Horn of Africa (MNN) — Years of drought have brought a deepening food security crisis to the Horn of Africa. Millions of people across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia have experienced repeated crop failures and loss of livestock. They aren’t alone in the world: nations such as Zimbabwe and Morocco and other parts of the world also face the increasing pressure of drought.
The global authority on food security levels has projected that in Somalia alone, 1.5 million children under the age of five will experience acute malnutrition between August 2023 and July 2024.
“There are so many families that have left their homes, and now they’re scattering all over looking for any assistance that can come their way,” says Peter Macharia with World Concern.
Woman collects water from a protected water well. (Photo, caption by Daryl Finley/World Concern)
“Most of those families are dependent on rains, and they have no choices. Women have to move miles and miles to access clean water.”
World Concern seeks to serve the unique needs of the communities in which it operates. In the Horn of Africa, the food and water crisis dominates.
“We do water trucking, finding water that is clean in a well that we have built or others have built and we truck that water to villages that have no clean water,” Macharia says.
World Concern also provides cash vouchers for food, nutritional supplements for children and nursing women, and de-worming medicines, among other helps.
“We have also been working on permanent solutions like digging wells, constructing water dams to harvest rainwater, and those kind of things. So our desire is not just to help (alleviate) the suffering, but also to have a permanent solution to the problems that people face,” Macharia says.
Pray for those who are suffering deeply from the effects of drought. Ask God to bring rain. Jeremiah 14:22 says, “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things.”
“I really encourage (listeners and readers) to be prayerful, and when they see things that are happening, let them see them as as happening to their brothers and sisters,” Macharia says.
Pray that World Concern and local believers will be able to serve the physical and spiritual needs of many in the Horn of Africa.
Header photo courtesy of Peter Caton for World Concern.
