Nation in denial #angola

ANALYSIS
The Guardian: The Angolan government has been
accused of being in denial over adrought that has
affected 1.8 million people because the crisis
threatens to tarnish the country's image as a
booming economy.
Children as young as nine are digging wells to
fetch water, amid a severedrought in southern
regions of Angola that has forced people to use
unclean water for consumption and cooking,
according to the UN. Neighbouring Namibia,
which has also been badly affected, has declared
a drought emergency and appealed for
humanitarian aid.
Angola has done neither, although it has
appointed a special inter-ministerial commission
to respond to the drought, delivered food aid and
drilled boreholes. Government sources have told
the UN that funding requirements are between $
150m (£242.3m) and $350m, but amounts
disbursed so far have not been confirmed.
International relief agencies, including Unicef, the
World Health Organisation and the Food and
Agriculture Organisation, began responding to
Angola's drought in 2012, but the Angolan
government was slow to respond, according to
aid officials.
"At the time, there was a denial of the problem,"
said an aid official. "There was a lot of difficulty for
them to accept the situation. There was a lot of
criticism of the methodology of our rapid
assessment. The government said it did not need
humanitarian assistance and had enough
resources ... the problem is we don't know how
much it has provided."
Others have been harsher, accusing the Angolan
government of seeking to play down the crisis.
"We have a government that has no political
responsibility," said Elias Isaac, country director
for the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa
(Osisa) and a strong critic of the Angolan
government. "Last month, it spent over $130m to
host an international hockey tournament and paid
for the Spanish to come, so you see the lack of
regard this government has for its own people."
Unicef, the UN agency for children, says
approximately 3 million children under five will
potentially be affected by the effects of the
prolonged drought. Between December last year
and June this year, 17,746 malnourished children
went through outreach community
programmes, 5,337 with severe acute
malnutrition and 11,097 with moderate acute
malnutrition.