East Africa food crisis

Oxfam has reached more than 3 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia with emergency support after a major food crisis was declared in mid-2011.

Despite significant improvements in parts of the region, millions of people continue to need support to recover.

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Video: Thank you from East Africa - 8 February 2012

'City of Hope': Reflections from Somaliland - 8 November 2011

East Africa: Mending a crack in the sky - 8 September 2011

The Situation

Rains failed in 2010 and 2011, pushing up food prices and causing millions of small farmers and nomads to lose their livelihoods. As a result, 13 million people across the Horn of Africa were facing desperate food and water shortages by July 2011. A famine was officially declared by the UN in parts of Somalia. 

What Oxfam is doing

We have reached more than 3 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya with safe water, sanitation, cash and other support.

Learn more about our emergency work in: 

Ethiopia | Kenya | Somalia


Video: All hands to the pump in Ethiopia

Video: All hands to the pump in Ethiopia

Photo gallery

Snapshot of the East Africa food crisis

Photo 1/10 photo by: Andy Hall

Kenya: The pastoralist communities of Turkana have experienced the longest period of drought in their history in mid-2011. Many livestock died and families struggled to feed themselves, reliant on Oxfam food aid. Here, Ikai and her mother Ester Longlomoe walk home with some food rations given to them by friends.

  • Kenya: The pastoralist communities of Turkana have experienced the longest period of drought in their history in mid-2011. Many livestock died and families struggled to feed themselves, reliant on Oxfam food aid. Here, Ikai and her mother Ester Longlomoe walk home with some food rations given to them by friends.
  • Ethiopia: Pastoralists in Gobablay sit by a trench collecting the first rain. Oxfam is running 'cash-for-work' programmes, paying those worst affected by the drought to help build trenches, dams and other structures that protect and improve farmland, whilst also providing them with a steady income for weeks at a time.
  • Somaliland: Severe shortages of food and water, along with spiralling food prices and the deaths of livestock, plunged many families into destitution. Mother-of-four Khadija Acoil runs a teashop: “I have fewer customers and I make less money. I used to open all day, but now sometimes I have to close the shop because I have no ingredients or no customers.”
  • Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya: Oxfam health workers prepare to distribute 7,000 jerry cans and bars of soap to newly arrived refugees from Somalia. The camp is severely overcrowded and clean water is scarce. Without sanitised jerry cans to store water, it can quickly become contaminated and risk spreading disease.
  • Hawa Abdulayi is from Hindeysa, a remote community in Ethiopia’s Somali region. Households run by women tend to be poorer and have fewer animals meaning that drought can hit them especially hard. “I only had 20 sheep and goats, and [the drought] has killed ten,” she explains. Oxfam has been building a borehole to bring Hawa’s community a reliable source of water.
  • Somaliland: After nearly 11 months without a drop of rain, all of Waridaad village’s traditional water sources dried up. Oxfam partners Havyoco have been trucking in clean water every day. The water is pumped into these community tanks, from where each family queues up to fill their jerry cans.
  • Villagers gather at the Oxfam water collection point in Kachoda, in Kenya’s northern Turkana region. Oxfam is providing communities with a supply of clean water by constructing and repairing dozens of boreholes and wells. We’re also working with nomadic pastoralist communities whose livelihoods have been destroyed to help find new ways of making a living.
  • Somalia: Oxfam is also working with local partner SAACID to run the single largest nutrition programme in South Central Somalia, every month treating more than 12,000 severely malnourished children (like Mohamed, pictured) and pregnant and lactating mothers in Mogadishu.

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