South China Morning Post
Jevans Nyabiage
Sunday July 24, 2022
Workers carry sacks of grain at a World Food Programme warehouse in Abala, Ethiopia in June. China is sending emergency food aid to Ethiopia and other nations in the Horn of Africa. Photo: AFP
China has started shipping emergency food aid to countries
in the drought-hit Horn of Africa, days after Washington and Beijing traded accusations
over the global food crisis.
Wu Peng, director general of the Chinese foreign ministry’s
African affairs department, on Wednesday said Beijing was speeding up efforts
to provide emergency aid to help Horn of Africa countries deal with the severe
drought.
The region has not had good rains for four consecutive
seasons and it has left 18.4 million people facing severe hunger, according to
the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). It said farmers would continue
to face widespread livestock deaths. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also
worsened the food crisis since most countries in the region were heavily
dependent on wheat from the two nations.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi promised emergency food aid
to Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti early this year. On Wednesday, Wu
said the first shipments were on the way. “Glad to know that the first batch of
food aid to Ethiopia and Djibouti has been shipped out and those to Somalia and
Eritrea are ready for shipment,” he tweeted.
Nazanine Moshiri, International Crisis Group’s senior
analyst for climate and security in Africa, said the situation in the Horn of
Africa was dire.
“More than 18 million people are suffering extreme hunger in
Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. In Somalia, more than 200,000 people are facing
famine. At least a thousand children have died – those are the cases we know
about – millions more are severely malnourished,” Moshiri said.
She said a two-year dry spell, or four consecutive failed
rainy seasons – the most prolonged drought in at least 40 years – had decimated
livelihoods, killed about 7 million livestock and degraded soil and land.
“Herders and farmers in Kenya told me during a recent
research trip, they haven’t seen decent rains in more than two years. There is
no relief in sight from the immense pressure,” she said.
Conflicts in parts of Ethiopia and Somalia have also
prevented humanitarian access. At the same time, Moshiri said food insecurity
was worsening, compounded by rising global food and fertiliser costs in the
wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the US and China are blaming each other for
worsening the global food crisis.
Speaking at an event organised by the Centre for Strategic
and International Studies in Washington on Monday, Samantha Power, head of the
US Agency for International Development, said even before the war in Ukraine
began, Beijing’s trade restrictions on fertiliser and grain hoarding were
inflating prices.
Power said Beijing offered little transparency on its stocks
and production, which might have soothed markets. “Removing export restrictions
in its fertiliser exports and releasing some of its grain reserves – either to
the global market or to humanitarian entities like the World Food Programme –
would significantly relieve pressure on food and fertiliser prices,” Power
said.
She said that in 2017, the last time the Horn of Africa
faced a severe drought, China had donated US$34 million to the WFP’s response.
“Thus far in 2022, they’ve contributed US$3 million to WFP and that’s for
global response. The United States has provided US$3.9 billion so far this
fiscal year,” Power said.
She said the US would provide a further US$1.2 billion to
meet the immediate needs of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia – countries facing
their worst drought in four decades and a lack of grains, which were previously
sourced from Russia and Ukraine. “This is on top of the more than US$507
million we’ve already given to the Horn response.”
The US aid chief has since travelled to Kenya, one of the
countries hit hard by the global food crisis, to assess the situation.
China’s foreign ministry hit back at the US claims on
Tuesday, saying Washington was partly to blame for the global food crisis.
Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the US had “also admitted that the
sanctioning of Russia has taken a toll on many countries and made food
shortages a reality”.
“We hope that the US will seriously reflect on its
disreputable role in the global food crisis and stop smearing and making
groundless accusations against China.”
Zhao said that as a developing country, China had no
obligation to provide official development assistance. However, he said China
“has been actively participating in international development cooperation,
providing development resources to UN development agencies, including food and
agriculture agencies, and making positive contributions to global food
security”.
“China has provided more funding, sent more experts and
undertaken more projects under the framework of the Food and Agriculture
Organization’s South-South Cooperation Programme than any other developing
country,” Zhao added.
At the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali early this
month, Wang proposed that countries should stop imposing export restrictions on
humanitarian food purchases by the WFP and that they should facilitate the
entry of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian agricultural products and inputs
into the international market. “Major food-producing and net food-exporting
countries should release their own export potential, reduce trade and technical
barriers, and control making fuel out of crops, so as to ease the tight food
supply in the market,” the Chinese foreign minister said.
But Moshiri said the international response to the crisis
had been too slow for the hundreds of thousands of children now at risk of
starvation.
“Even before Ukraine happened, early warning systems sent
alerts about the risk of food insecurity after failed rains. The Somali and
Kenyan governments declared an emergency last year,” Moshiri said.
“Since the war in Ukraine started the focus of donors of
course has been elsewhere. The budgets of humanitarian agencies have also been
strained by the same commodity shocks. But I think the support is finally
beginning to pick up some momentum.”
Guled Ahmed, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East
Institute, said neither the US nor China was responding better to the
humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa.
“Instead of President Joe Biden’s administration aiding
African countries by increasing gas production and investing in water
infrastructure to mitigate climate change and food security challenges in
Africa, his administration is preoccupied with blaming Russia for Africa’s
humanitarian crisis,” Ahmed said.
Meanwhile, he said China had failed to step up investment in
Africa’s poor water infrastructure, such as that in Somalia. He said the
Chinese government could have helped build small dams, solar wells and
mini-hydropower facilities to address water shortages and food security instead
of planning to deliver emergency aid at the eleventh hour.