CurrentEye

The British charity said tens of thousands of people in the Sahel region of west and central Africa could die in the coming months if the international community did not distribute much needed aid immediately.

The charity said western governments and aid agencies risked making the mistakes of last year in the Horn of Africa, where the famine may have been far less severe had there been a swifter response to the crisis as it developed.

Read more at The Telegraph

Over the last five years in Tanzania, however, the situation has become much, much worse, with albinos increasingly subjected to murder and mutilation because of a completely spurious myth that albino body parts are effective in witchcraft rituals. … Since 2008, at least 62 albinos have been killed in Tanzania, 16 have been violently assaulted and had their limbs amputated and the bodies of 12 albinos have been exhumed from graves and dismembered.

In this remarkable episode of Africa Investigates, Tanzanian journalist Richard Mgamba, albino community representative Isaack Timothy and Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas set out to discover what lies behind these sickening attacks and to uncover and confront some of those behind the grotesque trade in body parts for witchcraft rituals.

See the half-hour program in the link.

Xan Rice, Nairobi, The Guardian

Famine relief efforts in Somalia are being hampered as much by delays in procuring food aid and raising funds as by difficulties in accessing Islamist-controlled areas, according to humanitarian organisations working there.

The al-Shabab rebel group, which controls most of the south, including the main famine zones, has refused to lift the bans it has imposed on several humanitarian agencies over the past two years. Barred organisations include the World Food Programme, which usually leads drought responses.

But several other international aid groups, including Islamic Relief, Unicef, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are operating across the al-Shabab-controlled zones, as are numerous Somali non-governmental organisatons.

Staff at these agencies say the major problem in responding to the crisis is the time it is taking to buy food abroad and to transport it to the worst-hit areas.

The lack of food stockpiling in Somali reflects badly on the international humanitarian community, [Tony Burns, director of operations for Saacid] said, since the severity of the drought was known for many months before famine was declared in the Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions two weeks ago. A further three areas were added to the famine list on Thursday: parts of the Middle Shabelle region, the sections of Mogadishu that host communities who have fled their home areas, and the Afgoye settlements near the capital, which house 400,000 displaced people. 

The UN estimates tens of thousands have died from hunger-related causes across the country. Other countries in the Horn of Africa have also been hit by the drought, but it is the corrosive effect of 20 years without a government and civil war that has driven several million Somalis to the brink.

» Read more

Jeffrey Gettleman:

Kordofan lies at the heart of Sudan, is emblematic of many of the country’s problems, and is home to myriad militias, rival ethnic groups and contested oil wells. Vicious fighting broke out there last week, and there is fear that an escalating conflict in Kordofan could complicate southern Sudan’s secession into an independent country, scheduled for next month.

According to United Nations officials and aid workers, the northern Sudanese Army has embarked on an aggressive campaign against Kordofan’s Nuban people, many of whom aligned with the southern Sudanese during Sudan’s last civil war.