Washington — The U.S. funding commitment to alleviate the massive humanitarian disaster in the Horn of Africa has passed the $600 million mark after a top aid official announced a $23 million increase August 31.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah made the announcement at a community forum in Minneapolis. He said $10 million of the latest allocation will be devoted to the needs of people in Somalia. Prior to this latest allocation, the United States had pledged about $580 million to feed the hungry and ease suffering in the region.

An estimated 4.6 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia benefit from U.S. assistance. The worst drought in 60 years and ensuing agricultural failures have been major factors in causing the food crisis in the region. For the people of Somalia, ongoing violence and the activity of the al-Shabaab terrorist group have worsened conditions and escalated a crisis into famine in six districts. Famine is expected to spread more widely through southern Somalia in the weeks to come, according to one recent assessment.

The food shortages in Somalia began in early 2011, but al-Shabaab barred international humanitarian assistance workers from entering territory it controlled and refused shipments of food.

An estimated 12.4 million people in eastern Africa are at risk of malnutrition. People have responded to deprivation with their feet, leaving their villages and heading to refugee camps on Somalia’s borders. Ethiopia and Kenya host the camps even while their domestic populations also suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

USAID’s Shah also told the Minneapolis forum, organized by U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, that the United States is committed to relieving the crisis of the current moment, but also to helping the region develop better agricultural practices to break a recurring pattern of food shortages.

The Obama administration has developed a program called Feed the Future, which seeks to create greater food security in the region through better agricultural skills, techniques and infrastructure development.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a high-profile advocate of Feed the Future. Describing the program in August to a Washington audience, Clinton said the plan is designed to help farmers at the local level, but it also calls on governments to adopt new policies on a national level. “They need to move toward free trade in grain imports and exports,” Clinton said. “They need to improve credit and land-use policies to support farmers and herders. They need to ensure that public grain reserves are available when shortages loom. And they need to welcome new technologies to bolster drought tolerance, disease resistance and crop yields.”

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