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In Ethiopia alone, 700,000 people are on the verge of starvation. It is estimated that 8.5 million people are hungry in the country.
A prolonged drought has caused crops to fail and livestock to die in huge numbers.
The situation could get much worse between now and September and likely to continue until April 2018, if people cannot get the help they need, as food stocks are low before the next harvest.
Across the Lake Chad Basin, some 7 million people struggling with food insecurity need asistance.
“Famine does not arrive suddenly or unexpectedly, it comes after months of procrastination and ignored warnings. It is a slow agonizing process, driven by callous national politics and international indifference.” By Nigel Timmins, Oxfam
Today, the world stands on the brink of unprecedented famines. About 30 million people are experiencing alarming hunger, severe levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. 10 million of them are facing emergency and famine conditions. Famine is already likely happening in parts of northern Nigeria, while Yemen and Somalia are on the brink. Thanks to aid efforts, it has been pushed back in South Sudan but the food crisis continues to spread across the country.
These are just four of the many countries that are facing high levels of food insecurity this year. In Malawi, Sudan, Afghanistan, DRC or Syria millions of people do not have enough food to feed their families. The situation in some of these countries could worsen if the international community do not address urgent needs and resolve the root causes.
What is famine?
Famine represents the most serious food insecurity situation in terms of both scale and severity.
It occurs when a substantial number of people are dying due to a lack of food or because of a combination of lack of food and disease. When more than 20% of households cannot eat, acute malnutrition exceeds 30% and death and starvation are evident we cannot talk about a humanitarian “emergency” situation anymore but a “famine”. Learn more about the language of food crises.
Famine threat on the map
What are the main causes of famine?
There is not a single root cause that just explains all famines – each context has its unique aspects. However, there is always a fatal combination of various factors that can include conflict, insecurity, access, chronic poverty, lack of trade and severe weather events such as persistent drought.
For example, ongoing war and conflict are the primary drivers of the situation in north-eastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen, and for Somalia it is drought and weak governance after years of conflict. In some parts of Ethiopia and Kenya, communities are also suffering from a catastrophic drought which makes it incredibly hard for them to buy food locally or have any source of income.
What is sure is that we always have the power to prevent and end famine, but we always let it happen. A declaration of famine is effectively an admission that the international community has failed to organize and act in time and that national governments have been unable or unwilling to respond.
According to the charity, an estimated 20 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia unless provision of relief food is stepped up by national governments and bilateral donors.
So far, only South Sudan has declared famine in some parts of the country while Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could be the next epicenter of hunger and malnutrition.
NAIROBI, June 19 (Xinhua) — Countries in East and Horn of Africa region are staring at a large-scale humanitarian crisis occasioned by acute food and water scarcity, international charity, Christian Aid said on Monday.
According to the charity, an estimated 20 million people are at risk of starvation in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia unless provision of relief food is stepped up by national governments and bilateral donors.
“The recent disappointing rains in Ethiopia, and also in Kenya have shattered any faint hopes for water sources to fill up, pastures to regenerate and harvest to be viable,” said Christian Aid’s Head of Humanitarian Programs for Africa, Maurice Onyango.
The UN had earlier warned of a looming specter of mass starvation in the greater Horn of Africa region as acute drought and conflicts hobble efforts to feed the population.
So far, only South Sudan has declared famine in some parts of the country while Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia could be the next epicenter of hunger and malnutrition.
The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) says that cumulatively, 13.4 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are food insecure.
Onyango noted that the magnitude of food insecurity in the region has not matched the capacity of humanitarian agencies to respond.
“Communities affected by drought are relying more on outside aid, stretching humanitarian agencies and local authorities to respond,” said Onyango, adding that Christian Aid has so far provided life saving assistance to nearly 50,000 people affected by drought in the region
Besides providing emergency assistance to drought victims in the East and Horn of Africa, Christian Aid and a consortium of partners are investing in resilience projects to help communities cope with climatic shocks.
Onyango said the Charity has built the capacity of farmers and herders in arid zones to manage water and pasture in a sustainable manner.
“If the world wants to avert future catastrophes of this scale, we need to invest in helping communities become more resilient to disasters,” said Onyango.
Ethiopia is one such part of the world where there is ongoing disappointment, and hope has been severely tested. The country, in the Horn of Africa, has experienced very bad drought since February 2015. There was no harvest at the end of last year, and it’s doubtful there will be much of one this year. Spring brought rain, and some relief, but in some places too much rain led to severe flooding, which displaced 190,000 people. “The majority of Ethiopian farmers are dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Rain failure is a disaster for farmers,” said Argaw Fantu, regional director in Ethiopia for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. “Some areas are also naturally disadvantaged areas as the rainfall is so erratic, [and because of the] rocky and mountainous nature of the area.”
Though the situation is not as extreme as it was in the 1980s, when some 400,000 Ethiopians starved to death, more than 10 million people are threatened with malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that 15 million people are in urgent need of food aid due to drought, and that 33% of this population is already suffering the effects of severe malnutrition due to agriculture failure and death of livestock, Fides reported. It is estimated that, between October 2015 and April 2016 about 450,000 animals died, severely affecting the supply of milk, especially for children.
The colored corn and pumpkins decorating the front entrances of homes in North America, the weekend apple-picking ventures, the waning days of the farmer’s market in town all hark back to a time when America was a thoroughly agrarian society. So while “harvest time” may be more of a slogan than anything else anymore, in other parts […]
Ethiopians wait to fill water cans in February during the recent drought. With the return of the rains, however, have come flooding and disease — something the government is reluctant to discuss. (Aida Muluneh for The Washington Post)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — After going through its worst drought in 50 years, Ethiopia is again seeing rain. In fact, in some places, it’s falling too hard and has set off floods.
So while the number of people requiring food aid has dropped slightly from 10.2 million in January to 9.7 million, according to the latest figures, there is a new threat of disease in a population weakened by drought.
Measles, meningitis, malaria and scabies are on the rise. And most seriously, there has been an outbreak of something mysteriously called “AWD,” according to the Humanitarian Requirements Document, issued by the government and humanitarian agencies on Aug. 13.
“There is a high risk that AWD can spread to all regions with high speed as there is a frequent population movement between Addis Ababa and other regions,” it warned.
The letters stand for acute watery diarrhea. It is a potentially fatal condition caused by water infected with the vibrio cholera bacterium. Everywhere else in the world it is simply called cholera.
But not in Ethiopia, where international humanitarian organizations privately admit that they are only allowed to call it AWD and are not permitted to publish the number of people affected.
The government is apparently concerned about the international impact if news of a significant cholera outbreak were to get out, even though the disease is not unusual in East Africa.
This means that, hypothetically, when refugees from South Sudan with cholera flee across the border into Ethiopia, they suddenly have AWD instead.
In a similar manner, exactly one year ago, when aid organizations started sounding the alarm bells over the failed rains, government officials were divided over whether they would call it a drought and appeal for international aid.
Police break up anti-government protest in Ethiopian capital
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Hundreds of protesters on Saturday clashed with police in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after campaigners called for nationwide protests due to what they say is an unfair distribution of wealth in the country. (Reuters)
The narrative for Ethiopia in 2015 was a successful nation with double-digit growth, and the government did not want to bring back memories of the 1980s drought that killed hundreds of thousands and left the country forever associated with famine.
“We don’t use the f-word,” explained an aid worker to me back in September, referring to famine.
Like many of its neighbors in the region, Ethiopia has some issues with freedom of expression and is very keen about how it is perceived abroad. While the country has many developmental successes to celebrate, its current sensitivity suggests it will be some time before this close U.S. ally resembles the democracy it has long claimed to be.
Ultimately, the government recognized there was a drought and made an international appeal for aid. The systems put into place over the years prevented the drought from turning into a humanitarian catastrophe — for which the country has earned praise from its international partners.
In the same manner, even though it doesn’t call it cholera, the government is still waging a vigorous campaign to educate people on how to avoid AWD, by boiling water and washing their hands.
Yet this sensitivity to bad news extends to the economic realm as well. Critics have often criticized Ethiopia’s decade of reported strong growth as being the product of cooked numbers. The government does seem to produce rosier figures than international institutions.
After the drought, the International Monetary Fund predicted in Aprilthat growth would drop from 10.2 percent in 2015 to just 4.5 percent in 2016.
Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, maintained, however, that growth would be a robust 8.5 percent, despite the falling agriculture productivity and decreased export earnings.
In the political realm, news of unrest and protests is suppressed. During a weekend of demonstrations on Aug. 6 and 7, the Internet was cut, making it difficult to find out what happened.
Human rights organizations, opposition parties and media tried to piece together the toll from the deadly demonstrations, which according to Amnesty International may have been up to 100.
The United Nations has called for international observers to carry out an investigation in the affected regions, which the government has strongly rejected even as it has dismissed estimates of casualties without providing any of its own.
“That is one of the factors we are struggling against with this government, the blockade of information,” complained Beyene Petros, the chairman of a coalition of opposition parties. “Journalists cannot go and verify. We cannot do that.”
Local journalists are heavily constrained, and as Felix Horne of Human Rights Watch points out, Ethiopia is one of the biggest jailers of journalists on the continent.
“Limitations on independent media, jamming of television and radio signals, and recent blocking of social media all point to a government afraid to allow its citizens access to independent information,” he said.
Foreign journalists do not fare much better, especially if they attempt to venture out of the capital to do their reporting.
In March, the New York Times and Bloomberg correspondents were detained by police while trying to report on the disturbances in the Oromo Region.
They were sent back to Addis Ababa and held overnight in a local prison before being interrogated and released.
In a similar fashion, a television crew with American Public Broadcasting Service was detained on Aug. 8 south of the capital trying to do a story on the drought conditions.
They and their Ethiopian fixer — an accredited journalist in her own right — were released after 24 hours, and they were told not to do any reporting outside of Addis.
In both cases the journalists were all accredited by the Government Communication Affairs Office, with credentials that are supposed to extend the breadth of the country but in practice are widely ignored by local officials.
The government spokesman, Getachew Reda, has dismissed the allegations about the information crackdown in the country and in recent appearances on the Al Jazeera network he maintained that there are no obstacles to information in Ethiopia.
“This country is open for business, it’s open for the international community, people have every right to collect whatever information they want,” he said.
Women wait to receive food at a distribution center in Gelcha village, one of the drought stricken areas of the Oromia region in Ethiopia, on April 28. Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters
We came to Ethiopia to report on the country’s response to a historic drought. We left with a very different story and a taste of how hard it is for journalists, even those covering what should have been a mostly positive story.
For years, Ethiopia has struggled to shed its association with vast human suffering earned during the epic famine three decades ago.
Gleaming high rises in the capital, Addis Ababa, are testament to what today is one of Africa’s most robust economies. An infrastructure building boom has connected the farthest reaches of this sprawling nation of 100 million people, many of them now covered by a government social safety net.
As a result, even though Ethiopia’s current drought has been far more severe than that in the ‘80s — one-fifth of its population suffers moderate to severe food insecurity — there’s very little of the classic, horrible imagery: the emaciated faces of children with distended bellies, which became the backdrop of those historic famine relief rock concerts.
More hours went by before we finally got our “hearing” before five unidentified men. … Each of us was interviewed separately about exactly what our story was, why we chose to go where we did.
We went to Ethiopia to tell this new story, that drought does not have to lead to famine. Many experts say planning and good governance can greatly mitigate human suffering. Ethiopia’s government has won some kudos for its drought response this time, yet its abysmal record on human rights, its harsh treatment of journalists and political dissidents can hijack attempts to tell this story. And in our case, it did just that.
For foreign correspondents, obtaining a journalist visa requires extensive paperwork, documenting the serial numbers of all equipment down to cell phones, a detailed account of every place to be visited and, once approved — if approved — stern warnings not to deviate from it.
The morning after we arrived in Addis, armed with all required permits and paperwork, we set off for the Oromia region south of the capital, shooting images of the extensive housing and road projects under construction or newly completed, some images of farmland and finally a small farm whose owners were being trained in business skills while cultivating new specialty crops to help cope with climate vagaries.
It was here where we were summoned by Ethiopia’s “security services” to the police station. It is amusing to reflect now that our first reaction was annoyance: this would rob videographer Tom Adair of the afternoon’s best light. If only that was all we would lose.
About two hours into our wait in a dimly lit office, we were told to surrender all electronic equipment, including cell phones, and our passports. No explanation was offered, only the threat of arrest if we continued to insist, as we did, that our paperwork was in order, that it is illegal to confiscate a passport, especially without a receipt.
“Report to Immigration tomorrow, and you can collect it,” we were instructed by a plainclothesman who never introduced himself. That meant a six-hour journey back to the capital and to a building teeming with Ethiopians and foreigners alike, applying for passports or visas. In our case, our chance to get our equipment and documents returned.
More hours went by before we finally got our “hearing” before five unidentified men. They’d combed through every corner of our luggage in pursuit of hidden cameras or memory cards and demanded to see every inch of footage we’d shot. Each of us was interviewed separately about exactly what our story was, why we chose to go where we did.
An emaciated cow walks through a dry field in the Oromia region of Ethiopia. Photo by Tiksa Negeri/Reuters
Our explanation was simple: Oromia was hard-hit by the drought. It is where we planned to film food distribution and other retraining programs run by the government and by Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services, the largest nongovernment aid group operating in Ethiopia. A CRS official accompanying us was also detained through this ordeal. This was mystifying since his agency, far from being subversive, is a key government partner in relief work.
As it turns out, Oromia is also one of several regions that have seen political unrest and protests — unrelated to the drought — which the government has put down violently. In the days just before we arrived, Human Rights Watch reported 100 deaths at the hands of riot police in the Oromia region.
It’s fair to assume that the security services were looking for footage or evidence of any encounters we might have had with protests or protesters, highly improbable given that we’d barely arrived in the country. A glance in our passports could attest to that.
Finally, 24 hours after they were taken, our passports and gear were returned with the only “official” explanation we would get.
“You did not get permission from Security,” we were advised, even though no such requirement is published anywhere.
Oromia was now off limits and interviews already scheduled with government ministers about the drought were now canceled.
In Ethiopia, “Security,” the National Intelligence Service, appears to hold the biggest sway, enforcers for a government hell bent on controlling the flow of public information and the images it sends out to the world.
Internet service was shut down throughout the country in the period just before we arrived, presumably to muzzle social media and to prevent protest images from being exported, a virtually impossible task in this day and age. Nevertheless, footage of the protests were broadcast and distributed.
Given that weeks of careful planning (to say nothing of the hefty travel costs) were wiped out by the whims of a paranoid security apparatus, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to return and tell this important story any time soon.
For a long time, the government insisted that the country could handle the situation on its own. Indeed, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn first requested assistance from the international community in March. But international aid organizations were also ordered not to speak publicly about the true scale of the disaster, the liberal magazine Addis Standard recently reported — a newspaper that is viewed with some skepticism by the government.
The authoritarian regime doesn’t tolerate criticism: Members of the opposition are persecuted and unruly journalists imprisoned. Nor are oppositional voices to be heard in parliament, where the governing Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) holds 100 percent of the seats. The party liberated Ethiopia in 1991 from the socialist terror rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, but itself likewise acts with a heavy hand.
What Ethiopia needs is an agricultural revolution, but the government is doing too little to mechanize agriculture and increase productivity. In fact, it has done the opposite by clinging to its strategy of industrialization — one that includes the leasing of giant farmlands to foreign agricultural companies which then export foodstuffs in grand fashion from the country at a time when it must import hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat in order to compensate for the crop losses caused by the drought.
‘Death Awaits’:Africa Faces Worst Drought in Half a Century
By Bartholomäus Grill
Jens Grossmann / Welthungerhilfe
The worst drought in half a century has stricken large parts of Africa — a consequence of El Niño and high population growth. More than 50 million people are threatened by hunger and few countries have been hit as hard as Ethiopia.
Herdsman Ighale Utban used to be a relatively prosperous man. Three years ago, he owned around a hundred goats. Now, though, all but five of them have died of thirst at a dried-up watering hole, victims of the worst drought seen in Ethiopia and large parts of Africa in a half-century.
Utban, a wiry man of 36 years, belongs to a nomadic people known as the Afar, who spend their lives wandering through the eponymously named state in northeastern Ethiopia. “This is the worst time I’ve experienced in my life,” he says. On some days, he doesn’t know how to provide for himself and his seven-member family.”We can no longer wander,” Utban says, “because death awaits out there.” For now, he’ll have to remain in Lii, a scattered little settlement in which several families have erected their makeshift huts. Lii means “scorching hot earth.”
‘First the Livestock Die, Then the People’
Since time immemorial, shepherds have wandered with their animals through the endless expanses of the Danakil desert. They live primarily off of meat and milk, and it was always a meagre existence. But with the current drought, which has lasted for over a year, their very existence is threatened. “First the livestock die, then the people,” Utban says.
The American relief organization USAID estimates that in Afar alone, over a half million cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and camels have perished. Reservoirs are empty, pastures dried up, feed reserves nearly exhausted. With no rain, grass no longer grows. Many nomads are selling their emaciated livestock, but oversupply has led to a 50 percent decline in prices.
Currently, millions of African farmers and herders are suffering similar fates to Utban’s. The United Nations estimates that more than 50 million people in Africa are acutely threatened by famine. After years of hope for increased growth and prosperity, the people are once again suffering from poverty and malnutrition.
State of Emergency
The governments of Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland have already declared states of emergency, and massive crop losses have caused food prices to explode in South Africa. Particularly hard stricken are the countries in the southern part of the continent as well as around the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and especially Ethiopia.
Meteorologists believe the natural disaster is linked to a climate phenomenon that returns once every two to seven years known as El Niño, or the Christ child, a disruption of the normal sea and air currents that wreaks havoc on global weather patterns. The El Niño experienced in 2015-2016 has been particularly strong.
Mohamed Nasir is the clan elder in the Lii nomad settlement. He says he’s never heard of El Niño before. “The lack of water is our main problem — that’s why we’re fighting for our lives.” Nasir doesn’t have any explanation for why the weather has gone crazy. For why drops of rain no longer fall from the ice-gray skies here in the mountains, while only a three days’ walk away, the plains are flooded. For why his home region has been plagued by periodic droughts for more than eight years now. “Perhaps it’s God’s will,” he says.
Nasir has just finished praying for rain, bending over in the dust according to Muslim ritual, with grains of sand still stuck to his forehead. He’s 61 years old, but the worry lines in his face make him look a lot older. He sits in the shadows of a camel thorn tree, looking east. A hot wind blows from the Red Sea out over the karstic, grayish-brown countryside. Over the horizon, the empty promise of a few cirrostratus clouds can be seen. He’s been waiting for rain for a year now.
An Image at Odds with Emerging Ethiopia
This year’s crisis is worse than the one that befell the area in 1985, Nasir says. Back then, the most catastrophic year in Ethiopian history, around a million people died of famine.
Nasir says there have already been deaths this year in his clan’s region. He points to the mountainside behind and says, “Nine children are buried there.” Other herders also speak of the first starvation victims in Afar, but it isn’t possible to confirm the reports.
The government in Addis Ababa denies the deaths. It wants to overcome Ethiopia’s image as a country eternally beset by famine and instead present itself as an emerging nation. The Ethiopian economy, after all, is among the fastest growing in the world, with annual growth rates as high as 10 percent in recent years.
Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries, has transformed itself into a successful development dictatorship based on the Chinese model. It wants to achieve middle-income country status by 2025 and establish itself firmly as an emerging nation. Pictures of starving children with large, sorrowful eyes do not fit with that image.
The country’s boom is visible in the capital city of Addis Ababa, which is currently undergoing an incredibly fast process of modernization. High rises and giant new districts are sprouting up everywhere, new motorways criss-cross the capital and a light-rail system has even been built — the first anywhere south of the Sahara. Numerous new industrial enterprises are located at the city’s outskirts, where they produce textiles and leather goods for the global market.
Covering Up the Scale of the Disaster
For a long time, the government insisted that the country could handle the situation on its own. Indeed, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn first requested assistance from the international community in March. But international aid organizations were also ordered not to speak publicly about the true scale of the disaster, the liberal magazine Addis Standard recently reported — a newspaper that is viewed with some skepticism by the government.
The authoritarian regime doesn’t tolerate criticism: Members of the opposition are persecuted and unruly journalists imprisoned. Nor are oppositional voices to be heard in parliament, where the governing Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) holds 100 percent of the seats. The party liberated Ethiopia in 1991 from the socialist terror rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, but itself likewise acts with a heavy hand.
The country’s Western allies ignore the continuing human rights violations because Ethiopia, a bastion of Christianity, is an important military partner in the battle against Islamist terror on the Horn of Africa.
In praising itself, the government often points to the lessons learned from the 1984-85 famine. In response, Ethiopia set up a disaster early warning system and created emergency grain reserves. The country built dams, irrigation systems and roads. Around 7 million small farmers now receive crisis aid through a state safety net.
Esubalew Meberate is proud of these achievements. As the head of an administrative district with 257,000 residents, he’s responsible for 37 municipalities, 22 of which have been affected by the drought. He receives visitors in his office in the city of Gohala, high in the mountains in the state of Amhara. Meberate wears a stylish black leather jacket and a white casual shirt. He’s a typical representative of the ruling class: young, power conscious and a tad arrogant. He admits that ensuring water supply is the greatest challenge. The problem is that a dearth of transport routes makes it impossible for tanker trucks to reach all the villages. Still, he says, the government is working to address it. “Our economy is growing despite the drought and our agricultural potential is nowhere near exhausted.”
‘We No Longer Have Enough to Eat’
Yet even as the elite in the capital city enthuse about economic growth, in the mountains of Amhara, the Ethiopian heartland, people like farmer Destay Zegeye are suffering. “We no longer have enough to eat,” she complains. Last year, she says, the belg, or short rainy season, failed to materialize. Neither did kiremt, the long rainy season. Zegeye says she was only able to harvest a hundred kilograms of teff, the country’s most important food grain. She was able to keep two sacks for her seven-member household — far too little for survival.
Zegeye, 36, wears a tattered, patchwork dress with a cross dangling from her neck. She walks across the field in front of her hut, a half-hectare (1.2 acre), dry and dusty square littered with stones.
She is struggling to get her family through this period of struggle. Sometimes her husband earns a few birr as a day laborer for a government employment creation program focusing on the construction of schools, roads and storm water tanks. He also recently sold two of their four oxen. The family also gets rations from the government — 15 kilograms of grains per month and household. Somehow they manage to get by, but for how much longer?
All around the mountainous country, you find the same bleak image: cracked soil hard as cement, rocky fields and dried-up creek beds — no green patches for as far as the eye can see. In between are impoverished mountain villages that are constantly growing: Places like Qualisa, for example. Just 15 years ago, only 1,500 people lived here, but today a local employee of the German relief organization German Agro Aid (Welthungerhilfe) estimates that figure to be closer to 12,000. Such growth is the result of enormous settlement pressure. The once forested mountainsides have been clear-cut because of the growing population’s need for firewood and construction material.
Ethiopia Needs an Agricultural Revolution
At the same time, agricultural production has failed to keep up with the pace of population growth. Since the massive famine that struck Ethiopia in 1984-85, the country’s population has swollen from 41 million to 102 million. One-third of the population is already considered to be malnourished today: There simply isn’t enough to go around in many parts of the country.
DER SPIEGEL
African droughts
Much of that situation is attributable to the country’s antiquated system of subsistence farming. Millions of small farmers are incapable of yielding larger harvests because of their inability to access investment capital, equipment, fertilizers and high-quality seeds. In addition, their property belongs to the state, meaning they can cultivate it, but are unable to use it as collateral on any potential loans. They thus slave away just as in biblical times, using hoes, oxen and wooden plows to till low-yield soil.
What Ethiopia needs is an agricultural revolution, but the government is doing too little to mechanize agriculture and increase productivity. In fact, it has done the opposite by clinging to its strategy of industrialization — one that includes the leasing of giant farmlands to foreign agricultural companies which then export foodstuffs in grand fashion from the country at a time when it must import hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat in order to compensate for the crop losses caused by the drought.
Will Famine Become Chronic?
There also appears to be little concern in political power circles about annual population growth of 2.5 percent. The attitude seems to be: the more people it has, the stronger Ethiopia will be. What this overlooks is that the rapid recent population increase has been eroding successes in development policy. Agriculture experts warn that if the Ethiopian population swells to 150 million people by 2035 as some are predicting, famine could become a chronic problem.
Nor is this problem limited to Ethiopia. It could also be a harbinger of further food crises in Africa. “We are simply too many people,” says Ayenew Ferede, 37, the head of a kebele, the smallest administrative unit in Ethiopia. Seven-thousand people live in his ward, and 2,000 receive government emergency aid. “People are starving because we have run out of everything — water, grain reserves, livestock feed.”Ferede has traveled for four hours by foot here to the small town of Hamusit in the hunt for aid. He carries a heavy burden of responsibility. He, too, reports of famine deaths. “If it doesn’t rain soon, we are all going to leave.” But where will they go? “To the next kebele, to the city, across the sea to you in Europe. Someplace where there’s water and food.”
Though it has rained in recent days in some parts of the country, Ferede has little hope. “It’s too little, too late and the worst is yet to come.”
Debre Mekuria breastfeeds her malnourished baby in Seriel health centre in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, Feb. 13, 2016. REUTERS/Tristan Martin
NAIROBI, May 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation, 4 May 2016) – Over the years, Ethiopian mother-of-three Hana Mekonnen has received all sorts of aid designed to free her from the bitter trap of poverty and hunger: goats, cash transfers, resettlement and, of course, sacks of grain.
None has worked.
Hana’s one-year-old son was diagnosed with malnutrition in October, usually a time of plenty in Ethiopia’s mountainous Amhara region, when the main harvest starts to come in.
The Horn of Africa nation’s worst drought in 50 years has left her destitute, reduced to arguing with neighbors over the allocation of aid rations.
“Because of the drought, we are all poor,” she said, seated in her dimly-lit hut with her child on her lap.
“No one in this village has anything to give their children. We all live on food aid.”
Hana blames God for failed rains, but development experts say her chronic poverty is the result of traditional farming methods, a soaring population and a lack of alternative sources of income.
Millions of farmers and herders across Africa have been pushed into crisis by drought this year, raising questions about the ability of aid to break the hunger cycle, despite a resolve to do so after famine killed 260,000 people in Somalia in 2011.
How to make people less vulnerable to natural disasters, and improving the aid response when they do strike, are key themes of the World Humanitarian Summit on May 23-24 in Istanbul.
SAFETY NET
Hana receives cash and food six months a year, in exchange for environmental work, like digging ponds and planting trees.
Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), set up in 2005, helps her through the ‘lean season’ between harvests, while also rehabilitating land and building roads, health posts and schools to tackle some of the underlying causes of poverty.
The scheme, administered by the government and largely funded by international donors, was set up to end the annual scramble for emergency funding to feed hungry Ethiopians, averaging 5 million a year in the decade before its launch.
It has made the provision of food aid more predictable and cheaper, helping to prevent the terrible famines that tarnished Ethiopia’s international image in the 1970s and 80s.
But it has not ended hunger.
“Ethiopia is, and has demonstrated itself to be, very effective at response,” said Laura Hammond, who heads the development studies department at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
“But there’s still this level of vulnerability and poverty that is persistent and that’s harder to turn a corner on.”
This year, one in five Ethiopians need food aid, with 8 million receiving support from the PSNP and another 10.2 million from a $1.4 billion humanitarian appeal.
By 2020, the project – Africa’s largest social safety net – will have cost donors $5.7 billion, raising questions about its sustainability.
“Ultimately, there does need to be a vision for this not being a donor-financed safety net,” Greg Collins, director of the Center for Resilience at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“We more and more need to be investing in creating opportunities that allow those who are able to graduate from the PSNP.”
Initial optimism about a rapid shift to self-sufficiency has been replaced with an acceptance that some Ethiopians will be dependent on aid indefinitely.
GROWTH STORY
The busy roads, endless construction sites and new light railway snaking over Ethiopia’s capital are testament to the double-digit growth it has enjoyed for the last decade.
This growth has led to a dramatic drop in poverty rates, with the share of the population living below the poverty line falling from 56 to 31 percent between 2000 and 2011, according to World Bank data.
“Ethiopia is the darling of Africa at the moment,” said Lindsey Jones, a researcher with the London-based Overseas Development Institute. “Its economy is expanding massively.”
But deeper structural changes, like urbanization and industrialization, are needed to end poverty, experts say.
From the early 1990s, Ethiopia pursued an agriculture-led development strategy, under visionary strongman Meles Zenawi.
Increased use of fertilizer, better seeds and expert advice produced sharp increases in yields, benefiting the 92 percent of Ethiopians who, according to the World Bank, own land.
As Ethiopia’s population has doubled since the early 1990s, many people’s farms are often only half a hectare.
“There is no means to increase the landholding size,” said Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee. “The only option is to increase the productivity of the land by using agricultural technologies.”
Each ward has three development agents, graduates in crop and animal sciences, who demonstrate to villagers how to increase their yields, he said.
But farmers remain vulnerable to poor rains, unlike workers in manufacturing and services jobs, which have proven critical in reducing poverty in countries like Bangladesh and Rwanda.
Ethiopia’s recent investment in the food processing, textile and flower industries is a step towards diversifying the economy away from its heavy dependence on farming, said SOAS’s Hammond.
ACT BEFORE DROUGHT
The most popular buzzword among aid workers after the 2011 drought across the Horn of Africa was “resilience”, which means boosting people’s ability to bounce back from shocks like a failed harvest or a death in the family.
Projects that provide families with alternative sources of income, such as livestock, or loans to set up small businesses, can make them less vulnerable when disaster hits.
“What’s needed is more investment in action before droughts strike,” said Michael Mosselmans, head of humanitarian policy and practice for Christian Aid.
Every dollar spent on preparedness saves seven dollars in disaster aftermath, the United Nations says, but it is harder to generate enthusiasm for preventative projects than tackling visible crises, like starving children.
At the World Humanitarian Summit, Christian Aid is calling for 5 percent of aid to be spent on resilience and disaster preparedness, up from the current 0.4 percent.
Ethiopia is not holding its breath.
The government’s Mitiku says efforts to end hunger for women like Hana must be driven by Ethiopia itself.
“Emergencies will continue, in my view, as long as we are living with adverse climate change,” he said, drawing comparisons with drought-hit California.
“They are not appealing (for funds) because they have the capacity to respond. We expect Ethiopia to have such capacity to respond by itself… when we reach lower middle-income (status),” he said, a target it has set for 2025.
During my recent visit to Addis Ababa, one thing caught my eyes: the increased number of people on the streets begging for food and money. This is not the same Ethiopian capital I visited last year. It is very different due to a severe drought, and the government is trying hard to keep word from getting out.
Ziway Dugda district communities waiting for food distribution at Ogolcha food centre in a drought stricken area in Ziway Dugda district, during UN Secretary General, Ban Ki moon’s visit to Ethiopia, on 31 January, 2016.(AP/MulugetaAyene)
I asked a fellow journalist from Ethiopia – I will not mention his identity for security reasons – if I could take a photo.
“The government doesn’t want us (media) to write about this, and especially if you are a foreign journalist, you will be in much trouble. Most of the local journalists here are in jail for reporting the hunger stories and other stories that the government is against.
“The government thinks by telling the hunger stories, it is an embarrassment to the country,” he says, echoing what I hear from other journalists as well as NGOs.
Ethiopia is facing its worst drought in at least three decades, with devastating effects on agriculture and livestock, whilst millions of people face food insecurity. More than 10 million people – one in ten Ethiopians – are said to need emergency aid due to failed rains.
The Ethiopian government and humanitarian agencies have said that Ethiopia needs nearly US$600 million in international humanitarian assistance. But critics say the government’s new leasing law for foreign concerns is aggravating the crisis by blocking livestock from grazing in areas less-affected by the drought.
One-quarter of all districts in Ethiopia – mainly in the north of the country – are officially classified as facing a food security and nutrition crisis after the drought cut production by up to 90 per cent in some areas. That has caused a flight to the cities.
“Whenever the drought occurs in these areas, people migrate to areas less affected to look for food, and Addis Ababa is one of the areas they move to, especially those just in the outskirts of the city,” said Mitiku Kassa, the Commissioner in charge of Ethiopia’s Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Agency, in an interview with Equal Times.
According to the NGO Save the Children the number of those affected could be higher, considering that 7.9 million people are supported by the government’s safety net program that provides wheat, cereals and cooking oil. It says at least 6 million children are hungry.
Worst seen since the 1980s
The nation has historically struggled with hunger, including in the 1980s, when famine and civil war left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
Experts are predicting that Ethiopia will experience the worst drought in generations, one that will surpass the 1984 famine that killed one million people.
United Sates Department of Agriculture reports that Ethiopia sought 1 million tons of wheat late last year – more than what it bought last season. The government also purchased 500,000 tons more last month through the port of Djibouti, as Ethiopia is a landlocked country.
It is estimated that imports will jump to 2.5 million tons this year, up from the 900,000 tons purchased last year. And USAID, which has deployed a disaster response team to Ethiopia, last month announced that it would provide nearly US$4 million in maize and wheat seed for more than 226,000 households.
“The Ethiopian government is building distribution points and temporary warehouses for the food delivery,” Mohammed Said, the Ethiopian government Director of Communications and Media, tells Equal Times.
“All the centres in the drought-affected regions have been equipped with food they need, and focus is now shifting to providing seeds and fertiliser to farmers so they can start planting following the start of rains.”
He said that the government has a budget of US$381million to cater for those affected by drought, including their animals.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) early this year announced an emergency US$50 million aid to help drought-hit Ethiopians.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Ethiopia has launched emergency food delivery and supervision system that helps provide food for the drought affected areas before the onset of the rainy season. He also called for more international assistance.
The United Nations also says that 5.8 million people in the country are in need water, sanitation, and hygiene services while the total assistance required in 2016 is US$1.4 billion.
The predicted number of children at risk from suffering from severe malnutrition this year is 430,000.
Paul Handley, Head of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia, said that by the end of the first quarter of 2016, 546,257 moderately malnourished children and pregnant and breastfeeding women were treated through the Targeted Supplementary Feeding (TSF) Programme. This represents 82 per cent of the first quarter target of 665,000 people.
“Food overall will become harder to access if we continue to see prices rise, food stocks deplete and livestock become weaker, less productive, and perish,” says FAO representative for Ethiopia, Amadou Allahoury.
“As soon as the rains start, FAO plans include distributing seeds and animal feed, vaccinating animals, delivering 100,000 sheep and goats to vulnerable households and giving farmers cash for bringing weakened and unproductive livestock to slaughter.”
He says that the current drought is not just a food crisis – it is above all a livelihood crisis.
Under Ethiopian law, land is government-owned but occupants have customary rights. In 2010, Ethiopia passed a new farm policy to which the government is leasing 3 million hectares to foreign agricultural investors who mostly include Chinese, Indians and Saudis.
According to the government, the foreign investors will have to satisfy domestic food needs before they can export, while at the same time improve the social welfare of people in the rural areas.
“You cannot speak about land issues now especially with the food insecurity in the country. You will be arrested for that,” says one official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vast majority of land is being used by foreigners for agriculture, especially rice cultivation in the southwest region,” he says.
Although not as affected by the drought as the northern region, the southwest is where most of the food for the country comes from.
“Pastoralists would also move to this region whenever there is drought in the north, to graze their animals, but now they can’t,” the official says. “This is one of the reasons we are witnessing the worst hunger in the country.”
“The mood within the power circle is one of relaxation…One can hardly find the sense of urgency expected…The response system remains fragmented. There is no functioning integration between risk assessment units, response institutions, local administrations and federal level units… The whole response system seems to host great inefficiency”[16].
The credo was: the country has its own capacity to deal with the crisis; the government has enough food stock[7]. Redwan Hussein was categorical: “We are able to feed ourselves”.[8]The Prime Minister and Chairman of the ruling party, Haile Mariam Dessalegn, repeated such statements word by word[9].
But one month later, Redwan Hussein acknowledged that the recent rise in the number of victims calls for an urgent foreign assistance. “Although the government can tackle the problem by diverting the budget allocated for development, it needs international assistance so that the on-going pace of development would not be hampered”[10]. And even more: the government is now complaining that the donors “have already promised so much, but they have delivered practically nothing. The government is working alone”[11]. Even more: the government is now complaining that the donors “have already promised so much, but they have delivered practically nothing. The government is working alone”.
This provoked strong reactions. “Enough is enough… It is embarrassing and humiliating indeed to observe our smartly dressed leaders scuttling from one donor meeting into another with their begging bowls… It surely should not be beyond Ethiopia’s capacity to handle minor droughts without the necessity for the degrading foreign aid… By running to the UN for help, the EPRDF – the ruling party – has gravely injured the positive image of the country”[12].
The designated culprit is the drought, attributed to the climatic El Nino phenomena. Meteorological experts have confirmed it is the worst in the last two or three decades. However, this kind of crisis is recurrent. The sequence of bad rain seasons leading to bad harvests leading to a food crisis is unstoppable in a country where 98% of the agriculture remains rain fed.
It is highly probable that sooner or later TV screens will show us crying children with emaciated faces and balloon stomachs. The viewers will be convinced that once more famine and Ethiopia form a diabolical duo[13]. But there is always and at any time at least one place in Ethiopia where a camera could catch such a worrying scene. Does it mean that Ethiopia’s old evils have once again risen to the surface?
First, the apocalyptical famines of 1972-73 and 1984-85 left hundreds thousands of deaths, probably around 200,000 and 400,000 respectively. Now, whether real famine pockets have developed here and there remains to be seen – usually the stage of famine is considered reached when a significant number of adults start to die from hunger. In any case the possible death toll would have nothing to do with these previous figures.
Second, the official growth of the cereals production, and therefore the agricultural development action of the government are rightly the subject of enquiry. Last year, the official figure for the cereals’ harvest has been 27 million of tons for a population close to 100 million, that is to say 270 kg/person/year. Even with a high range estimate of post-harvest losses and reserve of future seeds, this left a per person consumption availability of basic food well above the required 180 kilo per year. Given these figures, Ethiopia should be overflowing with locally available surpluses.
The food market prices have remained relatively stable, and within the range of the global inflation. For example, the wholesale price of sorghum and maize in Addis Ababa are stable compared to one year ago, wheat has increased by 7% and decreased by 3% since its summer peak, teff, the most locally prized cereal, has increased by 13%[14]. But one should be aware that during former similar crises, the crops inflation started at the beginning of the following year.
But in any case, to attribute food shortages to a shortfall in the whole agricultural production cycle is misleading.
At least half of the Ethiopian farmers are net buyers of their own household food consumption thanks to extra-farm incomes. In bad years, their production drops, and they would need more money to respond to their needs. But bad years also mean less agricultural daily labour, well less paid, while this represents usually the main source of cash for the poorest. Thus, they face a food shortage not because the market is lacking, but because they cannot afford to buy it. Thus, they face a food shortage not because the market is lacking, but because they cannot afford to buy it. Amartya Sen has perfectly demonstrated this mechanism for the 1943 Bengal famine in India.
Third, the early warning systems have operated relatively properly, even if they need to be improved, after having been launched more than a decade ago.
Fourth, the so-called biblical famines of 1972-73 and 1984-85 were deliberately hidden so as to preserve the image of the imperial regime or of the Derg military junta. Even more recently, in 2008-2009, both the authorities and the donor community publicly denied the acuteness of the food crisis for three to four months, thus leading to a corresponding delay in the aid delivery.[15] Again, the reaction of the authorities is under strong criticism here and there. “The mood within the power circle is one of relaxation…One can hardly find the sense of urgency expected…The response system remains fragmented. There is no functioning integration between risk assessment units, response institutions, local administrations and federal level units… The whole response system seems to host great inefficiency”[16].
Interviewed under conditions of anonymity
International experts who deal with food crisis year on year don’t share this point of view, even when they go off the record and far from being apologists of the regime. Their general opinion is that the government has efficiently performed vis-à-vis the crisis, both in terms of volume and organisation. Aid officials and NGO’s leaders, interviewed under conditions of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue for the authorities, reached the same conclusion[17].
For them, the authorities have reacted faster and more vigorously than during any of the previous crisis. Above all, their level of assistance is beyond comparison with those of the past. For the first time, they have drawn on the national and regional budgets to put on the table first a tiny 33 million US dollars, second around 200 millions of the 600 million needed at that time, and just now an additional 97 million[18].
This represents around 3% of the whole budget, and 9% of the investment budget. Haile Mariam Dessalegn travelled to the affected areas in the Somali region at the end of October, and almost all regional high officials also did this. The concerned state departments are fully mobilized, including and even more in the regions. When the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia said that “the leadership and commitment of the government in driving its response to the impact of the El-Nino phenomenon on food security in affected areas has been exceptional“[19], this statement is not only diplomatically motivated. When Addis Standard writes: “The trend of not admitting on time to a looming drought hasn’t improved over the last four decades since 1974”[20] – the weekly is wrong.
It is obvious that the ruling power does not want the age-old dramatic images of starvation and the dead aired again all over the world. Reports have proven that, at least locally, a lot is done to hide the drama and even to silence the victims[21]. But trying to minimize the publicity about the food shortages, which the authorities do with a patent clumsiness, must not be mixed up with trying to withhold information of a crisis.
Fifth, the worst is highly probably to come. There is no doubt that the summer rains season in many parts of the highlands were insufficient and erratic, including in some of the most productive areas, and that the main harvest has been affected as a result. The crisis can only deepen until at best the small spring harvest and, more possibly the main production next autumn.
Controlling the crisis
Now the key question is: facing unprecedented growing needs, could the authorities – and the donors – continue to upgrade their response capacities, and thus maintain the crisis under control? Now the key question is: facing unprecedented growing needs, could the authorities – and the donors – continue to upgrade their response capacities, and thus maintain the crisis under control?
Some argue that the latter seem now to have reached their limits. The State Minister for Agriculture and Secretary of the National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee Mitiku Kassa stated: “You can build resilience, but when conditions are bad enough, so severe – and we’re seeing the perfect storm – these resilience systems are overawed”. He added: “The international community is not in a position to respond to our crisis”[22].
200,000 tons of food are on their way to Ethiopia. 600,000 tons have just been ordered. A bid for one million tons will soon be called for. The aim is not only to feed the starving people, but also to prevent a sky-rocketing in food prizes.
Where could the money come from to buy on the international market? First, Ethiopia’s lack of foreign currencies is chronic. It seems the World Bank and the African Development Bank are willing to give a hand. But other donors are more reluctant, and some of them even condition their further financial effort on the same move by the Ethiopian government.
The minimum delay between a bid and the effective distribution of the food at a village level is five months. The only solution to feel the gap in between is to dip into the available local reserves. But again: who will pay? At this stage, some donor organizations will be short of food to distribute in January in some areas.
Finally, the logistic bottlenecks. Most of the importation of Ethiopia transits through Djibouti port. It manages usually around 500,000 tons per month. Can it deal with an additional 2 million tons, and with what kinds of delay?
Sixth, Ethiopia is expected to become a middle level income country in 2025. Could the continuous foreseen growth of the Ethiopian economy, including the agricultural sector, progressively absorb these perennial food crises? The answer looks rather grim.
First, the cereal production has officially tripled during the last fifteen years. Even if this figures is highly questionable, the per capita production has substantially increased for sure. But the percentage of people suffering from the droughts has remained stable: around 20% in 2001-2002, around 15% in 2007-2008, around 20% now. “The poorest 15 percent of the population experienced a decline in well-being in 2005-11 mainly as a result of high food prices ».[23] “Graduation from the Safety Net Program has been short of expectation”[24].
The number of people who succeeded in increasing their assets enough to live without perennial aid has not exceeded a small percentage. So the hard core of the poorest farmers, the food insecure people, chronically vulnerable to any climate shock, has not been significantly alleviated.
Prospects
The present agricultural development policy does not seem to be appropriate to reverse this trend. At the grass roots level, when asked why this hard core of poverty remains, and even extends, the local authorities and development agents respond: “because these farmers do not follow our development advice”. When asked why they cannot escape from poverty, these poor farmers reply: “because the development programme does not fit our needs and means”. Actually, it looks like they are left to their fate.
They even start to complain that a kind of implicit alliance has been formed between the local authorities and the most enterprising farmers – the so called “model farmers” – to endorse this neglect. The former focus their efforts on the latter because they can boast of having better results to their superiors. The latter are the only ones who can rent a land from a poor farmer who is obliged to do so because he is engulfed in a debt spiral when any shock occurs.
The government seems to have validated this status quo. The draft of the Growth and Transformation Plan for 2015/16-2019/20 devotes few words to this destitute hard core. It mentions “strengthening the Productive Safety Net Program” and “providing effective credit facilities and other supplementary and complementary programs… to accelerate the graduation of Programme beneficiaries”[25].
But it looks like it doubts itself whether any of these actions would succeed: the food reserve for Food Security, Disaster Prevention and Preparedness, would have to be raised from 400,000 tons now to 3 million tons, which could be reduced to a little bit to more than one million tons in the finalised Plan[26].
Finally, the same scapegoat is selected as always. “The right to ownership of rural and urban land… is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia”, states the Constitution. Thus, the land tenure system, because it forbids sales, leases and mortgages, because it allows eviction for public interests, would be the main culprit for low production and thus for the food shortages in case of crisis. The only solution would be privatisation. But the land tenure security is now largely assured through the new 30 years land certificates. De facto, a mechanism of leasing has been put in place which allows land to be rented for cash or through a share cropping agreement. Privatisation would worsen the situation of the poorest farmers.
In the case of drought, they inevitably fall in debt. If a land market existed, their only choice would be to sell their last asset, their land, with very few possibilities of being employed either locally or in the urban areas, because the available workforce outnumbers the needs. They would simply join the growing rural lumpen proletariat – who is precisely the main food aid seeker.
Ethiopia Faces Worst Drought in 50 Years, Millions Affected
By William Davison, bloomberg.com December 7, 2015
A worsening drought in Ethiopia means 10.1 million people, a 10th of the population, are facing food shortages next year in the Horn of Africa nation, Save the Children said.
The figure is an increase of 1.9 million people from the number the government says currently requires food aid. The assessment means 400,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition in 2016, the London-based charity said in an e-mailed statement on Monday.
“The worst drought in Ethiopia for 50 years is happening right now, with the overall emergency response estimated to cost $1.4 billion,” said John Graham, Save the Children’s Ethiopia country director.
Ethiopia’s government has allocated $192 million for the crisis and received $163 million from donors since an appeal for $340 million in October, said Mitiku Kassa, who heads the government’s disaster response team.
Another 8 million vulnerable Ethiopians will receive food and cash transfers during the first six months of next year under a mostly donor-funded aid program.
Low rainfall this year had a “devastating effect” on agricultural production, with the next harvest not expected until June, the charity said. Ethiopia’s government has said the drought will not affect official growth rates of about 10 percent a year, despite rain-fed agriculture accounting for almost 40 percent of the economy.
ETHIOPIA RESPONDING TO AN EL NIÑO-INDUCED DROUGHT EMERGENCY:
The El Niño global climactic event has wreaked havoc on Ethiopia’s summer rains. This comes on the heels of failed spring rains, and has driven food insecurity, malnutrition and water shortages in affected areas of the country. A well-coordinated response is already underway and Trends in Severe Acute Malnutrition expanding rapidly, although the scale of the developing admission (2011-2015)3 emergency exceeds resources available to date. Given the lead in thousands times necessary for the procurement of relief items, the Government and its international partners have called for early 40 action to this slow onset natural disaster.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Ethiopia: Ongoing Drought in Ethiopia Being Hushed By Its Own Government
A Call to Take Responsibility: Exiled Ethiopian human rights advocate Yared Hailemariam, who is based in Brussels, speculates on why the government denies that the drought has turned into a famine. It is his opinion that the denial is due to a lack of competent governance, democracy, social justice and political will of the last three regime’s. He also says that the EPRDF (The Government of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) is highly corrupt, and that the development is not what it seems to be.
– The so called development is not humanitarian based – rather it is based on numbers and the economic aspect, but there is still lots of confusion regarding the double digit growth that has been reported to us over the last few years.
ANALYSIS By Fasil Girma, http://allafrica.com/
Birtukan Ali, a woman living in a rural district in Ethiopia, became a sensation following BBC’s report about the ongoing drought and famine. Thereport, which aired on November 10 2015, sparked a new kind of debate on the government’s intention in trying to cover up the famine – a story that remains untold.
Journalist Clive Myrie featured the story of Birtukan Ali who is from a small village called “Kobo” which is located in the North East of Ethiopia. It is a place where the drought is widespread and the effect of it is highly visible. Birtukan told the reporter that her son recently died due to severe malnutrition as a result of the drought in the area. The reporter said that at least two children die in similar cases daily.
The drought, brought on by the El Niño, a weather phenomenon described as a periodic warming of the sea surface, has severely affected the country. Ethiopia is mainly an agrarian economy and the agriculture is fully dependant on rain fall. Ultimately this means that no rain results in no crops, and therefore no food. This year the rainfall was inadequate to cultivate crops for two consecutive seasons. The United Nations estimated that 8.2 million people in Ethiopia’s drought affected areas need relief assistance. UNICEF said that the drought is expected to be the worst in 30 years and that 350,000 children are expected to require treatment for extreme malnutrition.
Ethiopian Government Denies Famine
In a press release by the World Food Program, it is stated that “a dramatic increase in the number of people in need of relief assistance, from 2.5 million at the beginning of the year to 8.2 million in October, led to a serious funding gap”. The Ethiopian government says that it has allocated $192 million USD for emergency food and other assistance.
However, the government and humanitarian agencies have said that Ethiopia needs nearly $600 million USD in international humanitarian assistance. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has called for international assistance by appealing for food aid to help feed the 8.2 million people that are affected by the drought.
Nevertheless, at the same time, his government denies that there is a famine at all. Deputy Prime Minister, Demeke Mekonen, commented on the BBC report in an interview with a local journalist:
– It is obvious that the foreign media works with different bodies of special interest. There is no such thing as famine in Ethiopia these days, Demeke said.
Similarly, the Ethiopian embassy in the United Kingdom has condemned the BBC report as being “sensational”. The embassy denied reports of approximately two children dying from malnutrition in the area on a daily basis.
Five days after the airing of the BBC’ program, government owned Amhara Mass Media Agency, which is based in Bahar-Dar, the capital of the regional state Amhara, presented a televised program that ridiculed BBC’s report. The program includes Birtukan’s interview with the regional media. This time, however, Birtukan claims that her son died of unspecified “sudden illnesses” and not because of the malnutrition as she had told the BBC reporter.
Felanemunemunim, a local journalist and social media activist who is mentioned by his nickname, followed the news on Ethiopian television. He says that regional governors report as if the agriculture is good enough to produce plenty of food.
– They were talking about it on television for more than four months, but the truth is as BBC reported, even if there was exaggeration.
Government Accused of Diminishing the Extent of the Famine
The statements made by the Ethiopian government have sparked a debate among Ethiopian human rights activists. According to them, the government is trying to cover up the severe effects of the drought.
Argaw Ashine, an exiled journalist based in USA and founder of the web based Amharic internet radio Wazema, which is getting a wide acceptance in the Ethiopian online community for its credible information, commented on the drought. According to him, it is obvious that the Ethiopian government continues to hide the drought from the media, and he believes that they will continue to do so despite the United Nations and others predicting that the worst is yet to come. Admitting that there is a famine would create a problem for the Ethiopian government.
– It costs them politically. The success story they fed to Ethiopians and the international community falls severely short after an exposition of the hunger.
Wazema radio reports that the federal government passes strict instructions to regional governments and Ethiopian embassies all over the world to not give any kind of information to any media regarding the ongoing drought and famine. The instructions include denying access for all journalists to drought affected areas and to take necessary measures for nongovernmental organizations to not leak information regarding the crises to the media.
According to Argaw, media restriction is common during humanitarian crises, and specifically the local media is blocked from reporting the situation.
– They may allow some big international media organizations in to specific locations for only a couple of days. International media reporting is part of convincing the international community to send aid, yet the government does not want an in-depth report on the cause of the problem.
– Authoritarian governments are good at controlling the information flow, and the role of media during crises in Ethiopia is kept at a minimum. Media should be at the forefront to end hunger. Development and better life is impossible without vibrant media in Ethiopia, Argaw said.
A Call to Take Responsibility
Exiled Ethiopian human rights advocate Yared Hailemariam, who is based in Brussels, speculates on why the government denies that the drought has turned into a famine. It is his opinion that the denial is due to a lack of competent governance, democracy, social justice and political will of the last three regime’s. He also says that the EPRDF (The Government of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front) is highly corrupt, and that the development is not what it seems to be.
– The so called development is not humanitarian based – rather it is based on numbers and the economic aspect, but there is still lots of confusion regarding the double digit growth that has been reported to us over the last few years.
Yared says that the first thing the government should do is to rescue those in need. The level of the ongoing and upcoming disaster that would take many lives, needs to be reduced. It is also important to take lessons from the past.
Erga guyyaatti 3 ol nyaanna jedhamee Wayyaaneedhaan hololamu eegalee waggoottan 24 darbaniiru. Muummicha ministeeraa wayyaanee kan ture Mallas Zeenaawiirraa eegalee hanga ergamticha har’aa H/Maariyaam Dassaalanyitti guddinarratti guddinni ida’amee, parsantii 11 oliin gudataa jirra jedhamee afarfamaa tureera. Guddinnii fi dhaadannoon waggoottan 24 darbaniif hololamaa ture garuu kunoo dhadhaa abidda bu’e ta’ee hafe. Guddinni gaafa afaan qawweetiin haangottii dhufan irraa eegalanii hololaa turan as buuteen isaa dhabamee ummattoonni biyyattii beelaan mankaraaraa jiru. Impaayeera Itiyoophiyaa keessatti beellii fi gadadaoon babalatee namni miliyoona .15 ol ta’u kan afaaniin qabatee bulu hin qabu. Inni guyyaatti 3 fi sanaa ol nyaata jedhame takkaa dhabee beelaa fi dheebuun harcahaa jira.
Dhugaadha miseensoonni Wayyaanee fi lukkeeleen sirnichaa saamicha fi malaanmaltummaa afaan qawweetiin gaggeessaniin quufanii bulaa jiru.
Ethiopia ‘using aid as a political tool’.
BBC report alleges the government is withholding aidfrom opposition supporters and committing human right abuses
Duroomanii midhaan filatanii nyaatu, wuskii bakka dhaqanitti dhangalaasu,ciree Finfinneetti yoo nyaatan dhayanni isaanii Awuroopaa ta’uu danda’a. Abbaa fooqii hedduutii, makiinaa akka kaalsii miilaatti guyyaa guyyaan jijjiirratu. Warshaaleen biyyattii keessa jiran kan isaaniti. Ummattoonni cunqursaa fi saamicha sirnichaa jala jiran miliyoona 15ni olitti tilmaaman garuu beelaan harcahaa jiru. Qayee fi qabeenyarraa buqqawaa jiru. Biyyaa baqatanii gammoojjii biyya ormaa fi galaanatti dhumaa jiru.Mootummaan Wayyaanee mootummaa gama hedduun ummattoota Impaayeera Itiyoophiyaa keessa jiran, keessumaawuu ummata Oromoo addatti irratti xiyyeeffatee fixaa jiruu dha. Murni saamichaaf umame kun gama tokkoon nama mirga isaa fi lammii isaatiif falme; barattoota qalama malee harkaa hin qabnee dabalatee, sabboontoota rasaasaan karaarratti fixaa jira. Kaan mana hidhaatti guuree, kaan ammoo qayee fi qabeenyarraa buqqisee, carraa hojii fi barnootaa dhorkatee mankaraarsaa jira, biyya dhablee taasisuun kan biyyaa baqachiisee gammoojjii, galaanaa fi kaampii baqattaatti fixes manni haa lakkaawu. Haacaaluu ammoo kunoo amma nama miliyoona 15 ol beeleessee kadhaa fi du’aaf saaxilee jira.
walumaa galattii ummattoonni biyyattii keessumaa Oromoon beelaan, baqaan, rasaasaan , hidhaan goolamaa fi dhumaa jira jechuutu hundarra salphata.
Murni Wayyaanee karaa adda addaan beela nama mil 15 ol miidhaa jiru kana dhoksuuf yaaluus, yeroo kaan ammoo lakkoofsa isaa gadi buusee himuuf carraaqus namni dhumaa, abdiin qotee bulaa fi horsiisee bulaa beeladoonni karraan harcahaa jiru. Akka BBC fi AL-JAZIRA dabalatee miidiyaaleen idil addunyaa hedduu fi dhaabooleen gargaarsaa adda addaa yeroo ammaa kana ifa taasisaa jiranitti impaayeera Itiyoophiyaa Wayyaaneedhaan bulaa jirtu keessatti beelli namoota mili. 15 ol , kan irra jiraan isaa saba Oromoo ta’e akka malee hubaa, lubbuu baasaa jira.
Despite its higher severity in terms of intensity and magnitude as compared to similar humanitarian crises in recent time, the current hunger in Ethiopia doesn’t receive adequate response yet from national and international aid organizations. Though good news are coming about bilateral aid support from U.S and certain EU members, the INGOs which have got ample experience in the area of humanitarian responses in the country are either still on the stage of preparation or did not yet plan to respond. The irresponsible position of the ruling party-EPRDF – that claimed the drought would not be beyond government capacity- might have contributed for the late and/ or no response acts of the aid organizations.
Moreover, Aid organizations become more curious about their mandate/roles and forced to operate under strict precaution (even in the case of emergency interventions) since the new civil society law enacted in the year 2009- that explicitly prohibited them to undertake any right based projects. The critical question usually asked by the practitioners goes, “is there any thing as such which can not be a right in the development endeavor? be it education, livelihood, economic empowerment or emergency food support?”. The ruling elites have never wanted to properly address such confusions emanated from their notorious enactment, as their main intention is to narrow dawn the space of civil society in Ethiopia’s political engagements.
Whatever the reasons, the emergency response support to millions who are severely affected by the disaster is already delaying. The results of such irresponsible acts might claim the lives of the vulnerable groups, if the trend continues so. The internationally accepted “Humanitarian” principles and standards are being compromised in Ethiopia due political irresponsibility in the ruling elites and lack of adequate sensitivity in the aid sector. The hunger incident has already severely affected the life of 15 million people through putting at least six regional states in “red level” hot spot situation. Oromia regional state having more than 125 most affected districts is leading in the humanitarian crisis. It should be noted that the recurrent drought crisis is proportionally shifting to South of the country during the recent incidents.
The claimed “food aid” through various government owned mechanisms do not address the need of all affected communities fairly and equally mainly due to autocratic political acts. The target community/ localities that showed their support to opposition forces during the recent national election 2015, for instant, would be discriminated by blind cadres during such government based aid support. Denial of such food aid-humanitarian support- to certain severely affected households due to failing to pay membership fee for OPDO- ruling party in Oromia region- was also observed in some areas.
Thus, alternative emergency response interventions should be in placed immediately. The Aid Organizations (INGOs) and other national civil society organizations as well as the entire community should act now, irrespective the prevailing political and bureaucratic challenges.
Related:-
SBO – Sadaasa 22, 2015. Oduu, Qophii Beelaa, Dhimmoota Adda Addaa Irratti Gaaffii fi Deebii Namoota Gara Garaa Waliin Taasifamee fi Qophiilee Biroo
Waan dubartiin san gaazexeessitootattii himtee keysaa akkana jatteen “Nuti hoongeen nuttii hammattee jirtii. Namnii goodanaa jiraa. Anuu ammaa goodansafiin demaa. Edaa edaatuu hiraata osoon hin nyatiniin bulee. Gargaarsi yeroo dhufe mallaqaa kaffalleeti katabamnaa. Abbaan araddaa maallaqa nurraa guurrateeti nu galmeeysaa. Qarshii san kan beeyladaa qabu horii gargureetii ittii kannaa. Walumaagalatti kan qarshii dhibbaa 300 hin qabnee gargaarsa kana hin fudhatu. Gargarsii osoo ummata hoongeen miidhame biraa hin geenye namootuma muraasaaf hiramee dhuma. Gargarsi aanaa keenyaa kan caasaalee araddaatifi kanuma nama qabenyaa qabuu tahe.” jattee icitii silaa isaan dhoysuu barbadaan mara jalaa bafte.
Galgaluma san TV Oromiyaa sagantaa kana dabarsee ture. Garuu kan nama aja’ibsisuu gazaxessooni kun waan intaltii dhala san ittii himtee hin dabarsine. Kan isaan dabarsan “rakkoo beelaa hin qabnuu tan nuti qabnu rakkoo bishaan dhugatiiti” tan jattu dabarsan. Kanaas kan ja’e nama bulchaan aanaa qopheesseen kan dubbatamee dha. Wanni nama gaddisiisu garuu bulchaan ummata bulchaa jiru kun ummata moo mootummaaf akka dhaabbateedha. Sagaleen ummataa ukkamamtee ummanni beelaan dhumaa jiraachuun kun akkamitti xiqqolee garaa isaan hin nyaanne jechuun ummanni bal’aan kaabinoota aanaa komachaa jiran.
Akka odeeffannoon gara Miidhagaa Lolaatii arra nu gahe tokko ibsitutti, hoongeefi beelaan wal qabatee haalli amma naannoo sanitti argamuu akka malee yaaddeessaa tahuu irraa kan ka’e abaar akka baroota dheeraa dura naannoo sanii namoota kumaatamaan baqachiisee turee san daran tahuun shakkisiisaa jira ja’an. Gargaarsi waajibir naannoo san dhufaa jiruus kan kallattiin ummata bira gahaa jiru osoo hin taane kan aangawoota araddaafi nama qarshii qabuu qofa akka tahe ijaan agartoonni naannoo sanii himaa jiran.
Haaluma wal fakkaatuun aanaalee walakkaan horsiifatee bultootaa tahan kan akka Qumbii, Mayyumuluqqee, Gola Odaa, Baabbile, Gursumiifi Cinaaksaniis beeyladaan isaani margaaf bishaan dhabaaf jalaa dhumaa kan jirtuufi ummanniis haala yaaddeessaa taheen beelaan xuruurfamaa jiraachuufi gargaarsi dhufu eessa akka gahu wanni beekan akka hin jirre odeeffannooleen garasii nu dhaqqabaa jiru ni hima.
(UN News Centre): With Ethiopia experiencing its worst drought in decades the United Nations is reporting deepening food insecurity and “severe emaciation and unusual livestock deaths” as the Organization’s humanitarian wing has allocated $17 million in emergency funding to help the Government tackle climate challenges and ensure timely food relief.
A recent report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that severe drought, driven by the El Niño phenomenon, has not only caused livestock deaths especially in pastoral areas, but it has also deteriorated food security conditions in recent months, as food insecure people have almost doubled from August to October this year.
While cereal prices dropped last month thanks to the carryover stocks from previous year, the report also indicated the soaring prices of dairy and vegetables, as a result of food inflation.
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) allocated $17 million last week from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), aiming to reach those in the areas hard-hit by the drought with immediate food assistance and relief.
“A timely response to the emergency is critical,” said Stephen O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, warning that “if we don’t act today, we face an even graver situation tomorrow, with more immense needs in 2016.”
This emergency funding will be provided to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), for supporting some 1.37 million Ethiopians with food, and providing specialized nutritional supplements to 164,000 malnourished women and children.
Some 8.2 million people currently need emergency food assistance – up almost 3 times compared to last year – and the number will likely double at the start of 2016, according to the Ethiopian Government.
The CERF pools donor contributions in a single fund so that money is available to start or continue urgent relief work anywhere in the world. Since its inception in 2006, 125 UN Member States and dozens of private-sector donors and regional Governments have contributed to the Fund. In 2015, CERF has allocated over $27 million to support humanitarian operations in Ethiopia.
Related:-
WHO warning over Ethiopia climate change risks
THE HEALTH BODY HAS SAID THAT CLIMATE CHANGE COULD WORSEN HEALTH PROBLEMS IN AFRICAN COUNTRY.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that climate change is threatening to exacerbate health problems in Ethiopia.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that climate change is threatening to exacerbate health problems in Ethiopia.
The WHO released details in its Climate and Health Country Profile 2015 on Tuesday (17 November 2015).
“Increased temperatures, intense heat waves, more extreme rainfall, floods and landslides, are expected to intensify existing challenges of communicable diseases, food insecurity and poverty unless timely action is taken,” according to a WHO statement.
Ethiopia’s country profile is one of the first 15 country reports the WHO is releasing.
“Ethiopia is vulnerable to many of the effects of climate change, including increases in average temperature and changes in precipitation. This threatens health, livelihoods and the progress that Ethiopia has made in recent years,” the WHO added.
The international body claims that by 2030, almost 250,000 people in Ethiopia will be at risk from annual river floods.
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said: “Our planet is losing its capacity to sustain human life in good health”. She called for “strong, flexible and resilient health systems” as a defense against the impact of climate change.
The EPRDF government officials are repeatedly denying the current famine that around fifteen million people are facing In Ethiopia. International media are busy reporting about the famine showing the pictures of emaciated children; the dead bodies of hundreds of animals and telling stories of mothers who lost their children due to starvation. It is funny to hear what the government officials say regarding the drought and famine that is causing the death of many people and animals. Some of the government officials are even accusing these media (BBC for example) that tried to showcase the extent of the problem to the world saying that they have sensationalized reports about the drought in Ethiopia.
The EPRDF leaders say Ethiopia is food self sufficient; needs no aid from outside. They say there is no problem, no famine, no drought and no death. Other time they say, there is drought in some parts of the country and it is under control. Still, they say, only very insignificant number of people (15 million people out of 90 million people) are affected by the drought. Oh, my God, how on earth they say that 15million people are very insignificant? These people are gone out of their mind; the life of a single person matters let alone the life of 15 million people.
Recently, we have learned that the government is building very modern houses with 154million birr for six retired EPRDF officials. What a paradox! People are dying because they have nothing to eat while the government is allocating all this money for building houses for its corrupt retired officials who have been amassing unimaginable wealth over the last two decades.
Why does this government likes denying the facts on the ground? Why is it they are hiding the famine? is it because it contradicts with their 11% economic growth for 10 consecutive years?Please, guys come to your sense, tell the world the truth about the scale of the problem; mobilize all the citizens and gather the resources needed to save the millions of people who are on the verge of death. At least for now, forget the politics and do the right thing-saving the lives of people should be given a priority.#Ethiopiafamine
Mohammed Jibril and his family in Mieso district West Hararghe Zone in Oromia region. Photograph: William Davison
On a bright afternoon in east Ethiopia, Mohammed Jibril’s family is passing around corncobs roasted over a fire. Bulky cows lounge on the other side of a shady tree, munching from a golden carpet of cereal.
It is a picturesque rural scene, complete with a forested mountain towering over the plains. Yet Jibril is worried and, when asked about this year’s crops from his three hectares of land, he is scathing. “What would I harvest?” he asks, gesticulating at his scrappy cornfield.
Due to a lack of rain, Jibril, 28, expects to collect only about 400kg of corn. Times were better a decade ago in the Mieso district of West Hararghe Zone, in Ethiopia’s Oromia region; back then, Jibril harvested up to 20 times that amount. Now most of his failed crop is only useful as fodder for his herd.
The story is the same across almost all of eastern Ethiopia, after a succession of supposed rainy seasons largely failed to materialise. The crisis has left 8.2 million of the country’s 96 million people in need of food aid – a number that could almost double in 2016as the effects of El Niño linger.
Jibril spent $100 (£65) renting a tractor this year; by his side is a Kalashnikov rifle worth more than $1,000. He is not among the poorest in Ethiopia, but he is worried about the immediate future. “If I don’t sell the cows they will run out of food and die before the next harvest,” he said. He has sold three this year, but at a steep discount as farmers all around him also offload livestock before the situation worsens.
As with the last dry spell, in 2011, Ethiopia’s government, with foreign assistance, looks likely to prevent the catastrophes of the past. In 1973, Emperor Haile Selassie’s neglect for the countryside led to the deaths of about 300,000 – and helped topple his regime a year later. A decade later, civil war during a socialist dictatorship led to famine when rains failed. Aid workers think the current development-focused administration, experienced at crisis management after almost 25 years in power, can cope. This month officials said the government has allocated $192m for relief efforts.
But the severity of the crisis raises questions about why Ethiopia still needs emergency aid and food imports given the nation’s agriculture-led economic growth and decades of development assistance from donors.
The government is commended by partners for its pro-poor budgeting, which means directing spending towards water, health, education, agriculture and infrastructure. With agriculture employing almost 80% of the workforce, improving farm productivity is key. The primary focus has been providing advice, seeds and fertiliser to smallholders. Over the past five years the government has also encouraged large-scale farming, which has not yet added significantly to food production. And in 2011, with assistance from donors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the government created the Agricultural Transformation Agency to boost yields and improve value chains.
Those efforts have led to agricultural growth that has averaged 6.6% a year since 2010, according to the finance ministry. What has not happened is the eradication of severe poverty and vulnerability. The UN Development Programmeconcluded this year that although Ethiopia’s poverty rate dropped from 39% in 2005 to 26% in 2013, the number of people in extreme poverty remained at roughly 25 million due to population growth.
Even if food surpluses were available from fertile areas in the highlands to the west, it is not clear they would reach those in the east. The government created a commodity exchange in 2008, again with donor support, that was supposed to modernise food markets. But seven years later, the bourse is still primarily a trading post for the country’s main exports, such as coffee and sesame. It has yet to change the way staple foods are distributed around the country.
According to the government’s bullish predictions, food surpluses should be available next year, and the economy will keep growing rapidly. During previous El Niño years, the economy shrunk by up to 5%. But the finance ministry says growth of approximately 10% – driven also by infrastructure spending and a construction boom – will not be affected this time because agriculture is now less dependent on rain, and the economy is less dependent on agriculture. The ministry’s data says 39% of gross domestic product now stems from farming, compared with 45% in 2010.
In areas like Mieso, the change is not evident. The ground under even the more arid stretches is believed to hold enough water to irrigate swaths of land, according to local experts, but the investment has not been made to harness it. After the east African food crisis in 2011, the talk was of building up the resilience of communities to drought, but achieving this will be tough, said an NGO head, who did not want to be named. “It’s really, really expensive to make boreholes, it’s really really, expensive to make irrigation. If we had unlimited funds it wouldn’t be a problem, but we don’t.”
Others blame tiny smallholdings and insecure land tenures as one of the key reasons that millions of Ethiopian farmers do not move beyond rain-dependent subsistence. The state owns all land in Ethiopia.
Whatever the underlying reasons, with the crisis running counter to the narrative of an ascendant African powerhouse leaving poverty behind, some aid agency members were concerned at official attempts to downplay the crisis.
“There is this huge competition for scarce emergency resources around the world, so you really have to push. But without a big push from the government – they’ve been saying two things at the same time, ‘Help us’, and ‘Everything’s fine’ – that mixed messaging sure does not help in getting the resources,” said another charity executive, speaking anonymously. Most foreigners working in Ethiopia for NGOs, embassies, or international organisations do not criticise Ethiopia’s government publicly due to concerns their work will be affected.
Ethiopian officials now seem to have changed their tone, with the prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, visiting affected areas and his government making a clear appeal for assistance in unison with the international community. A total of $340m is needed just for the rest of this year.
“The challenge we have before us is incredibly serious, and it will take the collective effort of the entire international community to support the government in preventing the worst effects of El Niño now and well into next year,” said John Aylieff, from the World Food Programme, earlier this month.
Just couple months ago, Western leaders and media outlets were fascinated with Ethiopia’s ‘miraculous’ economic growth. From Bill Gates to Obama and everyone else in between, they were convinced and tried to persuade others that Ethiopia has put that sad history of hunger behind itself and emerged as the fastest growing economy in Africa, if not the world.
Fast forward to these past few weeks, reports have begun giving back Ethiopia its old name- a starving country begging for urgent food aid. A month ago, the number of people needing aid were reported to be 4.5 million; now its 8.2 million and expected to reach 15 million by the end of this year. Two months ago when OMN first reported about the death of children from hunger in Western Hararghe, the regime dismissed the reports and suppressed the plea for emergency food aid. It has now been forced to admit the crisis and it is, as usual, asking the world for food aid to feed its hungry population. No amount of PR campaign or cooking the numbers to showcase double digit economic growth can hide the fact that Ethiopia is once again hit with famine.
Let’s ask the obvious question: why is Ethiopia hungry again? Within the Ethiopian discourse, four factors are often attributed as causing the recurring hunger. First, the government; not just the current but also past regimes, usually blame hunger on change in weather and climatic conditions for causing crop failure that results in food shortage. But how does an economy growing by double digits, whose agricultural sector apparently shows at least 9% annual growth for over a decade and produced ‘millions of millionaire farmers’, fail to produce enough surplus to feed few provinces hit with shortage of rainfall ?
The second theory attributes the problem hunger not on shortage of food but its weak circulation within the country. Popularized by Dr Eleni Gerbremedihin, this argument states that ‘market failure’ results in a situation where one province starves while another wastes food due to surplus production. So, Dr Eleni took her “idea whose time has come” to the World Bank and Meles Zenawi resulting with establishment of Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) in 2008. Launched with huge financial injection and massive public relation campaign, the project promised to make hunger history by ushering in a new system of market efficiency. As inspiring as Dr Eleni was, few of us remained skeptical from the get go. In response to her article promoting her project, I wrote a piece which argued that as long as the political market remains monopolized by one group, her ambition of creating an efficient and competitive exchange system is unlikely to be realized. I hate to say I told you so but 7 years later, ECX’s much anticipated revolution in agricultural market is not visible. Eleni herself has moved on ( quit or fired depending on who you ask). And hunger is back to being Ethiopia’s trademark. Genuine efforts to engineer market efficiency are either be rejected or sabotaged to serve the regime. If we take Dr Eleni’s project, the regime twisted and turned into a tool for further monopolizing the market. ECX enabled EFFORT owned companies to push out competitors and monopolize coffee export. A mechanism ( ECX ) that meant to open up the market to increase efficiency has turned out be a tool for control, corruption and monopolistic market practice.
The third argument blames hunger on the land tenure policy of the country. The argument goes that the source of food shortage in Ethiopia is farmers cultivating crop on small and fragmented plots of land using century old subsistent farming practices. Highly publicized during the 2005 election as key policy element of the CUD, this proposed solution advocates privatizing land ownership so that wealthy investors can help develop large plots of land using technologically advanced tools and inputs. This argument has already been put to test and failed to yield its intended result. Although land has not been officially privatized, domestic and foreign investors have been granted as much land as they request at dirt cheap price. Yet we are not witnessing the anticipated improvement in agricultural productivity and hunger remains a recurrent problem. Millions are starving even after over 3 million hectare of land has been leased out to the rich. Privatizing land while the political system is not competitive means, land would be transferred from millions of smallholders to few with connection to the ruling class. These few ‘investors’ are driven with profit maximizing incentives hence mostly produce for export, or hoard their product to limit circulation with the market to keep price high.
This leaves us with the fourth argument which asserts that lack of freedom is the real cause of hunger. This idea was developed by India’s Amartya Sen, who used Ethiopia as main example on a thesis that would net him Nobel Prize. Basically the argument affirms that hunger occurs only in dictatorship not in democracy. In democracy drought doesn’t necessarily lead to starvation as the media, civic society and elected officials preemptively publicize and exert pressure on the government to act early to ensure food supply. Let’s take Ethiopia and Kenya for instance. Their shared border provinces are inhabited by same people who mostly live nomadic life, and the climate condition is the same. Whenever drought hits Southern Ethiopia, it also hits Northern Kenya. But hunger in Ethiopia side of the border is a frequent phenomenon; Kenya rarely witnesses it. Hence, lack of democracy is the only argument of the four which has not been tested and still stands as plausible in Ethiopia. As long as the country is governed by authoritarian regimes, drought projection are unlikely to be acted up on, leaving farmers natural calamity whenever climate changes.
This current famine did not only bust the myth of Ethiopia’s economic miracle. It has also debunked the argument that the country could imitate the East Asian model of rapid economic growth while suppressing freedom. They can cook numbers, they could fool western diplomats and media outlets but, hunger has come back once again to unravel deception of the regime and illusion of its supporters. Poverty, and its worst form hunger, will remain the hallmark of Ethiopia until the people attain freedom and establish a government that depends on their consent rather its own gun and external aid.
The views expressed in this post (blog) are those of the author/authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OromianEconomist. Posting does not imply endorsement of views by the author/ authors.
“…UN now warning that without action some “15 million people will require food assistance” next year, more than inside war-torn Syria. ….Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while water supplies are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region.” Unicef
Millions hungry as Ethiopia drought bites
(Unicef, News24, October 22, 2015): The number of hungry Ethiopians needing food aid has risen sharply due to poor rains and the El Nino weather phenomenon with around 7.5 million people now in need, aid officials said on Friday.
That number has nearly doubled since August, when the United Nations said 4.5 million were in need – with the UN now warning that without action some “15 million people will require food assistance” next year, more than inside war-torn Syria.
“Without a robust response supported by the international community, there is a high probability of a significant food insecurity and nutrition disaster,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said in a report.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, warns over 300 000 children are severely malnourished.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which makes detailed technical assessments of hunger, predicted a harvest “well below average” in its latest report.
“Unusual livestock deaths continue to be reported,” FEWS NET said. “With smaller herds, few sellable livestock, and almost no income other than charcoal and firewood sales, households are unable to afford adequate quantities of food.”
Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, borders the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia, where some 855 000 people face need “life-saving assistance”, according to the UN, warning that 2.3 million more people there are “highly vulnerable”.
El Nino comes with a warming in sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, and can cause unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world and drought elsewhere.
Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while water supplies are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region.
Sensitive issue
Food insecurity is a sensitive issue in Ethiopia, hit by famine in 1984-85 after extreme drought.
Today, Ethiopia’s government would rather its reputation was its near-double-digit economic growth and huge infrastructure investment – making the country one of Africa’s top-performing economies and a magnet for foreign investment.
Still, nearly 20 million Ethiopians live below the $1.25 poverty line set by the World Bank, with the poorest some of the most vulnerable to weather challenges.
Ethiopia’s government has mobilised $33m in emergency aid, but the UN says it needs $237m.
Minster for Information Redwan Hussein told reporters at a recent press conference that Ethiopia is doing what it can.
“The support from donor agencies has not yet arrived in time to let us cope with the increasing number of the needy population,” he said.
Drought, food crisis and Famine in Ethiopia 2015: Children and adults are dying of lack of food, water and malnutrition. Animals are perishing of persisting drought. The worst Affected areas are: Eastern and Southern Oromia, Afar, Ogaden and Southern nations.
The tale of two countries (Obama’s/TPLF’s Ethiopia and Real Ethiopia): The Oromo (Children, Women and elders) are dying of genocidal mass killings and politically caused famine, but Obama has been told only rosy stories and shown rosy pictures.
By Tokkicha Abbaa Milkii, http://www.ayyaantuu.net/
“We are still surprised by the prevalence of draught-induced food shortages in Africa, 3,500 years after the Pharaohs worked out how to store grain.” (The dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Buend De Mesquita and Alastair Smith, p x-xi)
A recorded history shows that there was famine during the reign of Minilik. This famine was attributed to a plague called “ye Hidar Beshita” as their chroniclers put it. The story goes like this, “this plague killed people and their domestic animals like cows and oxen that caused a wide spread catastrophe and famine throughout the newly incorporated regions of the empire. The true story which the chroniclers did not want to mention was the plague broke out due to genocide committed in Oromia and the southern regions by Minilik army.
Somehow the plague killed millions of people and farm animals. Since the farm animals were extinct there were no means left to plow the land to grow crops. The chroniclers of the king’s history told us that the king ordered the skilled people to produce pickaxes to be distributed to the people to dig the land by hand in which the king himself participated in digging to prepare the land for growing crops. That was a “big technological innovation” discovered by Minilk to mitigate famine according to them.
This was narrated by his admirers to present Minilik as the innovative king who had concern for his people. For a shallow minded people it looks true. But Minilik who was an expert in amassing war technology like gun and ammunition from European countries to kill several millions of Oromos and the Southern Peoples had no sympathy to ask for medicine, food and farm technology aid from his war patrons.
If anybody think that this bloodthirsty monster had no knowledge how to get that aid is a fool. He had enough access and knowledge but did not want to save the subjects lives and introduce any sort of civilization into the newly incorporated regions.
To simply understand Minilik’s diplomatic ability and access to European countries it is enough to look at the next example. He amassed the next bulk of guns and ammunitions between 1968 and 1990 from four European countries with which he massacred millions of unarmed Oromos and the Southern Peoples.
Country guns ammunitions
1-England 15,000 5,000,000
2-France 500,000 20,000,000
3-Italy 50,000 10,000,000
4-Rusia 150,000 15,000,000 (Source Amharic book Written by Tabor Wamii titled “ye wugena Drsetochina yetarik Ewunetoch” p 499, translated from Amharic)
During Minilik’s reign a productive forces- all men capable of producing- from the north ( Habasha country) were forced to wage colonization war on the South (oromi’a, Sidama, wolayita,Somali, etc,) productive forces who resisted colonization. This process of war took more than two decades and during which all sort of production and progress was impeded. Therefore it is not a matter of wonder if famine and plague hit the people, because it was a man made famine and plague.
Take the case of Tewodros, he didn’t force the European missionary to produce improved farming tools. Instead he forced them to produce not even simple guns, but cannons. This shows that his appetite for mass destruction was overwhelming and clarified that Habasha rulers were and still are obsessed not with development and growth but with killing neighboring people to colonize and loot their wealth. This famine is inherent in this part of the world because the regimes were busy at war and looting the resource of the people rather than development and progress.
Out of thousands of Tewodros’s barbaric acts, to mention one of his anti-production deeds “Tewodros went to Karoda village. Karoda is known with its grain production and specially, in grape production. It was said that in Gonder one barrel of wine was sold with one bar of salt. Europeans said Karod wine was superior to European wine. He (Tewodros) ordered that grapes to be uprooted. Everybody who heard the King’s order uprooted his grapes. After that there was no wine in Ethiopia. Haleka Weldemariam wrote that, “Tewodros upon his arrival at Karoda ordered the people to be gathered at one place, 1700 people including children were gathered together. He packed all people in the houses at a maximum capacity and burnt them alive.” (Yewugena dirsetochina ye tarik Ewunetoch, by Tabor Wami, p416-417). Tewodros’s advocates try to convince us that he had a big vision for Ethiopia. I don’t understand how, the king who instead of rewarding those productive people at Karoda, burn them alive can be presented as visionary.
Tewodros never owned and resides in a palace and never settled in one place. He was called a king who lived in tent. He came to power through war, he waged war on different rival chiefs, brutally punished the people in the localities he found resistance. He committed genocide and brutal acts like mutilation of hands and legs, burning alive in mass, slain etc. wherever he set foot on. What makes Tewodros special is, even though he did the same crime on neighboring Wallo Oromos, his victims include Abisinyans. This does not mean that he had no hatred for other nations like Oromos, he had extreme rancor for Oromos and had a long intention to invade and evict them from their land. This evil intention was expressed in his letter written to Queen Victoria of England to ask for armaments to wipe out these Oromos whom he mentioned “pagans who occupied his father’s land”.
When we come to the modern era we find the Haile Selassie aristocratic and keliptocratic monarchy rule which the remnants of Naftenyas consider as nirvana. In actual fact it was as hell as the present time for the people who were expropriated their land and reduced to gabar, chisagna, slave, etc. This regime divided all the colonized peoples’ land among his invading army leaders who were changed to feudal land lords. This system of land ownership discouraged the farmers to produce in full capacity and famine was the day to day life style of the people. We can mention what famine meant to these rulers.
“Heart-wrenching images of starving children are a surefire way to stimulate aid donations. Since the technology to store grain has been known since the time of the pharaohs, we cannot help but wonder why the children of North Africa remain vulnerable to famine. A possible explanation lies in the observations of Ryszard Kapuscinski. Writing about the court of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, Kapuscinski describes its response to efforts by aid agencies to assist millions of Ethiopians affected by drought and famine in 1972.
Suddenly report came in that those overseas benefactors who had taken upon themselves the trouble of feeding our ever-insatiable people had rebelled and were suspending shipments because our Finance Minister, Mr.Yelma Deresa, wanting to enrich the Imperial treasury, had ordered the benefactors to pay high customs fees on the aid. “You want to help?” the Minister asked. “Please do, but you must pay.” And they said “What do you mean, pay? We give help! And we are supposed to pay?” “Yes, says the minister, “those are the regulations. Do you want to help in such a way that our Empire gains nothing by it?”
The antics of Ethiopian government should perhaps come as little surprise. Autocrats need money to pay their coalition. Haile Selassie, although temporarily displaced by Italy’s invasion in the 1930s, held the throne from 1930 until overcome by decrepitude in 1974. As a long term successful autocrat, Selassie knew not to put the needs of the people above the wants of his essential supporters. To continue with Kapuscinski’s description:
‘First of all, death from hunger had existed in our Empire for hundreds of years, an everyday, natural thing, and it never occurred to anyone to make any noise about it. Drought would come and the earth would dry up, the cattle would drop dead, the peasants would starve. Ordinary, in accordance with the laws of nature and the eternal order of things. Since this was eternal and normal, none of the dignitaries would dare to bother His Most Exalted Highness with the news that in such and such a province a given person had died of hunger……..So how were we to know that there was unusual hunger up north?’
Silassie fed his supporters first and himself second; the starving masses had to wait their turn, which might never come. His callous disregard for the suffering of the people is chilling, at least until you compare it to his successor. Mengistu Hail Mariam led the Derg military regime that followed Silassie’s reign. He carried out policies that exacerbated drought in the Northern Provinces of Tigry and Wollo in the mid1980s. With civil war raging in these provinces and a two year drought, he engaged in forced collectivization. Millions were forced into collective farms and hundreds of thousands forced out of the province entirely. Mass starvation resulted. Estimates of the death toll are between 300,000 and 1 million people. From the Derg’s perspective the famine seriously weakened the rebels, a good thing as Mengistu saw it. Many of us remember Live Aid, a series of records and concerts organized by Bob Geldof to raise disaster relief. Unfortunately, as well intentioned as these efforts were, much of the aid fell under the influence of the government. For instance, trucks meant for delivering aid were requisitioned to forcibly move people into collective farms all around the country. Perhaps 100,000 people died in these relocation.” (The Dictators Hand Book, by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and Alastair Smith, P162-163)
What I mentioned above is to refresh your memory a little bit. Even though corruption and kleptocracy were not started by Habasha rulers they were the first to introduce it to Africa. H/ Silassie started hording billions of Dollars in Swiss banks long before any African country got its independence. Therefore he is considered to be the first kleptocrat, the father and teacher of corruption in Africa.
We are still in the same vicious circle of corruption and kleptocratic rule. Instead of avoiding the barbaric acts of their fathers and forefathers todays Fascist rulers modernized and continued the same barbaric acts. Instead of burning alive, mutilation of hands and legs in public like Tewdros and Minilik, and instead of killing and throwing the dead body of their victims on the streets of cities like the military junta, today’s rulers do it behind doors, in known and un known detention camps, and prison centers like H/ Silassie deed. A hidden war is waged on the people in all colonized regions too.
Therefore it is not a matter of wander if peoples of this part of the world are starved in millions year after year. All Monarchs, Communist Military Junta leaders and The Fascist TPLF Dictators are on the same set of war against the colonized people, corruption and looting. In all of the mentioned criminal regimes government revenue was and is spent on bribing supporters and left open for corruption and on buying the loyalty of a few key cronies at the expense of general welfare. Yet these corrupt dictators make sure that the people cannot coordinate, rebel, and take control of the state and endeavor to keep those outside of their coalition poor, ignorant, and unorganized.
That is what TPLF fascists are doing today. Instead of mitigating poverty and hunger they loot all tax payers money, borrowed and aid money to reward their supportrs and buy weapons with the extra money to wage war on the colonized peoples like Oromo, sidama ,Ogadeenia, afar etc. who ask for their freedom. What is heart breaking most is on the very day they preached the self- sufficiency of the country in food supply and the idea was praised by US President, the International Agencies and medias started disclosing at least 4.5 million people are starved in a “Praised Ethiopia for its double digit economic growth”.
These Fascists behave like shy to tell the truth to the people of the country they rule about the famine looming on the people. On another hand they are courageous enough to exaggerate the damage to the donor countries to attract more relief funds. Once the aid fund is secured, it is simple for them to divert it into their private accounts, rather than being steered towards famine mitigation. Letting people die is good governance for them. This is the behavior of corrupt rulers.
I want to quote “We started this chapter with an account of Hail Silassie’s shakedown of donors. By now it should be clear that this practice is all too common, and reflects the logic of privately given aid. When private donors provide aid, governments must either strike deals with them so that the government gets its cut-that, after all, is the value of aid to a small coalition regime-or, in the absence of such deals, they must shakedown well-intentioned private donors. Either way, the government must get its piece of the action or it will make it impossible for donors to deliver assistance.”(The Dictator’s Handbook, p.186) This prevalence of master thieves among world leaders is shocking.
As the writer of this book clearly stated this practice is all too common to day and the corrupt TPLF leaders are an expert in channeling aid money to their foreign bank accounts. Their so called Civil Society’s Law was declared only to shakedown donors like their grandfather did half a century ago. So this process is a vicious circle which does not go away by itself. Nothing can stop this peril except liberating ourselves from the grip of these keliptocratic fascist dictators with our own struggle and sacrifice and build democratic and accountable governance.
The essay I am reproducing below is a reply to a comment made in my blog by OromianEconomist regarding the pictures and short essay on my blog (You can find them HERE.) in which I referred to the Ethiopian drought of the early 1970’s. This was his comment:
“The same is going on right now in Ethiopia. Authorities are either hiding the presence of famine or stealing the food aid.”
I wrote this initially short reply to the Oromian Economist’s comment on my blog, but then I seemed to just keep writing and writing until it turned into an essay of sorts. The facts are from memory and I realize I need to do some further research and I’d…
Ethiopia says it is managing crisis though UN says number in need has increased by more than 55 percent this year.
(Al Jazeera, 5th September 2015) – Around 4.5 million Ethiopians could be in need of food aid because of a drought in the country, the UN has said.
Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while pastures and water resources are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region, and northern Tigray and Amhara districts.
Reacting to the UN’s claims that the number in need had increased by more than 55% this year, Alemayew Berhanu, spokesperson for Ministry of Agriculture, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had “enough surplus food at emergency depots and we’re distributing it”.
“When we were informed about the problem, the federal government and the regional state authorities started an outreach programme for the affected people,” he said.
In August, the Ethiopian government said that it had allocated $35m to deal with the crisis that has been blamed on El Niño, a warm ocean current that develops between Indonesia and Peru. The UN says it needs $230m by the end of the year to attend to the crisis.
“The absence of rains means that the crops don’t grow, the grass doesn’t grow and people can’t feed their animals,” David Del Conte, UNOCHA’S chief in Ethiopia, said.
One farmer in the town of Zway told Al Jazeera that he was selling personal belongings to stay alive.
“There is nothing we can do. We don’t have enough crops to provide for our families. We are having to sell our cattle to buy food but the cattle are sick because they don’t have enough to eat,” Balcha, who has a family of nine, and grows corn and wheat, said.
El Niño
The onset of El Niño means the spatial distribution of rainfall from June to September has being very low. According to the UN children’s agency (Unicef), the El Niño weather pattern in 2015 is being seen as the strongest of the last 20 years.
Experts say it could be a major problem for the country’s economy, as agriculture generates about half of the country’s income.
Climate shocks are common in Ethiopia and often lead to poor or failed harvests which result in high levels of acute food insecurity.
Approximately 44% of children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia are severely chronically malnourished, or stunted, and nearly 28% are underweight, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Unicef says that about 264 515 children will require treatment for acute severe malnutrition in 2015 while 111 076 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition between January and May 2015
Ethiopia: Proportion of undernourished in total population in 2014-16: 32.0 %.
Number of people undernourished (millions):2014-16: 31.6 (millions)
Undernourishment means that a person is not able to acquire enough food to meet the daily minimum dietary energy requirements, over a period of one year. FAO defines hunger as being synonymous with chronic undernourishment.
The Cause of Ethiopia’s Recurrent Famine Is Not Drought, It Is Authoritarianism
Dawit Ayele Haylemariam, The Huffington Post, 24 August 2015 A concerned Citizen and Graduate Student of Political Science at University of Passau, Germany
Twenty years ago one Ethiopian Diaspora in Washington asked the late Prime minister Meles Zenawi what his vision for the country was. A rather polite and amiable Meles outlined his vision in a very human centered way. He said he hopes that in ten years every Ethiopian will have enough to eat three times a day and after 20 years Ethiopians will not only have enough food but they will also have the luxury of choosing what they eat.
Here we are now. Three years have passed since Meles died in office after 21 years in power. Once again Ethiopia’s food crisis is topping the headline. As seasonal rain fails in Eastern and Southern parts of the country, famine is threatening millions of Ethiopians. The UN estimates over 10 million are in need of emergency food aid.
Why is famine and hunger so common in Ethiopia?
Many experts relate Ethiopia’s cyclical famine with the country’s dependence on Rainfed smallholder agriculture, drought, rapid population growth or agricultural market dysfunctions. Although these factors do have significant role in the matter, they tend to hide the critical cause of hunger in the country – lack of rights and accountable government.
Nobel Prize winner and economist Amartya Sen has extensively analyzed the relationship between democracy and famine in his book Development as Freedom. Sen argues democracies don’t have famines, only authoritarian systems do. Famine tend to happen in places where the victims are oppressed by dictators.
A historical investigation of famine also identified 30 major famines during the 20th century. All happened in countries led by autocratic rule or that were under armed conflict, four being in Ethiopia.
Why does autocracy lead to famine? The most fundamental reason is that autocrats often don’t care enough about the population to prevent famine. Autocrats maintain power through force, not popular approval. This argument has been proven true in the case of Ethiopia.
During 1983-1985 the worst famine in the country’s history had led to more than 400,000 deaths. Extensive investigation by Alexander De Waal in his book Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia has found “more than half this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case.” The military government is not only spent between $100 and $200 million to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the revolution while millions were starving, Mengistu’s regime also attempted to impose customs duties on aid shipments.
Similarly during the 1973-1974 Wollo famine, attempts to hide the reality of the situation by the Imperial Feudal System caused 300,000 deaths. This particular famine was not a problem of food shortage in the country but lack of ability to access food. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture Report of 1972 stated that output for 1972-1973 was only 7% lower than the previous year. Also,food price in Wollo were no higher-often substantially lower-than elsewhere in the country. The problem was the poor just couldn’t afford to buy. Meanwhile, Emperor Haile Selassie spend some $35 million to celebrate his eightieth birthday in 1973.
Unfortunately the trend of autocratic-led hunger has not changed under the current government either, if anything Meles’s regime took it to the next level.
In 2004 Humanitarian Exchange Magazine exposed that disregarding experts advise that the situation in the country was very severe and does qualifies as a famine, the government of Ethiopia and USAID conspired to downplay the 2002-2004 food crisis as “localized famine” in fear of global media attention and political dangers for the EPRDF. The report states “the lack of classic famine images….facilitates further disengagement by the media and Western publics, even as large numbers of vulnerable people face destitution, malnutrition, morbidity and mortality.”
Again 2010 in a report titled Development without Freedom: How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia, Human Right Watch extensively documented how the EPRDF is using development aid to suppress political dissent by conditioning access to essential safety net programs on support for the ruling party.
Today, once again the danger of another catastrophic famine is looming large on the horizon. Ongoing drought worsened by the El Niño global weather phenomenon has already caused deaths of many cattle and have put as many as 14 million people at risk.
The government also argues the country has already realized food security at a national level, that is to say we have enough food in the country to feed everyone. The inherent flaw in this argument is that the presence of food in the country doesn’t necessarily mean those affected by drought will have access to it. As it was the case during the 1973 Wollo famine, when a crop fails it not only affects the food supply, it also destroys the employment and livelihood of farmers, denying them the ability to buy food from the market.
Reports have also shown that the government was informed of the risk of seasonal rain failure forecast as early as two months ago but it chose to keep it to itself. Had the government shared the information with the media and local governments to inform pastoralists to move their cattle near rivers or highlands, much of the animal loss would have been avoided and relief supports would have been delivered on time.
Democracy can effectively prevent famine
Why is the Ethiopia government acting so irresponsibly? The answer is simple – because there is no incentive for the government to work hard to avert famine. Amartya Sen argument related to absence of political incentives generated by election, multiparty politics and investigative journalism is also true in the case of Ethiopia.
The EPRDF led government has successfully wiped out all groups that might pose any form of threat to its power. Fresh from its 100% “election” victory, with very fragmented opposition parties, no civil society and no scope for uncensored public criticism, Hailemariam’s regime doesn’t have to suffer the political consequences of its failure to prevent famine.
If there were a democratic system to keep the government accountable, the state’s response would have been much different. For instance, Botswana, like Ethiopia, is prone to drought but a democracy since its independence in 1966, Botswana never had a famine. Botswana’s democratic government immediately deploys relief efforts during every drought, and even improves them from one drought to the next. Had the government in Botswana failed to undertake timely action, there would have been severe criticism and pressure from the opposition and maybe even bigger political cost in future elections. In contrast, the Ethiopian governments did not have to worry with those prospects.
Another Sen’s key argument is information flow and free press – democracy contributes greatly to bring out information that can have an enormous impact on policies for famine prevention. If it weren’t for the foreign media reporting and social media activists outcry, the government might have kept the current problem a secret for long and caused much greater damage than it already has. In Sen’s words “free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early warning system a country threatened by famine can have”
If aid organizations comprehensively and immediately deploy humanitarian assistance, the current crisis could be impelled with minimal damage. However, the argument that famine in Ethiopia is caused by drought doesn’t hold water anymore. Unless the problem is addressed from its roots, another famine is just a matter of time. For Ethiopia to truly achieve food security and avoid any dangers of famine in the future, nothing but building a democratic, transparent and accountable system is the solution.
In the midst of fastest growth hype and official statistical lies, Ethiopia has been plagued by high rocketed prices for basic goods, intensive and chronic shortages in all sectors of economy. This is the situation of TPLF ( fascist government and monopoly) controlled economy experiencing declining production (supply deficit) relative to citizens demand for basic necessities. In dealing with bureaucratic corruption that tinkers with distribution, citizens are experiencing long queue (disutility) in cities for basic goods for which very limited supply is available. They may be approved or disapproved to get access to the purchase by TPLF local cadres decisions. It has been reported that Ethiopia’s rural areas are in catastrophic famine. Widespread shortages, spiraling inflation and famine are fueling humanitarian crisis.
This is the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa (Finfinne) where the population of the early morning standing in long lines under the blazing sun (Sunday August 2015) for the purchase of sugar and oil. Cars, children, women, old and adult, all are in never ending line. Source: http://www.ayyaantuu.net/addis-ababa-this-is-eleven-percent-yearly-growth-in-ethiopia-endless-lines-for-sugar/
What are really the causes? Why? What went/goes wrong? What are the main reasons for continued famine in Ethiopia? Is it an act of nature, an act of man or God? Who is to be blamed?
A combination of long period political and economic instability has produced chronic famine in Ethiopia. We could recall the 1972/1973 and 1984/1985 starvation episodes that devoured hundred thousands of lives. Even this time millions of people are starved to death.
It is taken for granted that millions who are starving or threatened with starvation in Ethiopia to day are the victims of a drought caused by an unpredictable and unpreventable reduction of rainfall or natural disaster. In other words, drought or decrease in the annual rain fall is offered as an explanation for famine in Ethiopia. In reality, however, the famine we are witnessing in Ethiopia is not due exclusively drought or natural catastrophe as the Tigray based Ethiopian minority regime and some “researchers” would like us to believe. It is a good example of an inevitable result of bad government polices.
Drought, climate variation and other natural calamities (disasters) occur not only in Ethiopia, but in any part of the world. However, drought does not necessarily result in famine. Famine can be avoided if the government takes its responsibility. Therefore, there are good reasons to consider political instability and lack of democratic governance as significant factors.
Famine should be understood more broadly as a symptom of some thing the solution of which strongly demands a deep understanding of political and environmental systems of the country. In other words famine vulnerability has to be sought in human and natural elements.
Let me try to elaborate this with a very simple formula.
F = HN
Where: F = Famine; H = Human intervention; N = Natural interference
Human Intervention
Lack of political and economic instability:
The TPLF government expends enormous resource to fight against opposition forces
There is restricted freedom of assembly
There is restriction upon the press Thousands of able bodied men and
women including journalist and experts are in prison detained without charge
Misplaced political priorities
Many educated and experts are in exile to save their lives
Environmental degradation mainly as a result of bad managementPolitical crises are thus the centre of the famine problem. When there is politically induced insecurity, instability, repression, people will be affected by famine. When there is lack of freedom of association and lack of voice, there will follow restrictions on economic opportunities. Human right violations cause persecution, suffering and forced displacement of people.
Lack of democracy and peace are major obstacles which have the main effect on famine in Ethiopia. Under authoritarian rule, it is always difficult to fight famine and poverty. The TPLF minority government which is obviously on turmoil seems determined to conduct its campaign under the so called democracy which may as well target national groups to fight what it calls narrow nationalism and separatism.
It has been observed that famine do not occur in democratic countries with a relatively free press and active opposition parties because people have established mechanisms to compel governments to address their pressing needs. Moreover, famine in general and starvation in particular happen because of the failure of governments. Democratic governments are bound by social and political contract to respond to the need of their citizen. They know that failure of the contract on their part brings an end to their stay in power. Elections and the possibility of public criticism make the penalty of famine affect the rulers as well – not the starving people.
Therefore, the main roots of the famine crises in Ethiopia are related to political instability and economic uncertainties. Changes in these features are required on a real urgent base.
Misplaced political priorities can also easily lead to famine. For example, if high emphasis is given to the agricultural development sector and annual imputes into the rural sector are increased, Ethiopia can feed itself with out any problem. Serious studies indicate that only 20% of Ethiopia’s 65% suitable land is used for cultivation.
Natural interference
Drought, pest and disease are good examples of natural interference. Pest and disease are not reported to cause the famine in Ethiopia (at least the government did not claim). Drought by itself is the result of deforestation, soil erosion and biological soil deterioration. Drought triggers the famine crises, but does not cause it. It is to be recalled that calamitous forest fires raged across large areas of the country especially in Oromia region and destructed a vast area of forest. Such type of destruction of forests leads to lowering of soil moisture and suppress rail fall because much of the rain comes from water evaporated off forests/vegetations.
Drought is an environmental issue that has political and social dimensions. Of course, famine preconditions and drought /Environmental degradation are related. The reasoning becomes dangerous however, if we neglect other important agents of famine described above and focus only on drought. Though the Tigray minority regime has failed to address the cause of famine in Ethiopia, there are serious documents that prove that the famine is caused by human intervention rather than by natural catastrophe. Droughts may lower the agricultural production, however, it does not necessarily result in famine anywhere in the world
As the forest is destroyed, it holds less water and produces a drier local climate or drought. Therefore destroying forest reduces not only the amount of rain but also the moisture to evaporate or run off damaged soils. The problem is that the soil’s water-retaining capacity has been reduced by human interference with nature.
The most important thing is to understand that drought is not the direct cause of famine. Assume that drought in Ethiopia has resulted in low levels of production. Does this lead us to conclude that it results in famine? No! People do not starve in a drought related famine simply because there is low production or no food. Famine is influenced by working entire economy. It is very important to take an adequate view of the politico-economic processes that lead to famine in Ethiopia which continue to kill millions of people. What determines whether a person is starving is its food entitlement that is the amount of food he or she can obtain, own and use, not just the total availability of food in the country or region. I can give Ethiopia as an example. Throughout the famine 1984-1985, Ethiopia was a net exporter of food, Ethiopia still export food.
Given the deep-seated interdependences that influence economic and political deprivations and famine, a narrowly drought centred view would defeat the purpose finding practical ways of fighting famine in Ethiopia. Political-economic-peace-democracy and famine interdependences have to be adequately seized for the ultimate elimination of famine and starvation in Ethiopia.
Conclusion!
Catastrophe political and human crises are taking place in Ethiopia. Millions people are on the edge of death, Children, young and old are dying every day.
The famine we are witnessing to day is the inevitable result of bad government policies, lack of political and economic instability, lack of peace and democracy and misplaced political priorities. Therefore, it is important to take an adequately wide view of the political and economic processes that lead to famine which continue to kill millions of people and blight the lives of hundreds of millions
Any attempt to overcome the famine situation in Ethiopia must involve broad understanding of political, economics, humanitarian, social, environmental crises as well as decentralization of the TPLF power, resolution of the demands for the national self-determination, democratization and peace full transfer of power in the country. Read more at :- http://www.ayyaantuu.net/famine-in-ethiopia-the-act-of-man-or-nature/
Related:-
Drought, food crisis and Famine in Ethiopia 2015: Children and adults are dying of lack of food, water and malnutrition. Animals are perishing of persisting drought. The worst Affected areas are: Eastern and Southern Oromia, Afar, Ogaden and Southern nations. #Africa #Oromia
(Tesfa News) — It was with dismay that we read todayalarming reports that warn of catastrophicfood insufficiency in Ethiopia. The grim picture shows that Ethiopia will need an extra $230 million from donors to secure aid for4.5 million people this year alone. How come this is possible must be a very big mystery as Ethiopia is considered to be one of the fastest growing economies of Africa.
To be fair to Ethiopia, the nation has been badly hit by failed seasonal rains. On the other hand, the whole region is suffering from the same phenomenon as weather conditions and other such ‘Acts of God’ neither know nor distinguish between nations; weather neither recognizes nor respects territorial boundaries.
Is it then not about time that the question gets raised why Ethiopia is the only country in the region which is too busy spending its resources on building up military might to terrorize neighbours, occupy sovereign foreign territories and be a general menace both at home and around the neighbourhood while her own people are constantly faced by drought, hunger and famine.
It is exactly thirty years and twenty-five days ago since the artist Bob Geldoff organized the Live Aid concert which was watched by an estimated 1.5 billion worldwide, featuring 16 hours of live music and raising about £50 million on the day, and about £150 million in the decades since the event from merchandise sales. The event which was held live and simultaneously at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13, 1985 featured some of the biggest and most prominent artists of the day. This big charity event was to give aid to the starving millions of Africa as result of failing rains and droughts. Ethiopia was one of the major targets and beneficiary of that heroic effort.
At that time, Eritrea was illegally occupied by Ethiopia and was frenetically fighting for independence. Today, three decades later, Eritrea is a thriving independent nation. Eritrea is as badly hit by failing seasonal rains as Ethiopia, but these adverse effects of ill planning, ill management and poor governance making Ethiopia to go on begging spree year after year are a thing Eritrea left behind her the moment she won her independence.
So, what is Eritrea doing right and Ethiopia doing very wrong? President Obama has partly answered that question when he once said that what Africa needed was strong institutions and not strong men.
Do the Ethiopian leaders not read the holy scriptures? Even pharaoh had the common sense to plan when he dreamt about seven lean cattle devoured seven fat ones. Joseph deciphered the dream as a need to gather and save food during seven years of bounty to cater for seven years of drought and famine. The nation of Egypt thrived and survived those seven lean years without having to beg. Even ants save for a rainy day!
Eritrea is constantly yearning and working for sustainable peace between her and her giant neighbour. Ethiopia would have been more sensible to maintain a more peaceful and amicable co-existence with Eritrea and cooperate in the many sectors in which Eritrea has a proven track record of success such as agriculture despite failing seasonal rains.
UN says 4.5 million Ethiopians now in need of food aid after poor rains
Estimates of those requiring help have surged by 1.5m, and donors must urgently provide an extra $230m to meet their needs, say UN agencies
In Tyrannic fascist TPLF Ethiopia war, poverty and famine were not only in the past but also very true in this very moment, right now. It has spatial variations as rulers and time changes. In 1960’s and 1970’s (Hailse Sellasie Regime) Wollo and Afar regions were the mainly affected. As documented in Wikpedia:-
In 1973, a famine in Wollo killed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000, mostly of the marginalized Afar herders and Oromo tenant farmers, who suffered from the widespread confiscation of land by the wealthy classes and government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Despite attempts to suppress news of this famine, leaked reports contributed to the undermining of the government’s legitimacy and served as a rallying point for dissidents, who complained that the wealthy classes and the Ethiopian government had ignored both the famine and the people who had died.[12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia
In 1980’s Tigray was severely affected but not the only.
Five Ethiopian provinces—Gojjam, Eritrea, Hararghe, Tigray, and Wollo—all received record low rainfalls in the mid-1980s.[17] In the south, a separate and simultaneous cause was the government’s response to Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) insurgency. In 1984, President Mengistu Haile Mariam announced that 46% of the Ethiopian Gross National Product would be allocated to military spending, creating the largest standing army in sub-Saharan Africa; the allocation for health in the government budget fell from 6% in 1973–4 to 3% by 1990–1.[18]
Although a UN estimate of one million deaths is often quoted for the 1983–5 famine, this figure has been challenged by famine scholar Alex de Waal. In a major study, de Waal criticized the United Nations for being “remarkably cavalier” about the numbers of people who died, with the UN’s one-million figure having “absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever,” a fact which represents “a trivialization and dehumanization of human misery.”[19]
Nevertheless, the magnitude of the disaster has been well documented: in addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions were made destitute.[20] Media activity in the West, along with the size of the crisis, led to the Do They Know It’s Christmas? charity single and the July 1985 concert Live Aid, which elevated the international profile of the famine and helped secure international aid. In the early to mid-1980s there were famines in two distinct regions of the country, resulting in several studies of one famine that try to extrapolate to the other or less cautious writers referring to a single widespread famine. The famine in the southeast of the country was brought about by the Derg’s counterinsurgency efforts against the OLF. However, most media referring to “the Ethiopian famine” of the 1980s refers to the severe famine in 1983-5 centered on Tigray and northern Wollo, which further affected Eritrea, Begemder and northern Shewa.[21] Living standards had been declining in these government-held regions since 1977, a “direct consequence” of Derg agricultural policies.[22] A further major contributing factor to the famine were the Ethiopian government’s enforced resettlement programs, utilized as part of its counter-insurgency campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia
Since 1991 as rocky Tigray has been prospering through political favoritism, nepoltism and resource transfer from green Oromia and the south that have been subjected to underdevelopment, exploitation, land grabbing, evictions, genocidal mass killings and famine. It is not Ethiopia that has been growing fast and rising, it is rocky Tigray at the expenses of the suffering Oromia and the south. What the TPLF propaganda machine shows to the world is rosy pictures of its business empire that serves only the Tigray, genocidal cliques and new colonizer from the region. During the Obama visit, what the president was shown were Coffee ceremony in government office, Lucy’s skeleton, Fafa factory near Finfinnee, Ethiopian Air Line’s Boeing plane, Abyssinian women and their cultural dances and the Chinese built African Union building in Finfinnee.
Realities in Ethiopia that Obama have not seen:-
Systematic genocidal killings, mass eviction going on against Oromo people in Burrayyuu (Central Oromia, near Fifinnee) and in Bishoftuu (Central Oromia). Thousands have been become homeless and destitute as their homes have been destroyed by Agazi (TPLF) fascist forces that has targeted Oromo for land grabs in its genocidal (Addis Ababa) master plan:-
The following pictures are children, women and adults that has been exposed to famine in Eastern Oromia at the time Obama Africa/ Ethiopia visit. Thousands are exposed to famine and dying but help is reaching them. The pictures are on social media. The main stream media, TPLF and Obama are in Ethiopia’s fast growth hype, democratically elected government and war on terror. No one of them are talking war on politically caused famine.
Suuraaleen armaan gadii kun daa’imman dabalatee namoon kumaatamaan lakaawamani Godina Hargee Lixaa keessatti beelaaf saaxilaman jirachuu kan mul’isu dha. Ogeessonni fayyaa balaa beelaa hammaataa jiru kana dormannoof yoo waywaatanis haga ammaa dhageetti hin arganne. Gargaarsa tokko illee argachaa hin jiran.
Dhumaatii beelaan uummattoota naannoo roobni hin geenye irra gahaa jiru daa’immaan, haadholii fi horiiwwan yeroo itti wal faana dhumaatii sukkanneessaa irra jiranitti mootummaan Wayyaanee ofii cooma muree guddina biyyaa odeessaa jira.Kan baayee nama gaddisiisu keesssaa naannowwan kun beelli itti hammaatetti nyaataan mootummaan keenya isaan deggeraa jira jechunis miillii fi harki wayyaanee kan taate jaleen OPDO’n miidiyaa irraan oduu sobaa lafa naqaa jirti kan seenan lubbuu kumaan lakkawamaa jiru gaafatullee sobuudhaan uummata beelaan dhumaa jirutti qoosan. Yeroo biyyaaf boo’ichaa wayyaanee fi jala kaattuu sheef garaa guuttachuun nyaattee uummatatti dhaadatti. Kanumaanuu kan walq abate gaaffiii uummanni Baalee aanaalee garagaraa irratti mootummaan maaliif soba gargaarsi godhame nama dhuunfaa irraa kan hafe hin agine kan warra beela’aniif kan jedhanii wayyaanee soba ishee saaxilan yeroo kana gara siyaasatti harkifamanii qabamaa kan jiran jiru. Akkasuma sadaasa 25/2015 yuuniversirii Madda walaabutti barattotni gaaffii kaasan uummata keenya obbolaa keenya beelaan dhumaniif gaddina jedhuu fi akaksuma barattootni moora yuuniversitichaa mootummaa wayyaanee balaaleffatan.
OromianEconomist 
“The same is going on right now in Ethiopia. Authorities are either hiding the presence of famine or stealing the food aid.”
He included the below link to an article written about the current drought which I suggest you read. https://oromianeconomist.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/the-cause-of-ethiopias-recurrent-famine-is-not-drought-it-is-authoritarianism/ My comments follow below.
Leaves in a Dry Wind