Why we must not look away

By Ronan Scully

Before anything else, thank you to the people of the Midlands, and to communities across Ireland, who stood with Self Help Africa throughout 2025.

Thank you to those who donated, fundraised, prayed, organised events, attended charity events and quietly gave what they could, even when life at home felt uncertain. Sometimes we move forward so focused on the work that we don’t pause often enough to say thank you. Today, I want to change that.

Thank you for your unwavering support of Self Help Africa and for your compassion, generosity, and trust. What you give goes far beyond support, it brings hope and opportunity to communities across Africa. Recently, at one of our charity events, I looked around the room and felt both gratitude and urgency.

A World on the Brink

We are living through extraordinary times, a world marked by war, conflict, hate, instability, and a mounting planetary crisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, and widening inequality are colliding to form the greatest moral challenge of our generation. The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned just recently that “global warming is pushing the planet to the brink.” Every one of the last ten years has been the hottest on record. Oceans are overheating. Ecosystems are collapsing. Fires, floods, storms and droughts respect no borders. And yet, not all countries are equally responsible, and not all are equally endangered.

For Africa, the injustice is stark. Across East Africa, life hangs by a fragile thread, yet it is carried by astonishing courage. I have held children weakened by hunger, listened to mothers who skip meals so their sons and daughters might eat once, and walked through lands cracked by drought, conflict, and neglect. From Ethiopia and Somalia to Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and Eritrea, families are uprooted, wells run dry, crops fail, and parents are forced into impossible choices, yet hope refuses to die.

Women smile with grace that defies despair, children sing with empty stomachs, and communities plant seeds in scorched earth, believing tomorrow can still come. I have seen what compassion makes possible: clean water restoring health, small gardens feeding families, dignity returning where despair once lived. These people are not statistics, they are love, resilience, and humanity itself. Aid cuts now threaten to erase this fragile progress, leaving millions feeling forgotten. Compassion is not charity, it is justice.

The Poorest Pay the Highest Price

Africa contributes less than four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it suffers some of the harshest consequences. Across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, droughts parch wells that sustained generations. Floods wash away homes and harvests overnight. Farmers who planned by the rains now wait and wait and watch the sky remain silent. Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is a daily reality written on empty plates, dry riverbeds, and exhausted faces.

Just as the crisis deepens, some wealthy nations have pulled back. Key donors have cut aid budgets, suspended life-saving programs, and left millions abandoned. Jobs for African development workers lost. Irrigation systems, community water schemes, livelihood programs frozen. Irish Aid continues to stand with the poorest families on Earth. Their support saves lives every day.

As a Ugandan farmer said recently when I visited recently: “Ah, you’re from Ireland—the most caring country in our world.” It was in reference to the 30 Irish GAA stars led by the amazing Alan Kerins who joined forces with local communities in Uganda through the Plant the Planet initiative, planting over a million trees to provide livelihoods, restore soils, and bring hope to families and schools across East Africa. They also opened the country’s first one-wall handball alley, inspiring children, to engage in sport and experience joy amid hardship.

Hunger Is a Moral Scandal

Tonight, 733 million people, the population of Europe, will go to bed hungry. Globally, 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet, even though the world produces more than enough food for everyone. Farmers face failed crops; children endure malnutrition; communities live on the brink of disaster. Nearly 61 million people in Eastern and Southern Africa are in need of food, over 21 million children acutely malnourished.

The Global Hunger Index warns it could take 136 years to bring hunger to low levels at current pace. We should not wait 136 years for children to eat. These are not statistics. They are children with names. Families with dreams. Lives that matter. And still, too often, the world looks away.

Conflict compounds this suffering. In Sudan, families flee violence and famine. In Somalia, hunger stalks communities already shattered by war. In Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and parts of Uganda, pastoralists are trapped in endless cycles of drought, displacement and despair. No child should die because the world’s attention moved on.

To Be Human

There is a deep ache in our world, a hunger that goes beyond empty stomachs. It is a hunger for compassion. When we look upon the hungry and the thirsty, we are not looking at problems to be solved by someone else. We are looking into the very face of our shared humanity. This is not politics. It is not ideology. It is what it means to be human. Across Africa there is a word that explains this truth: Ubuntu — I am because we are. It reminds us that when one child goes hungry, something in all of us is diminished. Our lives are bound together, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Ireland understands this, shaped as we are by our own history of hunger, resilience and solidarity.

Hope Still Grows

And yet amid despair, hope persists. At Self Help Africa, we believe in a hand up, not a hand-out. Farmers are learning to grow drought-resistant crops. Women are rebuilding local food systems. Communities are harvesting rainwater and restoring soil. Thanks to Irish Aid and supporters across Ireland, Self Help Africa installs climate-smart boreholes, introduces drought-tolerant crops, supports women farmers, restores land, and rebuilds livelihoods. Families climbing out of poverty could fall back into hunger if funding is withdrawn.

A Code Red Moment

This is a code red moment. History warns us what happens when the world acts too late. In 2011, drought swept the Horn of Africa and 250,000 people died, many of them children. The warning signs were there. We promised it would never happen again. As needs rise, funding falls. Aid budgets are cut. Communities who were climbing out of poverty risk being pushed back into hunger. Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is a moral failure. The richest one percent emit more carbon than the poorest half of humanity combined.

A Call to Conscience

World leaders recently gathered again at global climate talks. There were plenty of more speeches and promises. But will there be courage? History will judge us not by the wealth we accumulate, but by the lives we save, the dignity we protect, and the future we choose to defend. Compassion without action is hollow. Solidarity without accountability is meaningless.

Please Stay With Us

To everyone who has supported Self Help Africa, thank you. You are changing lives. Together, we can help Africa rise, even when the world looks away. Because hope still lives and needs defending. If you can give, please give. If you can speak, please speak. If you can act, please act. We cannot save everyone. But we can save someone. And to that someone it means everything. Support Self Help Africa: www.selfhelpafrica.org or write to: ronan.scully@selfhelpafrica.org or post to Ronan Scully, c/o Self Help Africa, Westside Resource Centre, Seamus Quirke Road, Westside, Galway.