What Oxfam is doing
Oxfam and our local partners work in four sub-regions within Africa, providing humanitarian relief and implementing programs focused on community finance, water, HIV/AIDS, agriculture, hunger and food security, and equality for women. We are also campaigning on the issues of climate change, natural resource extraction, and aid reform.
West Africa
Oxfam America works in six countries in West Africa: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Senegal. The West Africa program was established in 1991 and is based in Dakar, Senegal.
Specifically, our work in West Africa is focused on the following key areas:
- Community finance, through Oxfam America's innovative Saving for Change program;
- Oil, gas, and mining, as part of Oxfam America's Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign;
- Equity for cotton farmers through Oxfam's continuing efforts to ensure fair trade;
- Reducing vulnerability to disasters and conflicts through peacebuilding and food security programs;
- Working with affected communities to adapt to climate change.
Horn of Africa
Oxfam supplies emergency aid to communities when needed, but we also work to help people improve their means of making a living, thereby fostering their self-sufficiency. Our headquarters in the Horn of Africa is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and our program work extends to the countries of Sudan, Somalia and Chad.
Issues we work on in the Horn of Africa include the following:
- Humanitarian relief in the Darfur region of Sudan as well as affected areas in Chad;
- Humanitarian assistance in Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for more than 15 years;
- Water-related programs in Ethiopia, a country affected by chronic cycles of drought;
- Climate change adaptation, primarily in Ethiopia, where drought has contributed to severe shortages of water and food due to climate's impact on farmers and livestock;
- Fair trade issues related to coffee farming in Ethiopia, where Oxfam has successfully campaigned to increase the prices paid to farmers by industrialized countries for that country's coffee exports.
Central and East Africa
Oxfam America's presence in Central and East Africa is focused on the continuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions of people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced by more than a decade of armed fighting in the eastern region of the country.
Programs in Congo include the following:
- Water and sanitation and public health initiatives for internally displaced people living in camps and makeshift communities;
- Women's rights, as the rates of sexual violence against women have reached crisis levels.
Southern Africa
Oxfam America supports emergency food and flood relief efforts, rural agricultural support and credit programs, and women's rights reforms in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, particularly with regard to legal reform and HIV/AIDS. The program in Zimbabwe also includes a peace-building initiative to end ongoing local conflicts as well as a humanitarian response to the cholera epidemic that broke out in late 2008. Oxfam America's regional office in Southern Africa is located in Pretoria, South Africa.
