LAKE CHAD
Bearing Gifts
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced $533 million in famine relief funds for Africa’s Lake Chad region ahead of his five-nation trip to the continent this week.
The funds will go toward providing food, medical supplies, better sanitation and emergency shelter to people in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and countries around Lake Chad, Bloomberg reported.
“The alarming levels of hunger in these areas are largely man-made, as conflicts erupt and people flee their homes,” Tillerson said hours before he left for Ethiopia, his first stop. Later in the week, he will visit Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria.
The aid package notwithstanding, the focus of Tillerson’s trip is security, as the US looks to partner with African nations to combat an Islamic State offshoot in the Sahel region as well as Al Shabab militants in Somalia, the agency said.
He’ll also aim to sooth feelings in the region after President Donald Trump’s alleged reference to “shithole” countries in January and combat China’s rising influence in Africa, where Tillerson said Beijing’s “predatory loans” “mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty.”
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