Ethiopia seeks urgent food aid for 6 million

AFP/File – A crowd of Ethiopians line up outside an outpatient medical center run by Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) …

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer – Thu Oct 22, 1:22 pm ET

NAIROBI, Kenya – Ethiopia said Thursday it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people, an appeal that comes 25 years after a devastating famine compounded by communist policies killed 1 million and prompted one of the largest charity campaigns in history.

The crisis stems from a prolonged drought that has hit much of theHorn of Africa, including Kenya and Somalia.

Drought is especially disastrous in Ethiopia because more than 80 percent of people live off the land. Agriculture drives the economy, accounting for half of all domestic production and most exports.

Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia's state minister for agriculture and rural development, appealed to donors Thursday for more than $121 million. In January, he had said that 4.9 million of Ethiopia's 85 million people needed emergency food aid.

Ethiopia has long struggled with cyclical droughts, which are compounded by the country's dependence on rain-fed agriculture and archaic farming practices.

In 1984, Ethiopia's famine drew international attention as news reports showed emaciated children and adults with limbs as thin as sticks. The crisis launched one of the biggest global charity campaigns in history, including the concert Live Aid.

This year's drought appears to be slightly less severe than the one last year, which was exacerbated by high food prices. A year ago, Mitiku appealed for aid to feed 6.4 million people affected by drought. Many humanitarian groups have said in recent years that they believe the number of people affected by hunger is higher than government estimates.

Because of Ethiopia's large size and poor infrastructure, independent observers have difficulty collecting data. The worst-affected areas in the country's east are the site of a fierce insurgency and are off-limits to journalists. Aid groups say their movements in these areas are limited by military restrictions.

Nick Martlew, an official with the aid group Oxfam in Ethiopia, said the country's east should be green and healthy now, but that crops are wilting in the sun and won't produce a sufficient amount of food.

"Really until June next year there is going to be insufficient food around," he said. "Where we are in eastern Ethiopia you can look out and it's completely barren as far as the eye can see."

Drought and water shortages are also increasing in Ethiopia's south because of a changing climate, Martlew said. Oxfam is helping villages collect rain water for long-term use.

In a report marking 25 years since Ethiopia's famine, Oxfam said countries must focus on preparing communities to prevent and deal with drought and other disasters before they strike, rather than relying on importing aid.

According to the U.N., nearly two-thirds of Africa's agricultural land has been degraded by erosion and misused pesticides. In Ethiopia, where bad farming practices have led to massive erosion, 85 percent of land is damaged.

"The current humanitarian situation underlines our belief that while food aid — much of it donated by foreign donors — is important and can save lives, we need greater funding for longer-term solutions, which can begin to tackle the underlying causes that make people so vulnerable to disasters," said Oxfam's Ethiopia country director, Waleed Rauf.

In eastern Ethiopia's Hararge zone, the scene of some of the worst hunger and drought-related suffering last year, health official Aliye Youya said few infants had come in to the main feeding center for treatment. A new initiative by the Ethiopian government to put health workers in every neighborhood has helped, he said.

But he said he was still concerned about the lack of rain in some areas.

"(A month ago) there was no rain, especially in the lowland areas," he said. "But nowadays there is some rain. The drought is affecting the lowland areas."

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Associated Press writer Anita Powell in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091022/ap_on_bi_ge/af_ethiopia_drought_6

Ethiopia demands food aid

Ethiopia demands food aid for 6.2 million

AFP/File – A malnourished boy in southern Ethiopia. Twenty-five years after Ethiopia's famine killed a million …

by Aaron Maasho – Thu Oct 22, 9:44 am ET

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) – Twenty-five years after Ethiopia's famine killed a million people and spurred a massive global aid effort, the government appealed on Thursday for help for more than six million facing starvation.

State Minister for Agriculture Mitiku Kassa said the drought-stricken country needed 159,000 tonnes of food aid worth 121 million dollars between now and year's end for 6.2 million people.

He said nearly 80,000 children under five were suffering from acute malnutrition and that nine million dollars were required for moderatelymalnourished children and women.

"Since... January, the country continues to face several humanitarian challenges in food and livelihood security, health, nutrition, and in water and sanitation," Mitiku told donors.

In a report to mark the 25th anniversary since the 1984 famine, Oxfam called for a change of strategy towards human suffering in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country after Nigeria.

It urged donors to focus on helping communities devise ways of preparing and dealing with disasters, such as building dams to collect rain water to be used during dry seasons rather than sending emergency relief.

Ethiopia adopted a controversial aid law early this year, under which any local group drawing more than 10 percent of its funding from abroad would be classified as foreign and subjected to tight government control.

Oxfam said lessons still had to be learned from the 1984 crisis and bemoaned that long-term strategies receive less than one percent of international aid.

"Sending food aid does save lives, (but) the dominance of this approach fails to offer long-term solutions which would break these cyclical and chronic crises," said the report: "Band Aids and Beyond."

"We cannot make the rains come, but there is much more that we can do to break the cycle of drought-driven disaster in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," Oxfam director Penny Laurence said.

"Food aid offers temporary relief and has kept people alive in countless situations, but does not tackle the underlying causes that continue to make people vulnerable to disaster year-after-year."

Of the 3.2 billion dollars of US aid to Ethiopia since 1991, 94 percent is food which is delivered there rather than grown locally or imported from the region, said the aid group.

However, some Ethiopian regions have learnt from the adversity of the 1984 drought and the palliative effects of emergency food aid and turned to modern agriculture for sustenance.

"It was horrible. There was nothing I could do to save some of my dying neighbours," recalls 55-year-old farmer Tayto Mesfin in Abay village, some 800 kilometres (500 miles) north of the capital Addis Ababa.

"There is nothing worse than food aid, it is never sustainable," said Tayto, standing at the gate of an expansive wheat farm. "If the right methods are practised, food shortages can be overcome."

Abay residents have built silos and farmers have been provided with drought-resistant seeds as well as training with the help of Oxfam.

"Drought does not need to mean hunger and destitution," said Lawrence. "If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them."

Although none of Ethiopia's six national droughts since 1984 have been as devastating, aid groups say the grim prospects of food shortages will linger for years to come due to climate change.

Average temperatures in Ethiopia are predicted to rise by 3.9 degrees Celsius by 2080, Oxfam said, making drought "the norm, hitting the region in up to three in every four years in the next 25 years."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091022/wl_africa_afp/ethiopiadroughtaid_20091022134640