Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
Ethiopia’s Gain Against Poverty
Amen Teferi
Last year, facing its worst drought in half a century, Ethiopia successfully thwarted the disaster and created a road map to respond to future climate emergencies. Again now it is admirably trying to avert the looming catastrophe of the draught that is endangering the lives of millions in the pastorals areas.
Ethiopia has confronted droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and political upheaval with staunch optimism and resilient nerves. The trials of the job have helped Ethiopia to develop confidence in managing risk and disasters. The economic development program has turned the country into one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, with levels of GDP growth over the last decade at 10% per annum– without the oil or mineral wealth that have largely powered growth in other parts of the continent.
This has helped it to absorb the harshest hit of drought that had crippled the country’s agricultural lowlands. Now Ethiopia has the capacity to support millions who need emergency food rations -sacks of wheat, corn, and teff, a grain staple; crates of beans and peas; and jugs of vegetable oil.
Remember when rain hadn’t come in for almost a year, leaving rivers empty and groundwater overdrawn, the country had face serious difficulties. Then, when acute malnutrition among babies, children, and mothers was on the rise, a team at Ethiopia’s commission for disaster and risk management was calculating figures and the number of people needing emergency food. People needing emergency food aid had skyrocketed in the span of two months from 8.2 million to 10.2 million people prompting the government to ask international community for humanitarian aid.
This figure does not include the chronically food-insecure Ethiopians who’d been receiving aid when conditions were stable. Then, Ethiopia was feeding more than 18 million people—nearly a fifth of the country’s population. The logistics of rapidly disseminating so much aid was as mind-numbing as the challenge of paying for it was. But Ethiopia was up to these tasks. There was no funding and supplying void in the emergency aid.
This unprecedented response has in fact stunned its aid partners as they see that Ethiopia becomes the lead investor in its own survival. After more than a decade of strong economic growth, the government was able to divert huge flows of domestic revenue into the drought response and it is doing the same in averting the current drought that has now affected the pastoral areas.
The result has been perhaps the largest drought-relief effort, with the fewest human fatalities relative to the scale of the crisis that the world has ever seen. And it is referred as model for other southern African nations who may wish to look to Ethiopia “for a blueprint in building resilience against the climate pressures ahead.”
Though the scale of the crisis is huge that the broadly televised, drought-fueled famine of 1984, which killed more than 700,000 people and left millions destitute, Ethiopia now has insulated itself from the tragedy that has devastated it 33 years ago. The draught that has struck regions of the country that is dryer (and with effects of climate change is becoming more vulnerable than before) has now put millions at risk and the government is making great effort to control the effect.
Ethiopia has dealt with multiple droughts since 1984, including severe ones in 2000 and 2011. The first major initiative was to significantly expand the country’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), a preventive initiative designed to coordinate the monthly distribution of food rations to people chronically at risk. In return, recipients provide labor to build roads, schools, health posts, food storage warehouses, and water reservoirs. The PSNP also includes regular assessments of damage to farms and of the scope and urgency of nutritional needs, data that helps warn of potential crises.
90 percent of the country’s farmland is rain-fed. The onset of the 2015 drought, hot and dry weather patterns arising from the El Niño weather effect left vast areas of the country without rain. Therefore, farm production in the affected regions dropped as much as 90 percent.
Recently, the people living in the pastoral areas were suffering from particularly severe water scarcity and the government managed to deliver drinking water around the clock there. The south-eastern region of the country, home to almost three-quarters of the country’s livestock, was in need of water and fodder-supply and the government has successfully responded.
These efforts were supplemented by food distribution program that is benefiting students in elementary schools, which is helping to significantly reduce the dropout rates in drought affected areas. The school feeding program is offering vitamin-fortified cereals at lunch with a selection of vegetables, fruit, grains, and milk—meals with more nutritional diversity than many children could get at home.
Now Ethiopia is largely focusing on grass-roots, sustainable resilience programs that offer countries like Ethiopia the best hope for surviving future crises. While it is aggressively continuing with its relief effort, it is also working on long term programs to forestall the next crisis. Soil and water conservation, fodder programs, irrigation and well development, improving productivity of ranch land for cattle, seed supply—all that are necessary to make it drought resistant nation. This exemplifies Ethiopia’s huge gain against poverty.
