Africa suspended between hunger, famine, and forgotten wars
Abstract: Africa is facing one of the worst recent humanitarian crises, marked by hunger, drought, conflict, and economic collapse, in violation of fundamental human rights. Water and food scarcity, the use of hunger as a weapon of war, and the devastating impact of the climate crisis outline a tragedy stretching from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa. The personal testimony of magistrate Colangelo, adoptive father of a child from Burkina Faso, intertwines the global dimension with individual experience, reminding us that the indifference of the West has become a form of cruelty. Saving Africa is not charity: it is a moral and human duty that calls for concrete action.
Keywords: #AfricaCrisis #HumanRights #WorldHunger #WaterScarcity #ClimateEmergency #SahelCrisis #HungerCrisis #HumanRights (già presente) #AfricaEmergency #Drought #ForcedMigration #WarAndHunger #ChildrenRights #StolenChildhood #SustainableDevelopment #GlobalResponsibility #StopIndifference #Humanity #GlobalSolidarity #SocialJustice #AfricaLives #WeAreAfrica #geopolitics #ethics #MaurizioColangelo #CristinaDiSilvio #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasJournal #ScientificJournal #SocialSciences #ethicasocietasupli
Maurizio Colangelo: Attorney before the Higher Courts, holder of a Master’s degree from the High School of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (S.I.O.I.) in European Union Law and with training at the University of San Diego. He has served as President of ministerial commissions for the Bar Examination sessions and as a member of various study commissions on EU legislation and the reform of the honorary judiciary. He has carried out duties as Deputy Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome and as Magistrate Judge by CSM appointment, and is also a writer. Linkedin Profile
“When you touch the stars, remember that someone beneath you is dying of hunger,” says an African proverb.
In 2025, Africa is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent decades.
Civil wars, collapsing economies, climate change, cuts to international aid. It is enough to follow, even just ideally, the line that crosses the continent from west to east, from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, to understand the vastness of the tragedy.
Every point along that line is a story of survival: water searched for over days, food that is never enough, homes abandoned in the night, a tomorrow as uncertain as the horizon after a sandstorm.
Hunger is not a statistic: it is the face of millions of people suspended between waiting and survival—a tragedy that tramples the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 guarantees every person food, water, and a dignified life.
Yet in Malian villages, entire families spend whole days searching for drinkable water, while in Niger crops destroyed by drought have erased months of sustenance.
The same is true for African children: the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child reiterates the right to grow up nourished, healthy, with safe water. Every child who walks kilometers to drink in Sudan’s refugee camps embodies a living, concrete, intolerable violation.
Complicating everything is the climate crisis: failed harvests in Burkina Faso, desertification in the Sahel, dried-up rivers in the Horn of Africa. International agreements and commitments—from the UNFCCC to the Sustainable Development Goals—waver while reality demands urgency.
Every delay is a political failure, but above all a human one.
And then there are the silenced conflicts.
In eastern Sudan, central Mali, northern Niger, and western Burkina Faso, the sound of weapons accompanies daily life. Families flee and keep fleeing, as though flight were their only home.
The Geneva Conventions require the protection of civilians and assistance to vulnerable populations, yet they often remain words abandoned on paper. When hunger becomes a weapon of war—as happens in isolated villages of Darfur—we edge dangerously close to what the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines as a crime against humanity: the intentional use of food deprivation against civilians.
Within this framework, suffering is not an abstract concept: it is the child who cannot find drinkable water in a Tigray refugee camp, the mother who breaks bread into increasingly smaller portions in the Sahel, the Nigerien farmer who watches his land turn barren, the generation whose future dissolves before their eyes.
Albert Camus wrote that “indifference is one of the subtlest forms of cruelty.” Today, faced with an Africa that screams, the world risks responding with that very silent cruelty.
But it is not too late: recognizing this tragedy means recognizing a global wound, a test of our humanity.
And it is here that the continent’s tragedy meets the personal, everyday one.
Maurizio Colangelo has seen Africa’s suffering in the eyes of a boy—the child he adopted in Burkina Faso—and that cry accompanies him every day, every minute, every time he sees images of malnourished children.
When he and his wife traveled to Africa in 2012, and only months later he nearly died from a very rare condition, they felt a terror mixed with joy—the fear of not being worthy of the immense gift God had placed in their hands. There, in a small clinic, their son sat on a cot, weighing only a few kilograms despite being nearly eight years old. His eyes were bright and frightened, like theirs, yet they also held a spark of trust, the hope that one day the wound of abandonment might be healed.
Witnessing such extreme poverty—those children who had nothing, not even food, yet smiled with a purity capable of breaking one’s heart—is a vision that is impossible to forget. They wanted to take them all with them. Even today, those children surround you with delicate caresses, offering a lesson in love far greater than any words.
Leaving the orphanage was a searing pain: in their faces remained hope, sweetness, dignity in a world that seemed to have denied them all three. Raising their son has been—and still is—like caring for a fragile little bird: pure sensitivity, disarming love, emotions that overwhelm. And one realizes that the strength of love can break down every obstacle.
Here in the West, we often complain about trivial things: a momentary discomfort, a missing convenience. But if even one of these people spent a single day in that Africa that screams, their perspective would change. They would learn that action—concrete, personal, economic, human—is the only possible answer. They chose adoption and support for orphanages. A drop in the ocean, yes, but every drop generates a wave.
The West must understand that life is only one, and that we cannot remain inert before a continent sinking into misery. Those children, born in countries where life is worth less simply because wealth and wellbeing are absent, have the right to a real, true life—without conditions. In the silence of African suffering, the pride of our humanity must resonate: the highest respect for the life of others.
Saving Africa is not an act of generosity: it is a moral, cultural, spiritual duty.
If everyone did their part, abandoning selfishness and complaints, the world would be different. There would be less violence, more dignity, more future. Because Africa is not only a vast continent. It is a living, pulsating world, a rainbow of colors and transformations. It is the silent judge observing the West’s inertia. It is our spiritual mother and father.
It is our soul. And wherever we live, wherever we go, Africa will remain the truest mirror of our conscience.
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