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International aid groups reluctant to use the "F"-word (famine) in Ethiopia

Story and Photo by Raymond Thibodeaux

The women and children of Dere Kiltu, Ethiopia—once a prosperous farming village, now stricken by drought.

In Dere Kiltu, Ethiopia, this year's drought turned this once-lush farming town into a bleak, Dust Bowl-era hinterland. For most villagers, food stashes from last year's harvest are almost gone, and their once-a-day meals are getting more meager—a pinch of bread, some beans, if that. Hamad Ibriham, a 75-year-old farmer, has already lost his two oxen to the drought, and now he fears for his two youngest granddaughters Hajo, 3, and Sera, 2, their bellies already bloated by hunger.

"There's nothing left for them to eat," said Ibriham, who, like many farmers in this village about 50 miles south of the capital of Addis Ababa, once prided himself on being able to feed his family. Now, he must depend on donations from relatives or handouts from aid agencies.

"There have been problems before, but it's never been this bad," he said.

Still, about 60 men in this town—nearly all the able-bodied adult males—have traded their plows for shovels and wheelbarrows to do the only job in town: digging a 50-foot hole to hold rainwater and runoff.

It's part of a $9 million federal program to build more than 70,000 ponds to support farmers and their livestock, the most ambitious agricultural undertaking in Ethiopia's history and a major step toward stopping the country's cycle of famine.

But funds earmarked for long-term agricultural projects like the one in Dere Kiltu are being redirected to buy grain and medicine for the more than 11 million Ethiopians (roughly one-sixth of the population) who face food shortages due to the drought.

According to the United Nation's World Food Program (WFP), about 5 million Ethiopians will die without emergency food aid. Ethiopia's President Meles Zenawi said the looming crisis could dwarf the 1984 famine, in which nearly one million people died of starvation.

Less than a half-hour drive from Ibriham's ruined farm, a convoy of white sport utility vehicles pulls into the Safari Hotel for lunch, a buffet of barbecued beef, wine-stewed chicken, salad, wine, beer and iced tea. The convoy includes WFP director James Morris and Andrew Natsios, chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development (US AID), the foreign aid arm of the American government.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Twice the size of Texas, its infrastructure is virtually non-existent—it has few paved roads, most people have no access to electricity or treated water, and the country's one rail line links Addis Ababa and Djibouti, which provides Ethiopia's only viable access to sea lanes.

Drought and hunger are near constants in Ethiopia, in which 85 percent of its population of 67 million are subsistence farmers.

But even with such a dire food crisis threatening many regions of Ethiopia, grocery stores and kiosks on the dusty streets of Addis Ababa and nearby cities like Nazareth, about 10 miles from Ibriham's ruined farm, are well stocked with fruits, vegetables and meat.

The area's drought hasn't significantly affected the hotels along Nazareth's main street, where guests can still take long, hot showers.

Ethiopia still exports vegetables and grains to neighboring Djibouti, leaving some to criticize profit-chasing in the midst of a large-scale food shortage which teeters on the edge of famine for millions of Ethiopians. With more than half of Ethiopians living on less than $1 a day, most people here can't afford the fresh watermelons and cuts of meat flaunted in store windows.

That's something that the Ethiopian government and the international banking community want to fix. International lenders, including officials from the World Bank, were in Addis Ababa in February, partly to discuss getting Ethiopia back on its feet through development loans, land reforms, loosening trade restrictions, and debt relief.

The lack of rainfall is only partly to blame for Ethiopia's chronic food shortages. Wars, rampant population growth (the country's population doubled in the last 30 years), outdated farming methods, and dubious land-use policies also contribute to Ethiopia's cycle of food insecurity and famine. And with periods of drought becoming more frequent in this country, aid agencies and Ethiopians themselves are pushing for long-term solutions, requiring more development aid—rather than emergency food aid—to end the country's food woes.

"We don't want to keep going to the world with an empty basket," said Tesfaye Getachew, a director for Ethiopia's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission. "We want to produce our own food, but we need infrastructure and agricultural technology. We don't always want to be a burden to taxpayers in the Western world."

The emphasis is on building Ethiopia's infrastructure—roads, irrigation systems, schools and health centers—money for development accounts for less than a sixth of the international aid coming into Ethiopia, say international relief workers.

This year, Washington allocated $200 million in emergency food aid to Ethiopia, but only $4 million for agricultural projects. Congress considered giving Ethiopia $75 million in development funds, but the proposal was quietly shelved.

"The time to make reforms is now to avoid the cycle, which is getting worse and worse, said Natsios. "Development aid is not a sexy thing. It's never taken off. But if you don't invest in agriculture, how can you avoid famine in the future?" Jeffrey Katz, the World Bank's regional manager for Africa, is encouraged by Zenawi's quick handling of the current crisis, which also won praise from the international aid organizations.

"Ethiopia has the hallmarks of the early stages of success," Katz said. "They have a strong and experienced leadership here. They have real strength in natural and cultural resources. The pieces are there, but they have enormous challenges."

Despite being Africa's largest coffee exporter, Ethiopia has been crippled by a five-year slump in the price of coffee, its chief export and the source of 60 percent of its export income. In the last three years, Ethiopia—historically considered the birthplace of coffee—has lost more than $200 million in export revenue from the 40 percent drop in world coffee market. Such drops directly affect coffee bean producers, who comprise nearly a quarter of the country's population.

According to aid workers, some Ethiopian coffee farmers have turned to growing khat, a leafy, drought-resistant plant with amphetamine-like effects. Khat is banned in the U.S. as a narcotic, but is legal and popular in many southern and east African countries. As Ethiopia's fourth-largest export earner, khat is major source of income for the government. International aid groups also are coordinating the construction of irrigation systems and man-made lakes across the country, such as the project in Dere Kiltu.

"People think we need big dams and big irrigation systems, but the idea here is individuals with a few hundred dollars. We need water harvesting at the household level," said Belay Ejigu, Ethiopia's acting agriculture minister. In the past, international aid to Ethiopia dried up as examples surfaced of government mismanagement of food and humanitarian aid.

Western news agencies reported that Ethiopia's government, led by Haile Mariam Mengistu, spent an estimated $100 million in 1984 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the overthrow of inveterate Emperor Haile Selassie, even as images of thousands of starving children flashed on television screens around the world.

Ethiopia's Mengistu regime cut ties to the United States, by far the country's largest food donor, to ally itself with the Soviet Union, its main arms supplier. The shift in allegiance led the Reagan admin-istration to limit its humanitarian support to Ethiopia during the 1984 famine.

More recently, Eritrea's fight for independence from Ethiopia has hampered efforts to combat chronic food shortages.

Further souring relief groups to Ethiopia's pleas for food aid was its spending of more than $1 million per day on weapons, the same amount it was asking foreign aid agencies and governments to donate. Several economics experts blame Ethiopia's food shortages on the country's land-tenure system, a remnant from its Marxist period during the 1970s and 80s. The economic reforms suggested by World Bank officials put pressure on Zenawi to take on the hugely unpopular task of reform.

Under the current system, farmers essentially rent land from the government, which often sets the price on their crops and collects taxes based on the value of the crops they produce. Critics of the systems say farmers are reluctant to develop land they don't own, or grow crops at below-market prices.

But the land-tenure system and all the talk about long-term developmental aid sounds far-fetched for those suffering the pangs of hunger, such as Tuma Zany, a 50-year-old widow.

"Every home here is empty," said Zany, who lives near Balqaahar, once the bread-basket of the Ethiopia's central Arsi region. "Before, I ate three times a day, bought dresses and clothes, and went to the health clinic. Now, I am skinny and everything is dark for me."

Ray Thibodeaux, a former editor for the Takoma Voice, is a Nairobi-based free-lancer for the Boston Globe and Newsday. His email is raythibodeaux@yahoo.com.