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UN pushes for Gulf states to invest in Horn of Africa

Saturday, 19 July 2008

By a Staff Reporter Gulf aid and investment can help bail out the Horn of Africa, where war, drought and soaring prices have left 14 million people urgently needing food, the UN’s top humanitarian chief said. Sir John Holmes, the UN’s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the petrodollar windfalls of oil-rich GCC members could assist their neighboring region through targeted assistance and investment. “There is an important role that can be played by the countries of the region which are obviously benefiting from higher oil prices,” said Sir John, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “I think there is a response and I hope that response will continue to increase because the needs are very great. “Large areas of the Horn of Africa, including parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Uganda and Kenya, are now in, or rapidly sliding towards, a humanitarian emergency and we believe there is something like 14 million people now in urgent need of food aid and other humanitarian assistance in the coming months.” Sir John said the recurrent failure of rains and sharp rises in fuel and food prices were crippling agricultural production and risked the livelihood of millions of people who already lived “on the margins of survival” due to civil conflict and other catastrophes. In southern Ethiopia, 4.6 million people need emergency food support, adding to the 5.7 million who have already received help under a government programme, according to UN figures. Somalis face an acute crisis caused by conflict, drought and price increases in basic commodities, with the price of imported rice rising by 350 percent between January 2007 and May this year in some markets. The number of people needing humanitarian aid has risen by 40 percent since January to 2.6 million. There is an intense conflict going on in parts of Somalia,” said Sir John. “We calculated something like 850,000 people have been forced to leave Mogadishu over the last year because of the fighting there. So, you have a compounded problem of the ordinary population with an additional population of newly displaced people facing these severe food shortages.” Somalia with up to 10 million people has been wracked by violence since Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, sparking a bloody power struggle. The government of Nur Hassan Hussein, who came to power in late 2007 on a pledge to end the violence, has been fighting militants ousted from large swathes of the country’s southern and central regions last year. In Kenya, 1.2 million people need assistance because of rising food prices and post-election violence and displacement at the beginning of the year that caused a drop in food production in the Rift Valley. In north-east Uganda, 700,000 people depend on relief supplies in an area blighted by conflict, a prolonged dry spell and emerging crop diseases. In Djibouti, global acute malnutrition rates for children under five have risen to between 17 percent and 25 percent in some areas because of reduced rainfall over recent months, while Eritreans are suffering from below-average rainfall over the past 12 months. Sir John noted Saudi Arabia’s recent US$500 million donation to the World Food Programme and other Gulf funds assisting north-east Africa, calling for khaleeji leaders to “continue to increase the generosity they have previously shown in humanitarian aid”. Dubai's will to invest about $100m in several economic sectors in Ethiopia from October is just the latest example of private Gulf finance and sovereign wealth fund cash flowing into the Horn of Africa. Last week, chairman Sultan bin Sulayem, head of the Dubai World delegation to Addis Ababa, said officials were “in the process of finalizing agreements with the Ethiopian government” relating to mining, trade, agriculture, property and catering contracts. Gulf sovereign wealth funds such as Dubai World have been enriched by record oil and commodity prices and are looking to emerging markets in places such as the Horn of Africa for new opportunities. Sir John encouraged greater investment in the Horn of Africa, saying: “If we can move to a productive cycle … of investment then that could be extremely helpful in a region which is affected by drought regularly.” Six UN agencies, as well as the aid groups World Vision International, Care International and Handicap International released a joint statement that called on governments and donors “to act promptly to save lives and prevent an escalation of the crisis” in the region. “A combination of drought conditions and rising food prices is driving the crisis which is affecting populations already food insecure due to conflict, displacement and a drop in food production,” the statement said. “The emergency is exacerbated by the erosion of livelihoods among the landless, pastoralists, internally displaced persons and the urban poor across the region. “Disease outbreaks fuelled by poor hygiene and sanitation in drought-affected areas, and poor health and nutrition services, including low immunization coverage, are additional high risks for mothers and children.”

 

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