We have the tools to prevent another famine in Africa

06 Oct 2011
We have the tools to prevent another famine in Africa Thursday, October 6, 2011 Long-term investments in agriculture and a focus on helping smallholder farmers with existing tools are crucial for avoiding another food crisis on the scale of that seen in the Horn of Africa, argues Sam Dryden, programme director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Famines are not forces of nature, he says, but complex events rooted in factors that can be controlled, such as governance, education and access to markets. There are success stories. A two-step programme put in place by Oxfam America, and supported by the Gates Foundation, helped to tackle Ethiopia's 2008 famine caused by rocketing global food prices. The programme provided immediate food assistance to farmers at highest risk, followed by cash-for-work projects - building dams and roads, for example - to help smallholder farmers develop resilience to future droughts. As a result, many farm families survived this year's drought without food assistance, says Dryden.

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