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During the United Nations General Assembly High Level Week, the United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced more than $53 million in humanitarian assistance funding to respond to the impacts of droughts made worse by climate change in Angola, Kenya, and Madagascar. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development announced a suite of investments and initiatives to support climate action in Africa as part of this week’s Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. Working with Congress, this includes $35 million in new investments this year. These activities will support communities across Africa to build their resilience to climate impacts and sustainably grow their economies. They also support the implementation of the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE), the Just Energy Transition Partnerships, and global efforts to conserve critical carbon sinks.

Today, while in Tanzania, USAID Administrator and Feed the Future Global Coordinator Samantha Power announced an additional $260 million to surge support for the U.S. government response to the global food security crisis. This comes at a critical time as new interlocking and compounding shocks exacerbate existing food needs, with an estimated 768 million people already facing chronic hunger. 

Well we announced today at USAID that we're bringing $5 million to this initiative, the Vodafone Foundation, and M-Pesa Foundation bringing an additional $9 million. And what's so extraordinary about this emergency transport idea is that it actually relies on community members volunteering to say, ‘hey, I'm not a professional ambulance driver, nor am I a professional taxi driver, but actually someone in my family died in childbirth and I have the chance to volunteer and become part of a network to provide those pregnant mothers with a lift to a local health facility through this organization and this dispatch service.’ So it's actually a very cost effective way to save as many as 25,000 lives – mothers' lives a year.  

The Government of Kenya, the U.S. Government through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Vodafone Foundation, Safaricom Plc, and M-PESA Foundation agreed to a new public-private partnership to bring the emergency transportation system m-mama to Kenya. Efficiently accessing transport in the case of obstetric emergencies can save the lives of mothers and newborns.