Did the world react too late to signs of famine in Somalia?

The Economist on the scandal surrounding the famine in Somalia.

Famine has a technical meaning these days. It is declared when 30% of children are acutely malnourished, 20% of the population is without food, and deaths are running at two per 10,000 adults or four per 10,000 children every day. ...

Yet famine was not declared until July, eight months after the first FEWS Net forecast. ...

Outsiders’ caution is linked to the role of the Shabab... The Shabab has banned food aid in most of southern Somalia since 2009, branding Western aid agencies anti-Muslim. The WFP, the biggest provider of food aid, has had 14 staff killed there since 2008. Agencies also worry that militias use food aid to rally their troops—some say this happened in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1980s—and do not want to pile into southern Somalia to find they have reinvigorated the Shabab.

... Some, but not all, parts of the Shabab seem to be looking for help. [Chance to split al-Shabaab?]

...

... FEWS Net may have predicted famine but nothing happened until television cameras showed up, beaming out pictures of fragile children arriving at the huge Kenyan refugee camp at Dadaab in large numbers. Aid officers worry about being criticised by the public and their own bosses if they spend scarce resources before there is an outcry. The result is that donors often ignore their own early warnings. “We’re not behaving like good risk managers,” worries Duncan Green, the head of research at Oxfam.

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Quite apart from the death toll and the misery, this is criminally wasteful. When famine threatened Niger in 2005, the cost of help was put at $7 a head. No one did much; the famine struck; the cost of help ended up at $23 each. Economic incentives and early-warning systems say donors should act early. But the political incentives advise delay—until it is too late.