Living on borrowed time: the importance of sustained development funding amidst the famine
By Abdullahi Nur Osman, CEO of Hormuud Salaam Foundation
The United Nation OCHA’s Horn of Africa pledging conference earlier this month secured $2.4bn to help people living across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia amidst the climate-induced drought and famine crisis.
The donations fell short of the $7bn that the UN was seeking, but the conference still could not have come at a more critical time. And will have been integral for continuing to raise awareness around the world.
Warnings of an impending famine have been hitting news headlines for months, and recent reports suggest that hunger will kill one person every 28 seconds in east Africa when the food crisis reaches its peak in July. All in all, the situation is dire.
And as a Somali myself, and the CEO of Somalia’s first corporate foundation, I can tell you that millions of people are already living through it.
In Somalia we seemingly stand at a crossroads. Whilst we urgently need aid funding to take immediate action against the famine, we also lack the political, social, and technical infrastructure to alleviate poverty, and to create long-term stability.
It’s true that the role of climate change in Somalia’s humanitarian crisis cannot be underestimated, but equally, the development challenges which have underpinned our society for decades should not be ignored.
Therefore, beyond aid funding, we need sustained development funding to make meaningful social and economic progress.
The drought weighs heavy on the funding agenda. But Somalia will never escape the cycle of poverty and socially develop, unless we work together with international partners and organisations to explore both immediate and long-term solutions.
From building water catchments that act as a defence against climate shocks but also employ local people, to training an army of local nurses that can access hard to reach rural areas — the opportunities for new approaches to the crisis are endless.
At Hormuud Salaam Foundation, we are committed to making a lasting impact and empowering local organisations to support last-mile communities. We will be there through the good times and the bad times.
I implore the international humanitarian community to look at Somalia and the Horn of Africa’s future, not just our present, and to remember that short-term aid funding and long-term development funding must go hand in hand.
We cannot save people today at the expense of tomorrow. Or else Somali communities are frankly living on borrowed time.
