Food Security Cluster

A 2018 global report on food crises by the United Nations has listed Somalia as one of the four countries that experienced the worst food crises. Together with Somalia in the list are Nigeria, Yemen, and South Sudan. According to the report, around 124 million people in 51 countries face …

HARGEISA (SoOHA) – Swarms of locusts have stripped large tracts of farmland across 10 districts in Somaliland, leaving farmers without any crops left to harvest.  The locusts have eaten crops including pumpkins, pepper, tomatoes, lettuce onions, pawpaw, and oranges, in districts in Sahil, Marodi-jeh, Awdal and Sanag regions.  Somaliland’s minister of agriculture, Ahmed Mumin Seed, told Radio Ergo they had assigned a committee to assess the losses caused …

NAIROBI (SoOHA) – King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) delivered yesterday 120 tons of dates to the World Food Programme in Nairobi to be distributed to needy people in Somalia, in the presence of Saudi Deputy Ambassador to Kenya Hamza Al-Qurashi; Head of the WFP Office in Somalia …

GAROWE (SoOHA) – Rough terrain and impassable roads are reducing profits for small scaleSomali coffee farmers in Puntland.  The farmers in the Al–Madow mountain range, stretching west from Bossaso to the northwest of Erigavo, are forced to use donkeys to transport their coffee beans to an accessible transit point, where they pay commercial lorries for onward transport to the northern port city of Bossaso.  Mukhtar Abdullahi Isse, who lives in Dadan village, has two plots measuring 2.5 hectares …

HARGEISA (SoOHA) — If she was to meet someone from her past life, Halima Dahir Mahmoud is not sure they would recognize her. She’s lost weight and is constantly stressed. She was once a nomadic herder who would roam the Ethiopian countryside with her 200 sheep and goats, and 50 …

HARGEISA (SoOHA) – Agriculture students from universities in Somaliland have been helping local farmers to master improved farming methods in order to strengthen their production.  Twenty-five students from Hargeisa, Golis and Beder universities in Hargeisa have been volunteering their knowledge and introducing skills to 500 farmers across Somaliland, including in Gebiley, Arabasiyo, Abarso, Adadley, and Dacadr-budhuq.  Mubarik Mohamed Iman, a …

HARGEISA (SoOHA) – In this week’s report from Somalia’s IDP camps, Radio Ergo visits Nasa-Hablood camp near Hargeisa, where destitute former pastoralist families face a lost past, an empty future, and constant threats of eviction from landowners. Fear and anxiety haunt the displaced pastoralist families in Nasa-Hablood camp, on the outskirts of the …

Conflict and disaster have shaped the lives of the Somali people for the last 30 years. Now, a new initiative is helping women to develop their own businesses – making them and their families more resilient to any future upheaval. The security situation in Somalia is still unstable after years …

JOWHAR (SoOHA) – Farmers in five villages in southern Somalia’s Middle Shabelle region have raised community funds to construct an irrigation canal to reduce their reliance on unpredictable rainfall.  Adan Omar in Qafow village, near Jowhar, told Radio Ergo he was irrigating his two-hectare farm for the first time with water channeled from the river Shabelle.  …

ADAADO (SoOHA) – Hassan Aabi is carrying the weight of a huge burden on his shoulders as he counts off the days before the debt collectors come for him again.   With his pitifully depleted herd of 23 feeble goats, Hassan is struggling to support his three wives and 23 children in Benyo-ad village, 25 km south of Guriel in Galgadud.   Earlier this month, his creditors had him arrested and they …