IN APRIL DAVID BEASLEY, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP), warned of the danger of "multiple famines of biblical proportions" as a result of covid-19. History suggests that Somalia's 16m people are especially vulnerable. Famines in 1992 and 2011 each claimed more than 200,000 lives. A drought in 2016-17 displaced more than 1m people and caused losses and damage of over $3bn. This year, in addition to the pandemic, crops have been swept away by floods and ravaged by desert locusts (with a new swarm on the way). The triple blow means that 3.5m people, more than a fifth of the population, face hunger between July and September, according to an agency of the UN and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, an American-funded outfit that monitors some 30 countries.
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