In Ethiopia, the worst El Niño event in more than a decade has caused major drought and floods, leaving more people in need of humanitarian aid than ever before. At the recent World Humanitarian Summit, the Ethiopian government highlighted that it is determined to take action.
When he knew that the El Niño drought was going to hit, Mohammed, a pastoralist in Ethiopia’s Somali region, sold all of his cattle and bought seed and irrigation pumps. Knowing that the drought would probably kill all his livestock, leaving him destitute or worse, he rented land and planted vegetables, using river water to irrigate. Despite the drought, the crops did well, leaving him anticipating a bumper harvest. But two weeks ago flash floods washed everything away. Now he has no choice but to rely on humanitarian assistance.
Mohammed’s story is not unique. Across the country, a combination of withering drought and major flash floods has left more than 10 million people in need of help. This figure may still rise.
It’s a huge headache for the government and the humanitarian agencies it works with. Ten million people translates into hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food aid, and with only one port in neighbouring Djibouti, there are legitimate fears it may not all get through in time.
One thing is different this time though; the way the government is handling things. Ethiopia is the largest donor to the humanitarian appeal, using money it saved from an unexpected drop in the global oil price. It has bought more than 300,000 metric tonnes of food, more than twice as much as the largest international donor, the USA. This is not all.
For several years, the Ethiopian government, supported by the World Bank, the World Food Programme (WFP), the United States and the United Kingdom, has been putting a safety net in place. Some eight million people who are in the most extreme poverty and are at risk when things get bad are given food or cash for six months of the year. With the help of Unicef, the government has also been expanding its nutritional care, aiming to have basic nutritional help in every village across the country where children might be malnourished.
These measures have given the country a fighting chance of bucking its terrible history. Ethiopia has seen dramatic economic growth in recent years, consistently recording GDP growth figures among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The safety net and nutrition efforts helped the government to fight off food insecurity during the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa, but this year El Niño is much worse.
Since October of last year, when the magnitude of the drought became clear, a massive relief operation has swung into action. Affected areas are predominantly in the east, spanning crop dependent highlands and livestock rearing lowlands. Rain failures meant crops didn’t grow, and the lack of pasture meant animals became weak. As always happens, when many herders tried to sell livestock at the same time, the price dropped. As food became scarce, the price rose.
In the middle of the gap between what people have and what they need – now estimated by the WFP to be as high as 75% for some – is the food aid operation. The significance of the government of Ethiopia being the main funder and distributor of food aid (using technical help from the international agencies) cannot be overstated. Pioneers of safety nets in sub-Saharan Africa, the Ethiopians may now also be the first to implement the World Humanitarian Summit’s rhetoric of local solutions.
This is not to gloss over some of the things that could have been done better. With the failure of the first rains over a year ago, the relief operation could certainly have started faster. Early action would have saved money and avoided much of the logistical bottleneck. Many also think that the government could go further – funding more of the relief operation and allowing NGOs to do more to help technically. Where capacity is added to the government’s system things go faster and often work better.
And it is not a done deal. The scale of the crisis would overwhelm the most organised government, and it is a race against time to get the food to where it is needed, especially now that flooding is making access more challenging. For Mohammed’s vegetables it may be too late, but if the Ethiopian government and its partners have anything to do with it, it won’t be for his children.
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