Somalia’s president has declared the famine ravaging the country a national disaster. There has been little response from the world.  Drought is a natural calamity that can happen anywhere, but what makes it more deadly in Somalia is the continued conflict that prevents relief aid from reaching the needy or makes it difficult for affected nomads to travel to other places to find help.

As Babsy confronted the duty nurse, he saw his neighbour, still bent, exhausted, over the stretcher on which her son lay motionless in the deadly grip of meningitis. He had not moved since he had been brought to St Patrick’s. Babsy wondered if he would ever move again.

Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration can be summed up in two oscillating swings – promising incredibly big, and falling resoundingly short. He is a showman in every respect, and his First Lady is a part of his duplicitous act. Last week, public ridicule forced Uhuru’s wife to suspend her annual marathon that is meant to raise funds for maternal healthcare.

Multinational corporations that are directly responsible for the destruction of food systems in Africa and globally are now purporting to provide innovative approaches to addressing the crisis – the so-called “green revolution.” Absent from these discussions are the voices of smallholder farmers who in reality feed the world. But these farmers are fighting back by establishing resistance networks to restore the power over food into their own hands.

At a time when human well-being is measured not only in terms of economic development, but also on the resilience of the environment and the society we live in, it is important to question the nature of livelihood opportunities that young people are being encouraged to pursue and their implications for the future.