Passage4
Hunger hit Africa hard this year as climate changes, conflict and lasting poverty destroyed multiple countries and left tens of millions of people in terrible conditions.
Countries as 1) diverse as South Sudan, Malawi and the Central African Republic have sounded the alarm in recent months. The U.N. World Food Program says sub-Saharan Africa already has the world’s 2) highest prevalence of hunger. Every day in Africa, 23 million children 3) go to school hungry. The agency’s David Orr said that in the lower half of Africa, where weather is the main criminal, this year has been an 4) unusually difficult year.
“ I think what makes things different this year is the 5) combination of drought and then an El Nino weather event coming right after that, so that people are 6) effectively being hit by two consecutive years of 7) reduced rainfall. It’s particularly difficult on a region where 70 percent of the population are subsistence farmers.”
But African governments say they, too, they have an 8) important role to play, and that the hunger crisis is their failure as well. Malawi;s minister of finance earlier this year 9) described his nation’s hunger situation as “ a scandal”. In Ethiopia, the government has committed a record sum, $192 million dollars amid news that as many as 10 million people will face 10) critical food shortages next year because of a severe drought.