The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) alerted on Tuesday April 5 to the major food crisis currently affecting Africa but "
going unnoticed
" due to the war in Ukraine.
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Some 346 million people, or more than one in four Africans, are suffering from "
alarming
" hunger and this figure is likely to rise in the coming months, the ICRC said.
This food crisis is hitting the entire continent, from drought-stricken Ethiopia and Somalia to Mauritania and Burkina Faso.
But the funds are lacking to respond to it, worries the ICRC.
“Millions of families are hungry”
“
This is a disaster that goes largely unnoticed.
Millions of families are hungry and children are dying of malnutrition
,” ICRC director of global operations Dominik Stillhart told a news conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
Dominik Stillhart added that attention to the "
terrible
" plight of Ukrainians "
should not prevent the world from seeing further crises
".
The conflict in Ukraine has contributed to rising food and fuel prices and disrupting supply chains, amplifying the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the ICRC also points out.
The organization wants to devote one billion euros this year to its humanitarian response in Africa, but it lacks some 800 million euros.
"
We are stepping up our operations...to help as many people as we can, but the number of people without water and food is staggering
," Dominik Stillhart said.
The UN World Food Program (WFP) warned last month that more than 70% of South Sudan's population would face extreme hunger this year, due to political instability and disasters. natural.
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More than six million people in eastern and southern Ethiopia need an '
emergency
' response this year to severe drought in the Horn of Africa, the government has warned. UN in January.
In Burkina Faso, the number of people displaced by hunger has more than doubled over the past year.
Dominik Stillhart recalled the indirect impact of climate change on crops.
"
The current food security crisis is clearly the result of the combined effects of conflict...but it is also the result of repeated climatic shocks
," he said.