A group of men plant crops in Kenya. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

Earlier this week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack reiterated the United States' commitment to reduce Africa's dependence on food aid and promote agricultural sustainability while in Nairobi, Kenya. Vilsack said the U.S. will focus efforts on providing "affordable credit to farmers, support to women farmers and providing new technology to encourage irrigation."

The United States understands that it has to be more than providing periodic emergency food aid. It has to focus on sustainable solutions to hunger, food security and poverty. This is not something where we come in and say this is the way you need to do it, it is where we come in and say how are you doing it and how can we help you do it better.

His comments come almost a month after G-8 members pledged $20 billion dollars to fight hunger in poor nations.

The U.S. Navy comes to the assistance of a Taiwanese-flagged fishing trawler been seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Photo: Open Democracy (flickr)

After 18 years of civil war, some good news is finally coming from Somalia. The recent election of Sharif Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, as Somalia’s new president brings the country a chance for peace and stability. But the country faces enormous problems and President Ahmed has a mammoth task on his hands — both domestically and internationally.

Perhaps the biggest challenges lay within Somalia’s own borders. Considered as a failed state since the early 1990s, Somalia has seen its worst spate of violence in decades over the past two years: Ethiopian troops invaded the country, at least 10,000 Somalis have been killed and more than one million displaced.

Much of this bloodshed and displacement comes from the poor security conditions and widespread lawlessness spawned by fighting between rival warlords, clans and other armed groups. This lack of national security poses a huge problem for Ahmed’s nascent presidency: Somalia’s two main insurgent groups, Hezbul Islam and Al-Shabaab, control “much of the south of the country” and refuse to recognize the election. Getting Somalia’s clans behind a centralized government is a task that previous Somali leaders have failed to meet.

In a country that has no almost running water or electricity, Ahmed also has numerous humanitarian challenges. The Red Cross considers Somalia's food crisis to be one of the worst in the world. And the country's infrastructure, already-limited agricultural systems and market linkages, has been severely damaged during the continuous internal conflict of past decades. As a result, more than a third of the population depends on food aid. Health care has also been decimated: Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital city of 3.6 million people has only two or three hospitals that barely operate at all.

Providing this critical food and health care will be very difficult, however, until some form of security is established. The government must find a way to ensure that youth have the education and economic opportunities they need so that they have less incentive to take a $15-a-day paycheck to join one of armed groups. But the already-precarious education gap is widening: at least 81 percent of Somalia's population is now illiterate — the highest such rate in Africa — and only 17 percent of Somali children go to school.

A moderate new government headed by an energetic and idealistic president has succeeded in giving Somalis hope — but delivering results is crucial to showing the country’s embattled population that their government is actually making a difference.

Four Ethiopian children are dead. Are inefficiencies in U.S. food aid to blame?

A new UN Food and Agriculture Organization report predicts that rising food prices will soon begin to slow. However the BBC decidedly reports that cheap food is a thing of the past:

[Food] prices will level off at a far higher average level than seen before the crisis erupted. The long era of cheap food is over.

The sharp rise in food prices over the past year have been felt all over the world but are particularly painful for the poor in developing countries. The World Bank recently estimated that higher food prices and food scarcity could force 100 million people to become impoverished. In response, The World Bank is allocating $1.2 billion for increased food aid. At least $200 million is designated for grants targeting "high risk" countries including Liberia, Haiti and Djibouti.

Photo: Henry McInnis for Mercy Corps

Along the banks of the Nile River in Sudan is some of the most fertile land in Africa. In fact, “Sudan could be self-sufficient, it does have the potential to be the breadbasket of Africa,” notes Kenro Oshidari, director of the UN World Food Program in Sudan.

Despite a harsh humanitarian situation in Darfur, and being the recipient of the most food aid, Sudan is actually a major exporter of sorghum, wheat, beans, peanuts, and tomatoes, among other crops. Just last year the U.S. shipped 283,000 tons of sorghum to Darfur — almost the exact same amount of sorghum exported by Sudan, UN officials told the New York Times.

Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times explores the complexity of food aid in Sudan in his revealing article; "The Food Chain: Darfur Withers as Sudan Sells Food."