Vicious circle: Why Africa is trapped in sea of human crises
Children race into the drop zone to gather any food or seeds that were spilled during the air drop in Leer, South Sudan on on July 5, 2014. Tens of thousands face starvation in South Sudan. PHOTO | NICHOLE SOBECKI | AFP
A humanitarian crisis is sweeping across Africa as wars, popular uprisings, separatist movements, drought, natural disasters and diseases displace people, raising serious questions on the priorities of economic managers and political leaders.
Apart from the well publicised war or instability in countries like Somalia, South Sudan, regions of Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, Sudan, Libya and Algeria, more than half of African countries are in some form of turbulence, according to the United Nations Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha). The crises manifest themselves in big refugee populations, both internal and external, hunger and malnutrition, unemployment and civil strife as people compete for increasingly fewer resources — means of sustenance like water and land, social amenities like schools and basic commodities.
