'You must help'

-- The text message was short and to the point: "My name is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilogrammes of food. You must help."

The arrival of that text made two worlds collide. The sender was a refugee in a drought-plagued camp in Kenya. The recipient was sitting in the London office of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in the comfort of the industrialised world where hunger and poverty are a distant problem.

In terms of sheer initiative, Mohammed's direct appeal has to be a first. Using nothing more extravagant than a mobile phone he showed that the gulf between the "haves" and the "have-nots" is much smaller than many of us would imagine. He shattered the stereotypical image of the faceless anonymous victim of yet another African disaster and gave a voice and a name to the tragedy unfolding in the Horn of Africa. --