"THIS year’s drought is the worst in east Africa since 2000, and possibly since 1991. Famine stalks the land. The failure of rains in parts of Ethiopia may increase the number needing food handouts by 5m, in addition to the 8m already getting them, in a population of 80m. The production of Kenyan maize, the country’s staple, is likely to drop by one-third, hitting poor farmers’ families hardest. The International Committee of the Red Cross says famine in Somalia is going to be worse than ever. Handouts are urgently needed by roughly 3.6m Somalis, nearly half the resident population (several million having already emigrated during years of strife). In fractious northern Uganda cereal output is likely to fall by half. Parts of South Sudan, Eritrea, the Central African Republic and Tanzania are suffering too. Rich countries are being less generous than usual. The UN’s World Food Programme says it has only $24m of the $300m it needs just to feed hungry Kenyans for the next six months."

Read "A Catastrophe is Looming" at Economist.com

Several GL-CRSP projects are actively addressing the impact of drought on livelihoods in East Africa, especially in pastoral regions.  The Livestock Information Network and Knowledge System (LINKS) project, has built on the efforts of the Livestock Early Warning System project, to provide real-time forecasts of weather, drought, forage condidtions, water scarcity, and conflict indicators througout Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and has been transferred successfully to Mali and Mongolia.  The Improving Pastoral Risk Management on East African Rangelands (PARIMA) project has developed and supported collective action efforts to diversify livelihoods and improve the capacity of pastoral households to mitigate drought and other risks.  Meanwhile, the Health for Animals and Livelihood Improvement (HALI) project in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania is researching the disease interface between humans-livestock-wildlife, an interface critically affected by water shortages and the deterioration of water quality in times of drought.