Rising Food Prices Pushing East Africa to Disaster, Warns Oxfam

by: Xan Rice, The Guardian UK Two-year-old Fatuma Hillow, a victim of a previous food shortage in East Africa. (Photo: Michael Macor / SF Chronicle) Nairobi - More than 14 million people in the east Africa region require urgent food aid due to drought and spiralling cereal and fuel prices, aid agencies say. In an emergency appeal launched today, Oxfam warns that millions of people in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Djibouti and Kenya are fast being pushed "towards severe hunger and destitution". Earlier this week the UN said it needed £200m to avert a humanitarian disaster. The hunger crisis is worse than the last regional emergency in 2006, when drought caused 11 million people to need assistance, because of the added impact of the global food price increases. Poor families are struggling to buy staples such as maize and wheat,... [read full story]