of staple crops adds to their woes -- maize has nearly doubled in price in Kenya, sorghum is 240 per cent dearer today in Somalia than a year ago. Somalia, perhaps worst affected but where figures are hard to pin down, is simply too dysfunctional and mired in war to cope. The suggestion that up to 12 million people are in urgent need of food, while stark, conceals the fact that taking those affected as a proportion of the total population, the situation is not as severe as it was during the appeals of the early 1990s. "In Ethiopia, the proportion of people affected by acute malnutrition has halved," says Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary. "That is a sign of the significant progress being made. "We are acting promptly to mitigate and blunt the effects of two years without rain in some places, something that is no fault of the people affected. But alongside that, there is clear evidence of the progress being made in mitigating the effect of these crises, so that fewer people in the Horn of Africa are affected by them than were before." But the fact is that there are many more people in these drought-affected areas, living off the same land, with worsening rains. "Over-population, both of people, and of their livestock, is all too often the elephant in the room, something too many people are afraid to talk about," says a senior aid worker in Nairobi. Increasing amounts of international aid -- some