The Coca-Cola Foundation, The Coca-Cola Co.’s Central, East and West Africa business unit, and Coca-Cola’s Africa-based bottling partners and employees committed to donate approximately $1.4 million toward hunger relief efforts in the Horn of Africa, a peninsula in East Africa. The grant will provide urgent humanitarian assistance through food, water, sanitation and health care services in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.

At a meeting with the Kenya Red Cross, Ethiopia Red Cross and Somali Red Crescent, Nathan Kalumbu, Coca-Cola’s president for Central, East and West Africa, highlighted the need for deliberate and critical attention.

“As a business with operations spanning across the Horn of Africa, we and our bottling partners strongly believe that the scale and magnitude of this crisis demands collaborative effort from all,” Kalumbu said in a statement.

More than $1 million of the grant is being donated by The Coca-Cola Foundation directly to The American Red Cross in support of Red Cross and Red Crescent partners operating in the Horn of Africa. The funds will be administered by the Kenya Red Cross, Ethiopia Red Cross and Somalia Red Crescent for immediate trucking of water to affected areas and providing affected communities with basic food and critical medicine with a special focus on children. Significant portions of the funds will be administered in Kenya as the country grapples with its own food challenges as well as the support it is giving to its neighbor, Somalia.

In Kenya, the Red Cross issued a national drought and emergency appeal at the beginning of the year to which Coca-Cola responded financially with a donation of approximately $32,000. Since then, the Coca-Cola system has remained engaged in the greater Horn of Africa region with the aim of providing support to humanitarian agencies.