Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63839100
Andrew Mitchell, the British development minister, on a visit to Somalia announced a donation of 14 million pounds towards Somalia and its starving people. Somalia, which is undergoing drought likely due to climate change, is currently starving and many of its people and livestock dying; many Somalis have begun to seek out refugee camps. but though many Somalis are starving and dying they do not meet the set criteria to declare an official famine. Andrew Mitchell has spoken of the world’s neglect of Africa and views this relief fund as Britain taking the world initiative in helping as they are at the same time helping fund Ukraine in their war against Russia. This visit was done in secret due to the islamic militant who control most of somalia and don’t exactly approve of the west.
With Andrew Mitchell’s visit and announcement of this money, it’s the first big donation from a singular country to Somalia’s drought which in part of course is their goal as they want to be seen as taking initiative to help africa which many western countries have taken flack before for what many have seen as negligence towards the continent. Somali has had difficulty finding help for its starving people as again they don’t get much in funding from other countries especially the west as they are currently more focused on Ukraine in their struggle against russia. this issue is compounded further by 2 things the first being that somalia has not reached the status to declare an official famine and so this issue can be ignored by many countries and not be taken as seriously by the U.N. and the 2nd is the islamic militants who don’t approve of foreign intervention making it difficult for officials to get an actual look at the country and its inhabitants. and on top of all this Somali has had 4 consecutive failed raining seasons so if the rain continues to not fall this issue will continue to only get worse and require more aid which at the moment seems highly unlikely
This connects back to the topic of alliances discussed in class and how when it’s not really beneficial for one country to help another they just won’t. Somalia in itself has not much to offer as of this moment. Its people are starving and its government fighting an intense fight with militants and that’s besides the fact that many of its allies are currently preoccupied with ukraine and its war against russia due to having more stakes in that with the west wanting Russia to obviously fall in Ukraine being one of the greatest exporter of wheat and so countries have more to lose if that alliance goes under as opposed to this one.