The rock stars came. They sang their hearts out and raised hundreds of millions of dollars that helped fill many empty bellies. Then they went. That was 17 years ago, and the devastating drought which was tearing through the Horn of Africa is back. But the rock stars are nowhere to be seen and the problem that they had hoped to eradicate could be more serious this time. Just as disastrously, large swathes of southern Africa are also parched. The World Food Programme estimates that 23 million Africans are hungry and that the number will rise dramatically in coming months. The people behind the pop extravaganzas Band Aid and Live Aid were not the only ones tackling the crisis in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. Humanitarian groups like Care International and the Save the Children Fund were there, as they are now. But the mass appeal of the stars raised the profile of the calamity. The world has changed since the heady days of new-wave pop. Economies worldwide have become market-driven and the gap between the haves of the developed world and the have-nots in Africa, Asia and Latin America has widened. Much of Africa has slipped into a financial abyss and is unable to help itself climb above the frequent cycle of droughts, floods and famines. For decades, the developed world's approach was to respond to each crisis as it happened with food aid. That gave immediate relief to those people the aid workers could reach, but did not stop the problem from re-occurring. International summits, such as those the United Nations organised in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and its recent incarnation in Johannesburg, have brought together some of the world's best minds and helped hammer out and modify solutions to old problems. The Hong Kong emergency officer for the aid group Oxfam, Teddy Arellano, says these included training programmes, infrastructure projects and the handing out of seeds with sacks of food. But donations are still needed, and without them the problems will persist. The UN on Tuesday appealed for US$3 billion (HK$23 billion) to alleviate crises worldwide and said a further US$1 billion would be needed in January to cope with the worsening Ethiopian famine and a drought in Afghanistan. Mr Arellano, who in August returned from a trip to drought-hit parts of South Africa, Angola and Malawi, says fund-raising for non-China causes in Hong Kong is a challenge, but $1.3 million has still been raised in the past few months for work in Africa. Oxfam Hong Kong has given almost US$200,000 to support the work of partners in Malawi and Zambia and a further US$100,000 had gone towards hygiene kits. 'We have placed strong emphasis on development projects,' Mr Arellano says. 'But we should also recognise that people in the region suffer from a lack of food. This is endemic and part of their lifestyle. They have coping mechanisms to combat that lack of food.' The reasons for famines are complex, and apart from weather, can be attributed to political and economic reasons. In southern Africa, the problem has been compounded by high HIV/Aids infection rates, which in some regions are affecting a quarter of the adult population. Mr Arellano believes the solution is equally complex: 'In an ideal world, what we need is a combination of short and long-term solutions - short-term, by immediately meeting the threats by providing food, mid-term, by providing seeds to encourage farmers in southern Africa to plant now and take advantage of the winter rains. What is most crucial is providing a favourable political climate.' Political problems are more difficult for the world community to control. Western governments blame Zimbabwe's food shortage on President Robert Mugabe's policies. There is little the West can do to help the country's 600,000 hungry people other than feed them. But Tavengwa Nhongo, the Kenya-based regional programme manager for the British charity HelpAge International, believes there is a simple solution - forgotten traditional land uses. Before modern economics took hold in Zimbabwe, an agricultural system called zunde operated which adequately coped with droughts, he says. Mr Nhongo's group is trying to reintroduce zunde, where every village has a common plot of land which all villagers can cultivate in addition to their own farm. Harvests are put in a communal granary, which is managed by the village chief, and the stockpile grows with each harvest - a weapon against famine. 'The cash economy stopped such systems,' Mr Nhongo says. 'People now grow for cash and sell all their grain to marketing boards and if the system was working properly, it would be a central reserve for times of need. But in Africa, with its disasters, corruption and the need for cash, this is not happening.' People are also often reluctant to move to other areas. Mr Nhongo says Malawi's Lower Shire River has highly fertile soil for the surrounding valley, but it floods almost every year, causing heavy losses to life and property. But farmers do not want to move to less fertile, higher ground. Africa has not developed comprehensive emergency response strategies, Mr Nhongo says. What are needed are sustainable strategies that will help Africans cope with situations that arise. 'I want to blame donor organisations slightly in providing bags of food and just distributing them and leaving,' he says. 'Relief without any element of development is not sustainable. If you give food at that particular time, they eat it all and that's it until the next crisis.' In Ethiopia, the problem is more one of scale. The World Food Programme (WFP) says 6.9 million of the country's 65 million people are affected by drought and a million more are suffering in neighbouring Eritrea. Many fear the Ethiopian figure will rise to 14 million in January if rains do not come. WFP spokesman Francis Mwanza, who is based in Rome, says alerts were first issued in May after rains were late. 'The priority is to save lives,' he says. 'Once that is done, we will work on development projects. In Ethiopia, some of the land is degraded due to deforestation. One of our projects is to try to stop soil erosion by reforesting areas so that the soil can be retained.' Although the extent of the famine seems formidable, for now it is not as severe as in 1984 and 1985, when pop stars such as Michael Jackson and Boy George went to the rescue. The population has increased dramatically since then and the country is no longer in the grip of civil war. HelpAge's Ethiopia representative, Peter Bofin, says the government is working with the WFP, the European Union and larger non-government organisations in assessing the crisis, although the prognosis, without more help, is not good. 'The best-case scenario is drought continuing, with 6.9 million people affected,' he says. 'The mid-case is 10 million and the worst case 14.3 million.' Mr Bofin, who worked in Hong Kong's Vietnamese boat people camps from 1989 to 1992, says parts of the country are affected by drought every year. This year, the two rainy seasons have both failed. He says that until three or four years ago, non-government groups had not been imaginative with their responses. 'Now they are trying to focus much more on the fundamental issues such as agricultural production and land tenure,' he says. 'The government is increasingly looking that way as well. Donors are beginning to realise that new approaches are needed.' For now, that will not help the hungry people of Ethiopia or the southern African countries of Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and South Africa. This year, they are at the mercy of the elements and reliant on the world community for help. But with greater assistance from the developed world through more strategic planning than in the past, there is hope that one day African nations will be able to fend for themselves. Peter Kammerer is the Post's Foreign Editor
