by aid agencies flooding the markets at harvest time leading to big losses for local farmers, lack of investment into irrigation.

And most importantly, land degradation. The land is degrading at an alarming rate which means top soil is being lost, meaning less ground water, meaning wells, lakes, ponds, and rivers dry up earlier after the rainy season, meaning less vegetation cover, meaning less rain, meaning even more topsoil loss and so on. Modern agricultural practises are not the solution because they will just compound the problem. The solution is to preserve and regenerate the topsoil and land. Holistic planned grazing and other regenerative agricultural practises achieve this:

 

[abz1991]

I think the biggest issue when it comes to the famine problem is the nabadiid al kabab. I think if the Nabadiid get defeated A lot of these famine issues will be lowered and the food security will improve greatly.

 

[abz1991]

Al kabab tax peoples farms and take their cattle by force causing them to flee their regions and live in camps.

 

[bidenkulaha]

I think the biggest issue when it comes to the famine problem is the nabadiid al kabab. I think if the Nabadiid get defeated A lot of these famine issues will be lowered and the food security will improve greatly.

That only applies to SWS and Jubaland. Where 90% of the issues are based on Shabaab.

In GM 90% of the population is free from them. However the drought still affects them because Somalis are still geeljire. And when the rain season isn’t productive then all the cattle and farms die. Therefore there’s a lack of food for these people.

We need to move people from the countryside/nomad culture to the city and find jobs for them. That way they can buy afford to buy food given the climate is going to only get worse.

 

[bidenkulaha]

Saudi Arabia donations reach Gedo Alhamdulilah

 

[abz1991]

That only applies to SWS and Jubaland. Where 90% of the issues are based on Shabaab.

In GM 90% of the population is free from them. However the drought still affects them because Somalis are still geeljire. And when the rain season isn’t productive then all the cattle and farms die. Therefore there’s a lack of food for these people.

We need to move people from the countryside/nomad culture to the city and find jobs for them. That way they can buy afford to buy food given the climate is going to only get worse.

Thats true. But don't you think because SWS and jubbaland are were most food is going to be produced if the road safety is better food can be transported to galmudug. But i do agree that there needs to be a way GM citizens can be self sufficient.

 

[bidenkulaha]

Special envoy for drought and humanitarian affairs reaches birthplace Buulo-Burde, Hiiraan.

@Kheyre @InaShaqalle

 

[bidenkulaha]

Speech to parliament on problems impeding the improvement of the situation

 

[bidenkulaha]