Drought-stricken Somalia benefits from Turkish food aid

By Ahmet Sait Akcay

ANKARA

Turkey’s aid agency has distributed food to thousands of families facing dire hunger in the drought-stricken nation of Somalia, it announced Monday.

Some 1,375 families in the Horn of Africa country have gotten food aid from the Turkish International Cooperation Agency (TIKA), it said in a statement.

The agency is supplying food aid to drought-stricken central and southern Somalia as part of its Emergency Humanitarian Aid Program, the statement said.

Forty-five tons of essential food supplies including sugar, rice, pasta, flour, and vegetable oil have been distributed to families in the states of Puntland and Gelmudug.

TIKA aims to reach at least 10,000 people as part of the program, which has been in operation since 2011.

In late February Somalia’s new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, declared the drought a national disaster and called on the international community to help people suffering from famine and drought.

The drought hit 11 out of 18 Somali regions, including Bay, where at least 110 people died from hunger and a cholera outbreak last month.

The Turkish government played a huge role in getting through Somali’s 2011 famine, which killed thousands of people, including children.

Separately, the agency said it has launched a “white walking cane training program” for blind people in cooperation with Turkey’s Family Ministry in Misrata, northwestern Libya.

Under the project, 50 blind people will be trained.

Libya has been locked in a state of violence and turmoil since 2011, when a bloody popular uprising ended with the ouster and death of longtime strongman Muammar Gaddafi.