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A NEW APPROACH TO AFRICA

Drought Insurance for the Third World

By Beat Balzli and Daniel Steinvorth

Under a new plan, insurance policies -- not donations -- would help starving people in the Third World. Already, Ethiopia has bought drought insurance. But will it work?

The cattle die first -- and the people follow soon afterwards. And after three years of draught in Kenya's Kajiado region, there's hardly anything left to eat for the large herds belonging to the Massai nomads who live in the area. Government trucks are busy hauling away the corpses to prevent contamination of the little water left in the few wells that haven't yet dried up.

For months, international aid organizations have been issuing dire warnings that the relentless drought in East Africa -- the worst in 10 years -- threatens to condemn 6 million Kenyans, Ethiopians and Somalis to death by starvation. The world community is about to face its next humanitarian disaster, says the aid community, and it can only be averted with a rapid infusion of money. "We don't want Kenya to turn into another Niger, where, in 2005, donations didn't start coming in until some of the victims were already dead," says Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

But donation fatigue has set in internationally, and aid organizations accustomed to collecting millions each time catastrophe strikes have recently found themselves faced with cash shortages. Following a year of tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes, it takes truly horrific images to generate enough sympathy to make a difference financially.

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