10:00 A.M. EDT
Real Audio of Briefing 
MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We're pleased to welcome back Mike Hess from USAID. Mike is in charge of coordinating USAID's humanitarian programs. He's just back from a recent trip to Africa and will brief you on that trip and the USAID's ongoing programs to prevent a humanitarian crisis in that region.
MR. HESS: Thank you, Jess, and happy birthday. Everybody wish Jess a happy birthday for me. That's pretty good. It's great to be here. Thank you all for coming. I want to talk about a couple of things on the trip. I just returned from the Horn and I want to talk to you a little bit about that. We started out in Kenya. I went up to northeast Kenya, the Mandera and El Wak , and then we went down to the southeast of Nairobi down in this region right in here, which is Makueni so we started out up here in Mandera and El Wak on the border. We also met with our partners in Somalia. As you know, we can't get into Somalia, but we met with the NGOs who work over there and the partners who work in that region, so while we were up in Mandera and El Wak, we took advantage of that time to meet with some of our implementing partners there.
We went up to Djibouti. Djibouti, even though it's a small country, 770,000 people, we estimate there is about 87,000 people who are food insecure in Djibouti, so we went to Djibouti to see, one, the port, because that's where we unload -- all of the food that goes into Ethiopia comes through there and so, we wanted to see how that port operation was going. But also to see how the people are doing there, the pastoralists who were out in the countryside there, about 87,000 people, saw a food distribution site there, went to the local market to see how that market was going, looked at some alternative livelihood programs. I'll talk a little bit more about that when I get back to Kenya.
And then went on to Addis, where we spent a lot of time in Ethiopia. Started off in Butajira, which is south of Addis in the Southern Nations region, and then went down to Gode. We couldn't get into this area right in here because the rains have started and that's a good sign. They're not substantial enough yet. As the meteorologists say, they're not going to be a long and sustained range, which is what you need in that part of the world, but it is enough to get the cattle away from the boor holes and the watering holes and there is some grass coming up, so that's important.
But let's go back to the map here first. This was the -- what they call the long rainy season, October through January. That failed last year. We had a good indication of that from FEWS NET that that was going to happen. So in October of last year, we started to send food and start some programming up in the region because we were concerned about the failed rains there. That puts us into this peak hunger period and then what they call the short rains in this period right here.
If you take that long rainy season, it doesn't work, not a good forecast for the short rainy season. We knew that we were probably headed for some kind of problem in the region and that's why we started heading out there fairly soon. As I indicated, we started diverting food to the region October, November last year. We got a lot of food into Ethiopia, some into northeast Kenya and some into Somalia. Somalia's hard to get into, as you can imagine.
But the thing that I wanted to focus on today is this is a pastoralist crisis and we call it that because of the people who are affected. We're talking about 7 to 8 million people who get their livelihoods from their animals, moving around this part of the Horn of Africa, and those are the ones who are most severely affected because they have to -- they depend on the grazing lands for their cattle to get out, for the cattle, sheep, the livestock and camels who are a fairly substantial herders operations in there.
And they move around that region fairly -- well, I don't want to say fairly freely, because they have to go where the water is and they have to go where the food is, but they are hard to hit. If you want to target a population and make sure you get them food, water and nutritional support and health issues, then it's hard to reach them. Think about trying to do a vaccination program for pastoralist children for measles. It's really, really hard in that part of the world. And so that's why we were focusing particularly on the pastoralists and that's why we're bringing more attention to them.
I mentioned diseases. Measles has not been as big as we thought it was going to be. Measles is fairly common when you have a drought because the children become weakened and they don't have the ability to fight it off as much. Measles was a problem early on, but vaccination programs have begun both in Ethiopia and in Kenya, not so much in Somalia. But we were surprised to see that there was an increase in polio, a big polio outbreak in Somalia. On the first week we were there, we got a report that 238 cases in this region, in the Kitui region, right on the border with Kenya -- they had suspected that there was one case already in Kenya and they were worried about it moving into Ethiopia, so polio is going to be a big problem if we don't get that under control with a vaccination program very quickly.
In terms of the children and the acute malnutrition rates, we're seeing global acute malnutrition rates in the region, especially over here in Somalia, where we think the epicenter of the drought is, up to 30 percent in some locations. But the average is 23.7 for this Kitui District up here and we met with the consortium from the Kitui region who came over for our meetings in Mandera. But when you talk about 23.7 percent, that's fairly high and anything over 15 percent, as you all know, is bad, is bad. Now, you couple that with diseases like measles and polio for the children, we're talking very big problems.
We were happy to see that when we went to the therapeutic feeding centers -- those are the ones in the hospitals where you bring the most severely acute malnutritioned children -- those numbers have been stable for three months. However, the supplemental feeding programs, that level right below where the children are starting to have an effect -- see the effect of the drought, those numbers are rising and those numbers are rising fairly significantly. So even though we're getting food in there, the food distribution is working fairly well, our partners WFP, CARE, are getting the food out, we're still starting to see a rise in the supplemental feeding programs. That's why we put more money into those programs, both in Kenya and in Somalia through implementing partners there and in southern Ethiopia.
I'd like to focus a little bit now on the Gode region; this region over here where we visited. Again, very severely affected because of the drought; the rains have not hit there. We have not seen the rains in that part of Ethiopia. A little further to the west, we have seen some rain, so there's some mitigation there. It rained the day we left Gode, so I guess that's a good sign, but it still is not substantial enough in that part.
We saw a supplemental feeding program in Addalle. That was a supplemental feeding program on April 19th that was scheduled for February, okay. That's a little bit of a problem. And the government -- the food gets distributed -- as I said, it comes into Djibouti, comes down to a distribution point there, and further down to the regional CAP(ph) in Jijiga and then sent out by truck from there, 760 kilometers over dirt roads that are in pretty bad shape out to these distribution sites. So the government is pretty strapped on how they can do this. WFP and our partners are helping with that process, but infrastructure is a big problem here, a huge problem, and we're concerned about that.
The government did agree -- they were talking about establishing a productive safety net program for the Somalia region. They decided to defer that because of the emergency. They agreed that they have to focus on the emergency right now to make sure that the food is getting out there. We also saw a food distribution in Gode while we were there, that was also the February food distribution program on April 19th. So that's not a good sign and that was not a full ration either, so we're concerned about that. While we're doing all this -- I'll take your questions in just a minute. May I? If you want to ask --
QUESTION: I just had a question.
MR. HESS: Sure.
QUESTION: Sorry to interrupt, but --
MR. HESS: No, it's okay.
QUESTION: Chuck Corey from the Washington File to Africa. You said a food distribution program from February in April. Does that mean that it was supposed to have been distributed in February, but it's only reaching the people in April?
MR. HESS: That's correct.
QUESTION: Okay. Thank you.
MR. HESS: Absolutely. And that's what we're concerned about. It's a timing issue. We got to speed that process up quite a bit and help the government. They don't have enough trucks in that part of the Somali region to get the food down there. And you couple that with the long distances, we're talking a 12-day turnaround for a truck to get to a distribution point from Jijiga. That's a long time, a 12-day turnaround, so -- big problems.
The other thing I wanted to focus on while we're here is we're not looking just at this immediate crisis, because what we're looking at are some long-term solutions to this crisis. As you all know, we have droughts in this country all the time. They don't result in crises like this. Why? Because there are mechanisms in place to help deal with it. And we're working with the local governments in all of these countries, except for Somalia where there is no local government, whom we can work, to try and improve the situation for the pastoralists.
We're doing a couple of things; one, sustainable water. There are some sustainable water projects that we saw going on in the area. But we're also looking at alternative livelihoods; not that we want to force these people to do something else, because they've done this for all their lives and that's what they want to do. I was a cowboy when I was a little boy and it's hard to change those attitudes. But you want to give them at least a shot or at least some indication.
We saw programs where they were doing silkworm farming. We saw chicken distributions where we were giving women in the families and the villages chickens. We'd give them 30- one-day old chicks, and that gave them the ability to start a savings account. This one group had built up a savings account. They had already started to buy goats and sheep and heifers from the sale of the eggs and some of the chickens.
So what's it doing? It's diversifying their diet. They're getting more protein. It's building up a savings and that's important, because what's happened here is the number of shocks over the years have reduced the asset base of the pastoralists, so they have no ability to withstand the shock of a drought, okay.
So if we can do that, build up that asset base, diversify their diets a little bit -- we were doing that also through feeding programs and developing vegetable gardens, little things like that. It doesn't take much. If you can diversify it just a little bit, then we can see some hope that the next time a crisis comes along, they'll be able to withstand it. So those are some of the things that are happening all throughout the region, as we work. We're working with the government on markets. There's a large demand for beef in the Middle East. In Ethiopia now, they've just signed a big contract to send Ethiopian beef into Egypt.
But we're working with them on developing markets, marketplaces, so the pastoralists will have a place to sell their cattle and their livestock and their sheep so that we can get it out. So those are some general observations in what we saw on the trip and a lot of hard work going on there. We're not done yet. The rains haven't stopped, but we want to make sure they keep going. We don't have any control over that. And we can get these people through this crisis. But again, focus on the long term, so they've got the assets, they've got the capability to get through the next crisis.
That's kind of an opening for your questions. Sure.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Samuel Tesfaye Bekele from Sub-Saharan Informer. What did the local government have said about the drought crisis?
MR. HESS: The local government you're talking about, like Kenya or --
QUESTION: Let's say in Ethiopia.
MR. HESS: Ethiopia. We had some good meetings with the ministries there. They recognize -- they were very candid about the fact that, you know, they need to build up the capability especially in the Somali Region -- the governments there. They want to take this productive safety net program and try to expand it in there again so they can help the people with the assets. But they recognize that they do need to do a lot more work. They also recognize they need to do work on infrastructure. They've got to improve the road network, the road systems down in there. And we're also working on vaccination programs for the children and these livelihood programs.
So Ethiopia is working on it. Kenya, same thing. When you're talking about the northeast province up there, that's a long ways away. They want the access to the meat, they want the access to the milk, but they need to improve the infrastructure. That takes a while -- road networks, markets, (inaudible) markets. They were talking about, in Kenya, the Ministry of Water. They're going to start building water earthen dams that you would see, like, in the Midwest out here so they can capture that rain. When the rains come, it's great. See these rivers flowing, a lot of -- but it goes right down into the Indian Ocean. Now, it's not going to stay there.
They were working on programs with help from donors to build 260 earthen dams that would capture 5 million metric liters of water. So they're starting to get long-term solutions to some of these problems and that was very heartening.
QUESTION: Chuck Corey again from the Washington File. Two questions. One, are you getting good cooperation from all the host governments out there in the region? And two, what kind of food are you shipping into the region?
MR. HESS: That's a good question. All the governments are cooperating. They're working very closely with us, except for the Government of Somalia, kind of a big government there to work with. But we do have good cooperation in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, very good cooperation with them in terms of getting the food out to the places where it needs to go. That's very important for us because what we're trying to do is build up their capacity at the same time while we're doing this. And you can see that's already happening in these governments. The DPPA, which is responsible in Ethiopia for distributing the food, is working very closely with us and our partners are working -- WFP in particular has worked very closely with the DPPA to make sure that they have the capability to do this on their own. And I think that's a great, great program.
QUESTION: And what kind of food?
MR. HESS: Food. Primarily wheat, veg oil and a corn-soy blend, CSB. CSB is important in supplemental feeding programs. You mix that with the oil and water and that's good for the children, CSB. And --
QUESTION: What kind of food?
MR. HESS: Corn-soy blend. It's good, high-protein. We're seeing also some maize distributed in the region. The Kenyan Government released 60,000 metric tons from their reserve and that's getting out there as well. So we see maize, wheat flour, the corn-soy blend, veg oil. Those are the main components of the package.
Sure, right back there.
QUESTION: Yes, thank you. Ben Bangoura with Afrotrading.com in Washington. You mentioned infrastructure as a serious concern to your mission. I would like to know what are you doing completely to make sure that is settled as a problem.
MR. HESS: Yeah, that's a good question. Obviously, when you talk about infrastructure, you've got to work with the local governments. We participate in the water board in Kenya, also the infrastructure working committees in Kenya. We also -- there's a donors working group in Ethiopia. That's called the DAP -- not exactly, donor -- it's a donor working group where all the donors get together and work with the government on projects specifically on infrastructure so that we can look at the long-term needs and then the various donors can sign up for projects.
We're also working with the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, which is the military organization headquartered in Djibouti. They do some infrastructure programs as well so we're making sure that their programs -- for example, well drilling, road building -- are coordinated with those government plans as well, so (inaudible) work with the government.
QUESTION: Thank you. Mounzer Sleiman with Al Mustaqbal Al Arabi. Two-part question. One about -- you talked about the long-term solutions. Are we providing some kind of mechanism that will prevent problems from reoccurring, not only the climate problems, but provide a sustainable source of food from the agricultural side or other material?
The other thing; to what extent the political climate in the region? You mentioned only Somalia, but there is tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea, there is a problem in Sudan. And to what extent the political situation creating obstacle to a joint effort with security, of course? And plus, what is the coordination with the UN agencies? You mentioned some of the nongovernmental agencies about this.
MR. HESS: That's three questions now.
QUESTION: I'm sorry.
MR. HESS: (Laughter.) Okay, we'll start with the coordination on the UN. The UN coordination is very good on the ground. There's good teams in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, WFP in Djibouti and UNICEF a little bit in Djibouti, not as many UN folks. There's not an OCHA office in Djibouti. So we work very closely with them because that's how we've got to get the donor coordination to make sure that we know where the gaps are in the program, and that's difficult. You know there was a regional appeal by UN OCHA. We've asked them to set up a UN regional humanitarian coordinator so that we can make sure that it's coordinated across the whole region, not just country by country, but across the whole region.
Now, the team -- I will have to tell you this. The team in Somalia is doing a very good job -- the UN OCHA, WFP, UNICEF, very good on the ground. It's a good team working under very difficult conditions, but with our partners and they're doing a very good job in that part.
In terms of the conflict, I wasn't out there to look at the big political conflict issues. I wasn't focusing on the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. What we're looking at when we look at conflict and security, especially in the southern part of Ethiopia and Northeast Kenya and even the Somalia region, we're looking at conflict in terms of resources, because as resources get scarce, conflict increases between the pastoralists as the pastoralists move through farming communities. These are traditional sort of conflict areas and we have worked very closely with a number of partners that are to include some local NGOs to start up some conflict mitigation formats.
There is a -- in the Mandera market, they have formed a conflict prevention group that meets and -- on a daily basis to handle issues of conflict that are cross-border there and dealing with the marketplaces. So that's the era, when we look at conflict, that's what we're looking at, is to mitigate those kinds of crises at the lower level that are mainly derived from resource scarcity. So that's -- when we look at conflict mitigation, that's what we're looking at. The larger political ones, I don't have a dog in that fight, quite frankly. But it's key.
And the last one is the long term. We've been working with the Pastoralist Livelihoods Initiative for the last year, year-and-a-half and these are the programs I was referring to earlier, where we're looking at alternative sources of income and to build up assets. When you build up savings accounts, the vegetable farmers that we saw in Ethiopia where they were actually selling seedlings for trees and plants and other vegetables to locals, they already saved up -- well, it doesn't seem like a whole lot of money for us, but it is for them -- each one of them in three months had already saved about $35 each. You know, so they're starting to build up their asset base and in three months, they were able to do that.
It was funny, when you talk to them, though. Both the women who had raised the chickens and these guys who had arranged the vegetables, you ask them what they were going to do with their money after. They had it all saved up. They wanted to buy a truck. Each group -- both said they wanted to buy a truck so they could get their stuff to market easier. So they'll build up those assets over the long term, diversifying their incomes. We're also working with the local governments, the local governments both in Kenya and Ethiopia, to set up livestock veterinary screening places, because if you want to export your beef, we got to make sure that they're certified, they're vaccinated, and that those programs get set up and this is part of the markets, who we were talking about as well. So those are some of the long term things we're doing.
Yes. A follow-up?
QUESTION: Just now, you mentioned chicken farms and --
MR. HESS: Yeah, chicken.
QUESTION: But would … It’s applicable… the same way for the beef about the new diseases that inflicting the chicken. And so I was kind of referring to how they could sustain themselves by themselves? Like, we hear a lot about the Sudan potential of having agriculture that could really feed the rest of Africa. So what kind of -- there is any effort in that direction?
MR. HESS: Well, that's where you get to the markets. You have to have a marketplace for all these animals and that's what we're really working on. We were talking about, especially, opening up the port here in Nabera(ph), so that you can ship out through there, improving that port in Djubouti where we ship livestock out through there. But in order to do that, you got to have the markets and that's when I say, setting up the markets, so that the people have a place to take their animals to, where they can then be shipped on, build up the infrastructure of the roads so that you can get the cattle out of there.
Same thing down here. The cattle and livestock that are produced up in here, they need in Nairobi. Well, you need some roads, but you need the markets. And we're talking about setting up the marketplaces so that they can get access to that food and make sure that they have a place to sell it, because that's what the pastoralists need. You know, right now -- the process right now is, there's a pastoralist set up in here that will sell it to another one down here, who will then graze them on down further south, sell it to another one down here, until they finally get to a market.
Well, think of how many layers you got to go through to do that. It's not efficient. If you put a good market up in here that has access to the roads, we'll improve that market access and that's what we're working on with the governments is to improve the market access for the pastoralists. That's the long-term solution.
QUESTION: Yes. I was wondering how food distribution on the ground is being handled and who is responsible for distributing meat? I understand that in the past, recently in Niger, basically, there was some problem -- people hijacking food and trafficking them in the Somalia areas. Do you have any concerns about that?
MR. HESS: We don't have a big problem with that in either one of these regions. I can't talk specifically about Somalia. Obviously, we're concerned there. But we have contracting mechanisms in Somalia that ensure that food gets distributed and they don't get paid until the food is distributed. So in Somalia, we have some mechanisms in place to ensure that happens. In both Kenya and in Ethiopia, WFP works with the local government to make sure that it gets out. And in most cases, it goes through community organizations who keep rosters, rolls of who the needy people are within the villages.
But by and large, in this part, when you're talking about pastoralists, and I don't -- I hate to generalize, but they take care of each other. We saw a woman in El Wak. She was getting her food distribution. She was on the rolls. We saw the rolls, we checked in with WFP. They monitor about every two or three days to make sure new people haven't moved in or a woman who moved in three days ago right next to her. You know, she'd come from three miles -- or a three days' walk away.
She was sharing her food with that woman. They have a culture, especially among the pastoralists, with sharing and so they do that and they do that fairly openly. That's difficult when you try to do a targeted feeding, because when you're trying to get food specifically to a family that needs it, and she shares it with a family next door, then you've got to increase the ration. And that's why WFP goes through these camps, these temporary camps that have sprung up along these waterholes every three to five days to do surveys and make sure they're picking up the people and making sure the rolls are updated. Same thing in Ethiopia; they have big lists where they sit there and they go through the roster and the distribution -- at the distribution points. And again, WFP has monitors out there ensuring that the distributions are going smoothly and that the people are getting what they need. So yeah, there's good mechanisms, monitoring, and evaluation mechanisms that are going on in both those places.
Anything else? All righty -- one more, that's great.
QUESTION: One more, basically. Yeah, (inaudible) situation. What do you see as major challenge to your mission in those countries, Somalia, Ethiopia, and maybe Kenya as well?
MR. HESS: For me, it's an issue of governance. You know, there are 4 million people who live in the Somalia region, okay, of Ethiopia, 4 million people out of 77 million. And so those people need a voice within the government and how is that going to happen? You know, again -- and you talk about northeast Kenya. That's three percent of the population. So what kind of voice do they have in the government to get their issues across, that they need roads, that they need markets, that they need these long, sustainable programs? And so we're working on governance issues to make sure those people have a voice there too. That's good for the long term. The 70 -- 87,000 people who live in Djibouti, they need a voice as well.
And in most of these places, Djibouti just elected local government officials and so, they're establishing training programs for them on how they represent their people. And in Kenya, the Kenyan parliament, the people in the northeast have proportionally a little bit higher number of representatives within the parliament, but we're also working with them to make sure that the parliament knows how to represent their people, something we take for granted here. But how they represent the interests of those people and how they take care of them in the long term is really important for us, because that's how they're going to get a voice and that's how you're going to break the cycle for the long-term.
Thanks a lot, folks. Thanks for coming out on such a beautiful day.
