After a series of particularly devastating famines in East and West Africa in the early 1980s—the ones that sparked the Live Aid concert and set Bono on his path from rock star to humanitarian dynamo—the U.S. set up an early-warning system for when a region’s food supply was going to fail. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS-NET, as it’s known, monitors weather patterns, agricultural production, conflict, and aid budgets to give wealthier nations and relief agencies timely information about likely crises. With enough awareness, the thinking was, there would be time to head off the worst ravages.
For months now, that system has been sounding a major alarm about the situation in the Horn of Africa, which, after four meager rainy seasons over two years, is enduring its worst drought in
