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U.S. sends elite disaster experts to respond to Ethiopia drought

Reuters: The United States is sending an elite team of disaster experts to respond to Ethiopia's worst drought in 50 years, it said on Thursday. Around a dozen members of the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) have arrived in Ethiopia to coordinate the U.S. response to the drought. They will be joined by DART logistics, nutrition, and water, sanitation and hygiene experts in the next few days. USAID responds to around 65 disasters a year,...

More child marriage in drought-hit Ethiopia with risk of “full-blown disaster”

Reuters: Child marriage is on the rise in Ethiopia due to the worst drought in decades, the government and agencies said on Friday, as Oxfam warned of a "full-blown disaster" unless more than $1 billion in food aid is found for 10 million people. Agencies predict the El NiƱo weather phenomenon will cause record levels of malnutrition in Africa's second most populous nation, famed for war- and drought-induced famine in 1984. More than one in ten of Ethiopia's 92 million people, most of whom depend on rain-fed...

More rains, more deaths as floods across southern Africa set to worsen

Reuters: Aid agencies raced on Monday to reach tens of thousands of people displaced by catastrophic floods across southern Africa, as more heavy rain was forecast in the coming days. More than 200 people have died in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar in one of the worst disasters to hit the region in years. Rivers have burst their banks, flooding vast areas and destroying homes, bridges and crops. "After surveying the flooded districts from the air, we know that the scale of flooding is immense, and with...

Red Cross appeals for worst drought in 30 years in Namibia

Reuters: Desert-hardy Namibians, overwhelmed by the worst drought to hit their country in 30 years, are surviving off wild fruits with no harvest in sight until March 2014, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said as it launched an appeal on Monday. The government of Namibia, the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, declared a national emergency in May. Drought has resulted in crop failure and livestock deaths across the tiny country of 2.1 million people. Maize...

World’s biggest refugee camp extended as Somalis flood in

Reuters: Thousands of Somalis fleeing drought, famine and war have started moving into a new extension of the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya, which is increasingly concerned about bearing the brunt of the Horn of Africa crisis. About 1,500 Somali refugees are now crossing into Kenya each day but there is no room for them in the congested Dadaab camp, which was declared full in 2008. Instead, 65,000 refugees have been forced to "self-settle" in cardboard and plastic shelters on flood-prone land...