There’s a hunger crisis creeping through East Africa — and it’s no longer just a distant headline. It’s real, it’s growing, and it’s putting millions of lives at risk.
World Vision has raised the alarm. In Ethiopia, over 10 million people are severely food insecure. In Kenya, more than a third of the population is undernourished. Uganda’s children are suffering too — a quarter of those under five are stunted due to malnutrition. And Sudan’s hunger crisis is increasing continually, worsened by violence and instability.
These are not just numbers. Behind every statistic is a family skipping meals, a mother watching her child waste away, or a farmer struggling against failed rains. It is a region in pain — and sadly, foreign aid is being withdrawn just when it’s needed most.
For years, international support kept many of these crises from boiling over. World Vision’s projects, like kitchen gardens in Kenya and health programmes in Sudan, have changed lives. They have shown that local, community-based solutions do work. But with global aid drying up, we can’t keep depending on aid from well-wishers.
It’s time for the EAC to lead from the front. We need action that goes beyond lofty policy papers. If the Community was built on the dream of shared prosperity, then surely feeding our people should be top of the agenda.
Governments must put more money into agriculture, nutrition and climate-smart farming. Programmes like Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration in Ethiopia can be scaled across the region. We also need to open up trade routes under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to move food more easily across borders.
East Africa has the brains, the land and the means to feed itself. What’s missing is the political will and united effort. Hunger doesn’t respect borders, and neither should our solutions.
Our leaders must stop waiting for outside help and start truly investing in their own people. We can’t keep sitting back, hoping that foreign donors will come to the rescue every time a crisis knocks.
This calls for more than just speeches and policy promises. It calls for action rooted in compassion. It calls for budgets that prioritize food and livelihoods over flashy projects. It calls for leaders who see every hungry child not as a statistic, but as their own.
The time to step up is now — because our people can’t eat tomorrow’s promises.
📌 Isaac Mwangi writes on social, political and economic issues in East Africa. E-mail: isaacmmwang@gmail.com
