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10 June 2024

The Horn Of Africa States: Populations At Risk – OpEd

Dr. Suleiman Walhad

The Horn of Africa States region is a vast region of some 3.8 million square kilometers and a marine exclusive economic zone of some 1 million square kilometers. It houses and accommodates a growing 216 million people of youthful age, most of them (0ver 70%) under thirty years old. It has a large agricultural base, including production of native grains and other grain seeds aside from the large fishing waters the region owns both in the oceans and in the rivers and lakes. The region, if worked well could, therefore, be food self-sufficient as it always was through millennia.

It is not the case, however, and thousands of the region’s population are at risk or on the move, and out of the region simply because the governing infrastructures are obstacles to peaceful life in the region and the five countries from Sudan to Somalia are all involved in wars with rebellious forces be they ethnic or religious. It is a sorry of a region, indeed.

While there are strenuous climatic situations in the region, it does not warrant an extreme hunger and/or a mass exodus as has been happening in the region for many years now to the extent that the populations of the region even risk their lives crossing deserts and seas to move to other destinations.

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