Famine broke out in South Sudan in March 2017. At around the same time, the United Nations announced that Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen were also on the verge of being hit by long draught, putting around 20 million at risk of starvation. The UN described this as an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and appealed to the international community to donate US$4.4 billion — with little success.

Conflict, the root cause of these famines, will need to be resolved. China’s increasing involvement in the Middle East and Africa gives the country the incentive and the capacity to effectively deliver both short and long term food security interventions that can enable peacebuilding and economic growth. Can China step in to help mitigate the calamity through its Belt and Road initiative?

… Stella Liu is a visiting US Fulbright Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.