Lack of rain, the Horn of Africa increasingly threatened by famine

The acute drought in the Horn of Africa is expected to worsen this year and threatens the region with a famine worse than the one that killed hundreds of thousands of people ten years ago, a program of regional climate monitoring.

Forecasts of the rainy season expected from March to May next "

", said in a press release the Center for Climate Predictions and Applications (ICPAC) of Igad, a group of countries. from East Africa.

Sixth rainy season aborted in a row

However, this rainy season contributes significantly (up to 60%) to the total annual rainfall in the equatorial countries of the Horn of Africa (which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and parts of Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda, and is sometimes extended to Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania, editor's note).

These forecasts confirm the fears of meteorologists and aid agencies that this drought of unprecedented duration and severity could quickly cause a humanitarian disaster.

"

", underlines ICPAC, considered as the organization reference climate by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization.

The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, with increasingly frequent and intense crises.

Read alsoThe risk of famine is still worsening in the Horn of Africa

The five consecutive failed rainy seasons have so far caused the death of millions of livestock, the destruction of crops, and forced millions of people to leave their areas to find water and food elsewhere.

ICPAC says current conditions are worse than they were before the 2011 drought, with 23 million people already '

' in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, according to the report. Igad and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The last famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, and some 260,000 people, half of them children under the age of six, died of starvation for lack of a fast enough response from the international community, according to the UN. .

At the time, the region had experienced two consecutive aborted rainy seasons, compared to five today.