DanChurchAid
Ethiopia
Good harvest in Ethiopia
85 per cent of Ethiopia’s 77 million population live in the rural areas and are depending on small-scale farming to get food. Many ordinary families have only a plot of land of 0.5 hectare or less – and many have lost their land or live as daily labourers.
Approx. 7.5 million people are only food secure for part of the year – six to eight months a year – and they are registered in the government’s so-called safety net and will receive food parcels to keep them alive during the lean months. The good harvest this year does not change that: these families need food aid again this year – and every single year – in order to survive.
Extraordinary climatic conditions
But in addition to the families on the safety net, hundreds of thousands or even millions are affected by extraordinary climatic conditions. Last year, millions of people in Ethiopia (and in other countries on Horn of Africa) were affected by drought, while 700,000 people were hit by heavy floods.
In a really bad year, between five and ten million people may need food aid. When adding all these numbers, the number of people on the safety net may reach 12-13 million – that was the situation in 2003.
The good harvest this year means that this last figure will be considerably lower than in many previous years. The government estimates that only 1.4 million people may need extraordinary food aid. The majority of them are nomads and live in the dry Somali Region – the Ogaden Desert. They are affected both by the climate and by the political situation.
The population in the eastern part of Ethiopia are ethnic Somalians, and they were never a top priority of the Ethiopian government. The government has its support in northern Ethiopia – Tigray Region – and there is a historical conflict of interests between the Amhari speaking Tigray people and the Somalians. The situation has hardly improved after the Ethiopian army deployed troops in neighbouring Somalia a couple of months ago.
Looking forward to a year without starvation
In other parts of Ethiopia the population may look forward to a year without starvation – a year when i twill be possible to rebuild some of reserves lost the previous year. When there is food shortage one year, the consequences can be seen the following years: poor families had to sell their belongings and maybe even eat the seeds. The children no longer go to school but have to work, and maybe the husband has travelled to the city to find work. Thus, foot shortage leads to shortage in many other areas, and it may take years to recover.
DanChurchAid and other organisations working in Ethiopia take the opportunity to use the good year to prepare for the next years. The rains came on time this year, but may fail next year. Our task is therefore to make the Ethiopian farmers less depending on the climate by securing other income from other activities and access to markets where they can buy cereal when the harvest fails.
By Lars Jørgensen, Country Coordinator, Great Lakes/Horn of Africa, ljn@dca.dk
Ethiopia
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