SOMALIA: Shock waves from Asia's tsunami could reverberate across Africa for a long time to come as aid workers fear the crisis will soak up donor funds and leave less help available for the poorest continent.
"I'm very worried," said Mr Mike Sackett, regional director of the UN World Food Programme for southern Africa. "We've already found it difficult to get resources to feed people in southern Africa," adding that one donor had already cancelled a meeting because of pressing Asian needs.
With the tsunami death toll reaching more than 145,000, the crisis is undoubtedly severe. Africa's woes are more long-term. Aid agencies say 6,500 Africans die of preventable diseases daily.
"Our obvious concern is that all the [ tsunami] commitments must come out of additional funds from national budgets," said Ms Nina Bowen, Care International's acting regional director for southern and west Africa. "I hope we don't hear a giant sucking sound away from our major aid programmes in Africa . . . what we don't want to do is to rob Peter to pay Paul."
Sub-Saharan Africa swallowed up $19.4 billion in official development assistance and aid in 2002, dwarfing even the massive worldwide tsunami response, which yesterday saw pledges nearing $3 billion.
Bob Geldof, who led the Live Aid efforts to relieve famine in Africa in the 1980s, has asked people not to forget Africa's plight in the rush to help Asia.
"The tsunami must be dealt with, it is an act of God, an act of nature," he told BBC radio. "Africa's an act of man. Millions die each year completely unnecessarily and that can be adjusted . . . The issue is one of poverty and debt and it need not be."
While Médecins Sans Frontières made a rare appeal on Tuesday for donors to stop giving it money for tsunami relief, appeals by organisations such as UNICEF to provide relief for African emergencies regularly fall on deaf ears.
While all eyes turn east, attention is deflected from Africa's own crises, such as Darfur in Sudan where conflict has left more than 1.6 million people homeless, tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands dependent on food handouts.
It wasn't meant to be like this - 2005 was to be Africa's year.
The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has pledged to use Britain's G8 and EU presidencies to press Africa's case, while the British Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, is due to unveil his plans for 2005 international aid tomorrow. He may find it hard to keep the focus on Africa given the British public's massive tsunami response, pledging $146 million over and above the $96 million promised from government funds.
Africa had its own tsunami victims. Invisible to most television viewers, Somalia - with a fraction of the wealth of the Asian nations affected and no central government - took a battering that left 150 dead and 54,000 in need of help.
Mr Simon Maxwell, director of London's Overseas Development Institute think tank, said the outpouring of tsunami sympathy might put aid back at the top of political and public agendas. "Out of this tragedy might come a unique constellation of public opinion, political leadership and events that might enable us to tackle the problems of Africa," he said. "We're not saying scale down aid for the tsunami, but scale up aid for Africa." - (Reuters)