Africa’s famine response — too little, perhaps too late

Jerry Rawlings, a former president of Ghana and now the high representative for Somalia for the African Union (AU), visited a number of African capitals in July and August to drum up support for a pan-African conference on the famine in the Horn of Africa. “I believe African leadership will rise to the challenge,” he said over and over as he lobbied heads of state to attend the conference. But only four (from Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti and Somalia) actually came to the 18 August gathering in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.