Hunger hit Africa hard this year as climate change, conflict and enduring poverty ravaged multiple countries and left tens of millions of people in dire straits.
Countries as diverse as South Sudan, Malawi and the Central African Republic have sounded the alarm in recent months. The U.N. World Food Program says sub-Saharan Africa already has the world's highest prevalence of hunger; one person in four is undernourished. Every day in Africa, 23 million children go to school hungry.
The agency's David Orr said that in the lower half of Africa, where weather is the main culprit, 2015 has been an unusually difficult year.
"I think what makes things different this year is the combination of drought and then an El Nino weather event coming right after that, so that people are effectively being hit by two consecutive years of reduced rainfall," he said. "It's particularly difficult on a region where 70 percent of the population are subsistence farmers."
Governments' role
But African governments say they, too, they have an important role to play, and that the hunger crisis is their failure as well. Malawi's minister of finance earlier this year described his nation's hunger situation as "a scandal" and pledged to do more.
In Ethiopia, the government has committed a record $192 million to the problem amid news that as many as 10 million people will face critical food shortages next year because of a crippling drought.
John Graham, Save the Children's country director in Ethiopia, told VOA that African governments need to do more, because international donor budgets are increasingly squeezed by crises elsewhere in the world.
But, he said, they still can't do it alone.
"The Ethiopian government has stepped up," Graham said. "They've pledged about $200 million, which is far more than I've ever seen them pledge for any other emergency, and so I think that they're really trying to do their best. But I think the international community should really stand by them, and also make big pledges. And so far — I've been here for 18 years, and this is the slowest response that I've seen to this type of crisis."
South Sudan conflict
Elsewhere on the continent, such as in South Sudan, the problems are trickier. There, two years of brutal conflict have played a huge role in pushing hundreds of thousands of people to starvation.
But aid officials say aid agencies can only do so much on their own.
"We and the other humanitarian agencies are there to support the governments," Orr said. "And that's more and more what we're doing — not just providing lean-season relief programs, and other forms of food assistance, but actually giving technical support and institutional capacity to really increase the ability of governments to solve these problems for themselves."
That, everyone acknowledges, is a long and difficult process, but one that governments and donors need to tackle if they want to avoid a repeat of 2015.
Vocabulary
ravage:毁坏;破坏
subsistence:两生活;生存
中国严防埃博拉进入本土
致不爱做饭的你
恶意软件瞄准中国苹果设备用户
不惧埃博拉:美国男子热衷病毒试验
环球剧场推播放器 莎翁戏剧可点播
人工智能大发展 50%职业未来将消失
你的信息足够安全吗?
如何找到“达西先生” 简•奥斯丁的恋爱指南
公司社交活动注意事项
立冬啦 关于冬天不可不知的3个单词
疯狂的双十一 阿里巴巴1小时交易20亿美元
英机场装香味地球仪 你的国家什么味道?
美中期选举:共和党版奥巴马横空出世?
到底如何才能灭掉肥肚腩?
14个看似不靠谱却有效的减肥妙招
日本研发人工智能软件 考试成绩超学生
缩水的双十一 阿里巴巴销售数据虚高1/4
成功的商人不懂宏观经济
宫崎骏访谈 不做电影做漫画
想在网上相亲 未来可能需要先测DNA
开心地结束一天工作
10条握手注意事项
音痴父亲秘密苦练半年 献唱女儿婚礼
生命的奇迹 史上唯一健康成长的熊猫三胞胎
可以让你用手机开关家门的智能锁安全吗
纽约世贸中心13年后重新开业
双十一诞生史 从光棍节到购物狂欢
“卷福”登报宣布订婚 粉丝心碎
听“习语”,学英文
习主席在APEC领导人非正式会议上的讲话要点(双语)
不限 |
英语教案 |
英语课件 |
英语试题 |
不限 |
不限 |
上册 |
下册 |
不限 |