About this Event
14th Event of the Sinews of Development Speakers Series
DANGER: Risk of Famine in Ethiopia
Whilst the new Live Aid Musical show is set to play to packed audiences in London, northern Ethiopia is once again heading for disastrous famine. Live Aid raised over £145 million to tackle famine in Ethiopia and build global awareness. It is estimated that over a million people died of starvation during that period.Once again, a catastrophic drought has ruined harvests in the Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia. Regional conflict, political manoeuvrings, corruption and other factors compound the problem. United Nations agencies, development NGOs, journalists, academics, governments and experts have all raised the alarm.
But what is really happening? What are the key factors? What is already being done and what else could and should the global community do immediately to try to deal with this disaster? And how might we avoid this kind of calamity in the future?
Please join us online for this University of Cambridge Sinews of Development special event, hosted by The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, who is a Fellow of the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development.
It is free to attend (when you register) and open to all, wherever you are. Please join us to discuss this crisis with leading experts, including Bob Geldof KBE, Dr Sarah Vaughan and Dr habil. Jörg Haustein, chaired by The Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, the UK’s Minister for Development and Africa in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Please don’t miss this important and illuminating event.
Register now!
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Speakers
Bob Geldof KBE
Bob Geldof founded and chairs Band Aid, which operates daily, largely in Sudan and Ethiopia, and has done for 40 years. He co-founded DATA and ONE, both being developmental policy groups. He has several honorary degrees in this area including Fellowship of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a load more. Bob has also been an advisor to governments in both official and unofficial capacities viz, a commissioner on the Blair Commission for Africa, which became the blueprint for the successful debt relief agenda at the 2005 U.K. G8, for which he also organised the far bigger Live8 concerts. This involved eight simultaneous concerts in the eight countries of the G8 and 1,000 artists broadcast globally as a lobby for the debt agenda. Bob was also on the Conservative Party Poverty Policy Group, which made the 0.7 target part of the Conservative manifesto for Cameron’s victory and which was subsequently implemented. He travelled with President George W. Bush in Africa as an informal and anecdotal guide. Bob was a member of the Kofi Annan Africa Progress Panel alongside Gordon Brown, Robert Rubin, Grace Michela, the President of Nigeria and others, from its inception to its demise with Kofi’s death. He established the 8 Miles private equity fund for investment in African mid-range businesses. He raised $200 million and created 10,000 jobs across the continent in eight companies ranging from farming to banking to chemicals to biscuits. Etc etc etc… Bob Geldof also makes records.
Dr Sarah Vaughan
Dr Sarah Vaughan is a Principal at The Policy Practice, a political economy analysis consultancy. Dr Vaughan has worked in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa since the late 1980s, advising a series of governmental, multilateral, academic and non-governmental bodies. An Honorary Fellow of the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh from 2001 to 2021, she has taught African politics and social theory in Scotland and Ethiopia.
Dr habil. Jörg Haustein
Dr Haustein joined the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge, in 2019 after teaching Religions in Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (2013–2019), and Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the University of Heidelberg (2003–2013). He earned his PhD at Heidelberg with a study of Ethiopian Pentecostalism (2009), and completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg with a study of German colonialism and Islam in East Africa (2020).
Chairs
Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development). Senior Fellow, CRSD, Cambridge University
Andrew is the Member of Parliament for Sutton Coldfield. He was appointed Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development) in October 2022. Andrew was the Secretary of State for International Development in the British Government from May 2010 until he became Government’s Chief Whip in September 2012. He was a member of the National Security Council in Britain and a Governor of the World Bank between 2010 and 2012. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 2010. Before joining the cabinet in 2010, he held numerous junior positions in Government (1992-1997) and in opposition (2003-2010). He served in the Army (Royal Tank Regiment) as a UN Peacekeeper before joining the International Investment Bank, Lazard where he worked on and off for 30 years. He was a Director of Lazard Asia and Lazard India as well as of Lazard London. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD) at the University of Cambridge; and an Honorary Professor at the School of the Social Sciences for the University of Birmingham.
Prof Nazia Habib
Prof Nazia M Habib, FRSA is the Founder and Research Director for the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD), at the University of Cambridge. She also holds academic positions in the Department of Engineering and the Department of Land Economy. Trained as a political economist, Nazia specialises in using systems thinking approaches with political economic theories to influence one's worldview of decision making with an emphasis on Sustainable Investment, Responsible Innovation, and Good Governance. She focuses on emerging issues within economies and has since worked with governments from over fifty-seven (57) countries. Nazia has received several awards notably, the Commonwealth Fellowship, Newton Fellowship, and Harvard Sustainability Science Fellowship. She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), a special advisor for the EAT Foundation, a Non-Executive Board member for TISATech, and a past Fellow with the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Producer
Steve McCauley
Fellow, The Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development
www.stevemccauley.com
Relevant News Items and Background Reading
Ethiopia starvation: Fear of famine in Tigray grows (24th Jan 2024)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-68061876
‘At the door of death’: desperation in Ethiopia as hunger crisis deepens (9th Feb 2024)
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/09/tigray-ethiopia-war-drought-aid-suspended-hunger-crisis-death-desperation
Nearly 400 Ethiopians have died of starvation recently. Millions more need food aid (31st January 2024)
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2451111/world
Event Venue
Online
GBP 0.00