Behind the images of Africa's starving, there is economic hope
Desperate times ... women and children wait for food-aid
distributions in Kenya, where food shortages have increased
dramatically. Photo: AFP The humanitarian crisis in the Horn of
Africa is deepening. But what makes the disaster even more
tragic is that it's happening at a time when Africa has made
significant economic gains. The number of people affected by
food shortages in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti has
leapt from 10 million to 12.4 million in a matter of weeks. A
famine declared by the United Nations in parts of Somalia last
month is now expected to engulf the entire south of the country.
About 2.3 million of the region's children are acutely
malnourished and the UN Children's Fund says more than half a
million of them are ''at risk of death'' without urgent
intervention. Despite reports that 29,000 children have already
died in the past three months, the worst may be yet to come.
Images of famine are part of the African story but