African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›Somalia food shortages worsened by NGO policy and anti-terrorism laws – By Mohamed Mubarak

Somalia food shortages worsened by NGO policy and anti-terrorism laws – By Mohamed Mubarak

By Uncategorised
July 29, 2014
2590
0
AMISOM

AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) helps humanitarian workers distribute food in Afgoye (UN photo library).

As the UN warns of an impending famine in Somalia, it is important to look at the track record of aid organisations in responding to emergencies in the country. This will help explain what should be done to aid local communities in becoming better prepared.

How we got here

The work of aid organisations in Somalia is partly to blame for the over-reliance of many former-farmers on food aid, rather than maintaining a more sustainable self-sufficiency through continued cultivation of their farms.

A popular criticism is that aid organisations bring in imported food and give it away for free when farmers are about to harvest their crops. This has helped discourage the farming of cheap staple foods, and has also contributed to the bankrupting of small-scale farmers. This also happens to be the reason Al-Shabaab said it had banned the World Food Programme (WFP) from operating in its territory.

During the last famine in 2011, Al-Shabaab was heavily criticised for banning WFP from operating in its territory. While reprehensible, this alone did not cause the shortage of food in large areas controlled by the group.

The US government’s anti-terrorism laws have also made it extremely difficult for aid organisations to work in Al-Shabaab territory without breaking US law. This led to many aid groups opting to concentrate on Mogadishu. The result was a huge wastage and stealing of food aid, with much of the aid going straight to the commercial markets in the capital.

Some local NGOs, and those from Turkey and Gulf or Arab states, helped set up an SMS-operated money transfer system that sent funds directly to those in need. This helped countless people buy food and live through the famine.

The downside is that it created an aid-reliant population; many people still live on cash hand-outs even though they were never affected by the famine, nor are they IDPs.

Many of the IDP camps that were set up in Mogadishu were indeed ghost camps that would be populated only when aid was about to be distributed. This meant that few aid recipients were people who lived in the epicentres of famine; little aid reached these and many of them died. There is nothing to suggest that things will be different this time.

While Al-Shabaab in some ways contributed to making the famine worse, one aspect of its response was effective in helping and resettling a minority of the population affected by the famine.

The group ran IDP camps within its territory, with the biggest being in KM 50 airport in Lower Shabelle region. After the famine subsided, it gave the IDPs three months’ worth of food and money and resettled them back in their places of origin.

It may have been a poorly planned resettlement, but it was one that should have been replicated by aid agencies in Mogadishu.

Famine on the horizon

Over the past year rains have been less than expected in many parts of south and central Somalia. Farmers largely rely on rain to water their farms; artificial irrigation being too expensive for subsistence farmers and nomads rely on the rain to provide drinking water and grazing grounds for their animals.

As reduced rains mean less pasture, nomads are the first to be affected: they start to lose the milk from their camels and cows – milk that could be sold for money to buy food. Then, as their animals start to die, they move to look for greener lands, which inevitably leads to clan clashes over grazing grounds.

The easiest places to graze for armed nomads are on farmlands owned by unarmed farmers, but this exacerbates the spiral towards famine.

In Middle Shabelle region, both Al-Shabaab and AMISOM have armed at different points in time a local farming community that had problems with local nomads grazing on their farmlands. Communities such as these are likely to clash as the situation worsens.

The famine therefore is expected to not only cause death by hunger, but also armed conflict for resources, including for food aid.

What can be done?

As the pre-famine situation in towns such as Wajid and Hudur in Bakool region has shown, Al-Shabab can still force its policy on areas it doesn’t control. The two towns have been under siege for almost 3 months; food prices there are three times those in Mogadishu. The Somali government sent dozens of trucks of food aid to the towns, only to get stranded in Baidoa; Al-Shabab still controls the countryside and regularly ambushes allied troops.

This means that food aid by the WFP cannot be expected to make it to the areas liberated from Al-Shabab if the situation deteriorates.  Moreover, there is no realistic expectation that the US government will change its antiterrorism laws in time to prevent a famine.

Given Somalia’s weak government, insecurity and instability will continue to be a problem. These will continue to intensify famine conditions. The starting point for mitigation lies with aid organisations helping to resettle victims that originate from peaceful areas. Mismanagement and diversion of food aid should be monitored and sanctioned.

Mohamed Mubarak, a political and security analyst, is the founder of anti-corruption NGO Marqaati (Marqaati.org), based in Mogadishu @somalianalyst This article was commissioned via the African Journalism Fund.

Previous Article

Will (re)constructing the CAR’s security sector help ...

Next Article

Violence, photography and the iconography of South ...

Uncategorised

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Politics

    Ghana: women still sidelined as 2012 election approaches – By Clair MacDougall

  • MalawiPolitics

    Malawi faces toughest, most high-profile trial yet in massive Cashgate scandal

  • Age of Agitation SeriesDebating IdeasSouth Africa

    Female Comrades against Apartheid: Rethinking Youth Activism

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter


  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • The two defining challenges facing South Africa
  • ‘Don’t Agonize, Organize!’ Remembering Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s Advocacy on Sudan
  • Four actions vulnerable countries need from COP28
  • Afrobeats: The birth of Afro-Adura
  • Sudan: How the generals disappeared the people on the way to the economy

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksKenyaPolitics

“A struggle in a struggle”: Patriarchy in Kenya’s social justice movement

Sexism is depleting activist movements, silencing women’s voices, and leading to burnout. Yet it is hardly spoken about. When Irene Asuwa first found out about Kenya’s social justice centres, an ...
  • Travelling While Black Nanjala Nyabola

    The pitfalls – and privileges – of travelling while Black

    By Nanjala Nyabola
    November 18, 2020
  • Dr Stella Nyanzi at a human rights conference in 2018. Credit: Chapter Four Uganda.

    Stella Nyanzi: The rude vagina-poem-writing hero Uganda needs

    By Rosebell Kagumire
    July 9, 2019
  • President Emmanuel Macron of France during his three-country tour in Africa. Credit: Présidence de la République du Bénin.

    Liberté, Egalité, Impunité

    By Billy Burton
    August 16, 2022
  • “What this generation wants”: African authors publishing direct to the web

    By Derick Matsengarwodzi
    April 1, 2021

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.