Across Africa, 2015 Has Been a Lean, Hungry Year_美文

Across Africa, 2015 Has Been a Lean, Hungry Year

John Graham, Save the Children's country director in Ethiopia, told VOA that African governments need to do more, because international donor budgets are increasingly squeezed by crises elsewhere in the world.

But, he said, they still can't do it alone.

"The Ethiopian government has stepped up," Graham said. "They've pledged about $200 million, which is far more than I've ever seen them pledge for any other emergency, and so I think that they're really trying to do their best. But I think the international community should really stand by them, and also make big pledges. And so far — I've been here for 18 years, and this is the slowest response that I've seen to this type of crisis."

South Sudan conflict

Elsewhere on the continent, such as in South Sudan, the problems are trickier. There, two years of brutal conflict have played a huge role in pushing hundreds of thousands of people to starvation.

But aid officials say aid agencies can only do so much on their own.

"We and the other humanitarian agencies are there to support the governments," Orr said. "And that's more and more what we're doing — not just providing lean-season relief programs, and other forms of food assistance, but actually giving technical support and institutional capacity to really increase the ability of governments to solve these problems for themselves."

That, everyone acknowledges, is a long and difficult process, but one that governments and donors need to tackle if they want to avoid a repeat of 2015.