Dancers and drummers accompanied Namibia’s President Hage Geingob and first lady in welcoming US first lady Jill Biden to the country on Wednesday, as she began a five-day, two-country visit to Africa aimed at highlighting the challenges facing women and young people as well as the food insecurity plaguing the Horn of Africa.
After flying all night, the first lady was feted at the airport by members of some of Namibia’s many ethnic groups — clad in red, white, blue and bright pink — who greeted her with singing, dancing and drumming.
The last high-level US official to visit Namibia was vice president Al Gore in 1996, the White House said.
The first lady’s trip is part of a commitment by President Joe Biden to deepen US engagement with the fast-growing region. The US has fallen well behind China in investment in sub-Saharan Africa, which has become a key battleground in an increasingly fraught competition between the major powers.
Ms Biden, who was embraced by Namibia’s first lady Monica Geingob, was greeted by US and Namibian diplomatic and government officials.
The two first ladies met in December, when dozens of African leaders flew to Washington for a summit hosted by President Biden.
“I think it is safe to say that Monica and I became friends instantly,” said Ms Biden, who was accompanied by granddaughter Naomi Biden.
After leaving the airport, the Bidens travelled 45 minutes south of Windhoek, the capital, to lay a wreath at Heroes’ Acre, Namibia’s official war memorial.
She later met the Geingobs at the State House, where her arrival was heralded with more singing and dancing.
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The UN says 12 million people in Ethiopia, 5.6 million in Somalia and 4.3 million in Kenya are 'acutely food insecure' after years of drought. All photos: Eduardo Soteras / AFP -
The region's people, many of them herders and subsistence farmers, are enduring their fifth consecutive poor rainy season -
The UN says 1.7 million people have been driven from their homes by a lack of water and pasture -
The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, and extreme weather events are occurring with increased frequency and intensity -
Eight of the 13 past rainy seasons have brought below average rainfall, according to the Climate Hazards Centre in the US -
That has brought hardship for millions -
The last famine was declared in Somalia in 2011, when 260,000 people - half of them children under the age of six - died of hunger, partly because the international community did not act fast enough, says the UN -
Crops were ravaged by a locust invasion between 2019 and 2021. They have since been wiped out, while livestock has also suffered -
UN humanitarian agency OCHA estimated in November that 9.5 million cattle had died -
The war in Ukraine has contributed to soaring food and fuel costs, disrupted global supply chains and diverted aid money away from the region -
Somalia has been hit hardest, with the drought affecting more than half of its population - about 7.85 million people -
In December, OCHA said the nation was not yet in the grip of full-blown famine thanks to the response of aid agencies and local communities -
But people were nevertheless suffering "catastrophic" food shortages, it said, and if assistance was not scaled up, famine could be expected in southern Somalia as soon as April -
Rural people in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts, and displaced people in Baidoa town and the capital Mogadishu were most at risk -
OCHA said that by June, the number of people at risk of starvation was expected to more than triple to 727,000 from October -
According to the UN children's agency Unicef, almost two million children across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia require urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form of hunger -
It said in September that 730 children had died between January and July in nutrition centres in Somalia, but that the real numbers were likely to be much higher -
Lacking water, milk and food, and often living in squalid conditions, the youngest become so weak they are vulnerable to diseases such as measles and cholera -
Unicef said 2.7 million children had stopped going to school -
'There is no end in sight for the hunger crisis and hope is slowly fizzling out,' said Xavier Joubert, Ethiopia director for the British charity Save the Children -
'There's no doubt that the need has grown to an enormous scale,' he said, in an urgent call for funding -
Only 55.5 percent of the $5.9 billion sought by the UN to tackle the crisis has been provided -
Early humanitarian action averted a famine in Somalia in 2017
This is Jill Biden’s sixth time in Africa, but her first trip as first lady. She is following in the footsteps of her recent predecessors, who all made the trip across the Atlantic Ocean in the name of trying to help foster goodwill towards the US.
“We have a lot to accomplish,” she said on Tuesday before departing Washington.
Africa is the fastest-growing and youngest region in the world, according to the White House, which said one in every four people in the world will be African by 2050.
Ms Biden previously visited Africa in 2010, 2011, twice in 2014 and once in 2016, all during her husband’s service as US vice president. Two of those trips were with him.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
