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Hundreds of thousands of people might starve to death if the scale of Africa’s food security crisis is not recognized, warned Isak Pretorius, president of the indigenous African non-governmental organization, ForAfrika. (and growing malnutrition) affecting our continent is real and urgent, and I urge people of conscience to join the people of Africa,” he said in a statement released to APA on Tuesday. Contrary to what is often reported, the drought in Africa extends far beyond the Horn of Africa, and hundreds of thousands of people in central and southern Africa are threatened by lack of food, Killen pointed out. Otieno, Chief Operating Officer of ForAfrika. “Emergency assistance is therefore needed to prevent parts of the Horn of Africa, which encompasses Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Somaliland and Djibouti, from descending into famine,” said Mr. Otieno. In addition, drought and heat stress are noticeable in northwestern Namibia, southwestern Angola, northern and central Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar. ForAfrika has helped over 1.2 million people in South Sudan in 2021, and over 903,000 in Angola, 50,000 in Uganda, 400,000 in Mozambique, 166,300 in South Africa and 500 in Rwanda. This assistance includes working with people to improve their ability to feed themselves. “The staff of ForAfrika are themselves African. We are at home here and we know what Africans need to thrive. This is our vision: for Africa to flourish,” said its CEO, Isak Pretorius. He added that the crisis, which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the African Union (AU) say has affected 346 million people, is the result of a number of simultaneous factors. These include conflict, drought, floods, the Covid-19 pandemic and rising prices due to the war in Ukraine. While food insecurity in Africa is due to recurring environmental, political and economic instability and the concomitant breakdown of community support systems, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated the situation by disrupting the global supply of wheat and other commodities such as cooking oil, driving up prices.

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