First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Philip Baker. I work at CIDA as a regional director general for southern and eastern Africa. I had the honour of accompanying Minister Oda to Somalia for the visit to Nairobi and the camps on the border on July 22. We had the Nairobi sessions the day before. It was a very illuminating visit.
In general I just want to say a couple of quick things with regard to the longer term. I've worked in a lot of places in Africa, but besides what we see on the ground, even before you get on the ground, as you are arriving, just seeing the intense drought conditions as you are flying into the camp areas hits you like a brick.
We saw every aspect of the camp from reception right through to long-term settlement within the camps, camps that have been there for a long time. I can speak to the notion of the confidence we have in the partners. Of what we saw, things were incredibly well organized, even in the incredibly busy camp at Dadaab. People have been there for a long time, and coordination is the watchword. That's where you have to be on top of your game.
Stephen is the expert on humanitarian assistance. I have a bit more of the longer-term perspective, having been able to wander through the camps and see all aspects--even gender-based violence--and to look at what can be done about those things.
The short-term immediate work is under way. It is very strong, and we have a high level of confidence in what we are seeing. As for the longer term, that also touches on earlier questions about regional stability. As you can imagine, there's a very large international community, and we all work in various places that we have to focus on. It's like a division of labour, if you like, when you look at a large area like sub-Saharan Africa and this region. It's an unstable, challenging region. Canada, through CIDA, is heavily involved in Ethiopia, which is experiencing a large portion of the drought effects. We are very engaged in Kenya, and as you have seen, the security question makes it much more of a challenge to be deeply engaged as a development agency in Somalia.
However, when you look at the regional efforts that are possible and that are under way, there are quite a few. You spoke about food security. There are also the issues of agricultural growth as well as nutrition for women, children, and youth, all of which we are busily engaged in.
If you look at our programming in Ethiopia, we're having great effect on all three of those fronts. There's a massive program into which we're putting $140 million over five years. It's a program called the “Productive Safety Net Programme”, and it will allow for a way to close the gap on food and security such that you can help numerous people in many of the drought-affected regions to buy time in order to put longer-term programs in place. Those include things like programs for agricultural growth. Some of the biggest climate change adaptation programming you see in Africa is under way in Ethiopia right now, allowing us to stabilize land that has been degraded and make it productive.
There are millions of kilometres--and I have seen these myself--of hand-built stone walls that terrace the actual landscape in Ethiopia in some of these incredibly affected regions. These allow you to come in and redevelop that land for agricultural purposes and allow families to sustain themselves and also go on to a little bit more growth that can contribute to their neighbours in terms of markets and sharing and selling their produce.
You also have things like nutrition programs. Of the money for women and children's health programming announced by the government at Muskoka, $50 million will be going to Ethiopia to support three million children and pregnant and lactating women to enhance their nutrition and allow them to be more productive and to focus on taking that land further so that they can both sustain themselves and perhaps generate enough to provide a small income for the family and pull themselves out of food insecurity.
These programs are under way, and some of our programming can be done elsewhere. As I said, it's not always just Canada. The British are also very involved in Somalia, for example. You can look at a sharing of that kind of effort across the region, and we stay closely coordinated with other donors.