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		</div><p>UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has made a surprise visit to Somalia for talks with the country&#8217;s new president as a worsening drought threatens millions of people in the Horn of Africa nation.</p>
<p>Mr Johnson told President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. <i>&#8220;It is all so, such a shame that you are facing the problems that you are facing, particularly of course the drought and the risk of starvation, though I think that we are moving fast to try to tackle that this time &#8217;round.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Somalia recently declared the drought a national disaster amid warnings of a full-blown famine. The country faced a similar crisis in 2011 that killed nearly 260,000 people.</p>
<p>The current drought, which the United Nations says threatens about half of Somalia&#8217;s population, or roughly six million people, is part of a four-nation humanitarian crisis that the UN has called the largest since the world body was formed in 1945.</p>
<p>Britain on Wednesday announced it would match &#8220;pound for pound&#8221; the first £5 million donated by the public to the Disasters Emergency Committee&#8217;s new East Africa Crisis Appeal. The committee is a collection of 13 British aid agencies.</p>
<p>Mr Johnson said Britain will host a conference on Somalia on May 11 to help address &#8220;underlying problems&#8221; like extremist attacks and corruption.</p>
<p>Mr Mohamed blamed the drought in part on homegrown extremist group al-Shabab, which continues to control parts of the country. &#8220;This drought is really serious, and so far we have lost 60% of our livestock,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>As Mr Johnson visited Somalia, Somali-born Olympian Mo Farah backed the new aid appeal for the region.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;As a father of four, it hurts to see children without food and water, but this is a reality being faced by parents in East Africa right now,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p>
<p>&#8220;The drought is really bad and there are millions of children at risk of starvation. I was born in Somalia and it breaks my heart to hear stories of how families are suffering.&#8221;</i></p>
<figure id="attachment_109210" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-109210" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/BorisJohnsonSomaliaA15Mar17_large.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/BorisJohnsonSomaliaA15Mar17_large.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="325" class="size-full wp-image-109210" /></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-109210" class="wp-caption-text">British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson</figcaption></figure>
<p>After his recent visit to Somalia, UN humanitarian chief Stephen O&#8217;Brien said 2.9 million people are at risk of famine and require immediate help &#8220;to save or sustain their lives&#8221;. He has said close to one million children under the age of five will be acutely malnourished this year.</p>
<p>Current indicators mirror &#8220;the tragic picture of 2011 when Somalia last suffered a famine&#8221;, Mr O&#8217;Brien said. But this time the UN&#8217;s humanitarian partners have a larger footprint, better controls on resources and a stronger partnership with the new government, he said.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;To be clear, we can avert a famine,&#8221;</i> Mr O&#8217;Brien has said. <i>&#8220;But we need those huge funds now.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Nigel Tricks, Oxfam&#8217;s Horn of Africa regional director, said on Wednesday that &#8220;the window is short in which we can still avert a famine&#8221; in the regional crisis.</p>
<p>The drought also affects millions of people in parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, where the government recently declared a national disaster for about half of its counties. Famine has been declared in two counties of civil war-torn South Sudan.</p>
<p>Later on Wednesday, Mr Johnson arrived in Uganda, one of the regional countries that have contributed peacekeeping forces to help support and protect Somalia&#8217;s government.<br />
Don Wanyama, a spokesman for Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, said Mr Johnson and Museveni would discuss issues of regional security.</p>
<p>Mr Johnson also is expected to visit Kenya and Ethiopia.</p>
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