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U.S. Pushes for More Help for Drought-Stricken Eastern Africa

In Kenya, USAID chief appeals to China to increase contributions to multilateral relief efforts

Michael M. Phillips in Kachoda, Kenya, and

Nicholas Bariyo in Kampala, Uganda

July 24, 2022 5:31 am ET

The Biden administration pressed U.S. allies and rivals to contribute more funds to feed the millions left hungry by eastern Africa’s historic drought.

During a visit to an emergency feeding center in parched northern Kenya on Saturday, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power called on China, the Gulf states and Europe to boost donations to the United Nations and other agencies for drought relief.

“Every country that has the capacity to stave off the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our lifetimes—I just appeal to citizens in those countries, to the leaders of those countries, to dig deep, to find additional resources, to support people who have lost everything through no fault of their own,” Ms. Power said.

Ms. Power is one of many aid officials trying to direct a distracted world’s attention to eastern Africa, where four rainy seasons in a row have failed to materialize, an event never before recorded in the region’s history. The drought has left 50 million people expected to face acute food insecurity this year in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional trade bloc.

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Some 300,000 people in Somalia and South Sudan are likely to face famine conditions, the report said. In Kenya, half of the population of northern Turkana County, where Kachoda is located, suffers from moderate to severe malnutrition. The devastation stretches into Karamoja, in eastern Uganda, where the U.N. says nearly half of the 1.2 million population goes without food for three days each month.

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And the latest forecasts suggest the next rainy season—normally in October in Kenya’s case—will likely fall short, as well.

Last week, the U.S. announced a fresh $1.2 billion infusion of aid to eastern Africa, bringing the American contribution to $1.6 billion this fiscal year, out of total humanitarian expenditures of $11 billion, Ms. Power said.

Ms. Power praised the generosity of Europe, and noted that Saudi Arabia has provided emergency assistance to Yemen. In June, the European Commission announced the equivalent of $612 million in new global aid to address the food crisis. The U.K. pledged the equivalent of $446 million in fresh funding for worldwide relief. But Ms. Power urged them to go beyond routine giving.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power is one of many aid officials trying to direct a distracted world’s attention to eastern Africa.
PHOTO: THOMAS MUKOYA/REUTERS

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She singled out China for pressure, in particular, saying that Beijing contributes only $3 million to the U.N.’s World Food Program, which distributes cash and food on the ground during emergencies. The U.S. has provided nearly $4 billion to WFP in fiscal 2022, for use globally.

Michael Dunford, the WFP regional director for eastern Africa, said China doesn’t contribute “at the levels we’d like to see.”

China recently announced unspecified emergency food aid for Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea. “In support of the Horn of Africa countries against the severe drought, #China is speeding up efforts to provide emergency aid,” diplomat Wu Peng, director-general of China’s Department of African Affairs, wrote on Twitter.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian

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said this month that Beijing has actively participated in international development programs, providing resources to U.N. agencies. He also pointed to the impact that American sanctions on Russia have had on food security.

Ms. Power said donor countries are understandably consumed by their own issues, from the movement of refugees fleeing Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine to rising inflation.

But, she said, those very issues have ricocheted back onto Africa. Russia and Ukraine are traditionally major sources of grain for eastern Africa, but supplies are now cut off. Somalia usually imports 90% of its wheat from the two countries.