African Anglicans Combating Food Insecurity Caused by El Niño
Anglican churches are prioritising advocacy and practical responses to El Niño’s increasingly devastating impact on food security in the southern and central parts of Africa, says the Anglican Alliance’s facilitator in the region.
Famine and hunger have been stalking millions of people, notes June Nderitu, who is also on staff of Alliance partner the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA). Drought has been the culprit in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, while heavy rainfall and floods have plagued other parts of the continent.
El Niño, a warming of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, occurs roughly every three to seven years and can lead to unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.
Last December, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) underlined predictions by climatologists that the 2015‒2016 El Niño event would be stronger than that of 1997‒1998, currently the worst on record, and might persist until the second quarter of 2016.
European Commission DG ECHO