By Isaac Ugbabe

Echoing the Ethiopian government’s recent call for food aid, British diplomat, Paddy Ashdown, has requested the international community’s urgent assistance in preventing a looming humanitarian crisis. Reuters reports that 160,000 tons of food are required if the devastating effects of poor rainfall are to be avoided. According to the Economist magazine, this year has seen the worst drought in East Africa since possibly 1991. Production of Kenya’s staple crop, maize, is expected to fall by a third, with subsistence farmers suffering the most. In several parts of the country, villagers are already dependent on monthly government rations of maize-meal and cooking oil. Somalia, faced with attrition from an escalating civil war, is now also considering the daunting prospect of supplying emergency food supplies to about 3.6 million hungry people. Yet, it is Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, that is most susceptible to climate change, and, confronting the specter of famine, will have to ask itself why it is once again in this perilous situation. Paddy Ashdown, speaking to Reuters about the possibility of 6.2 million Ethiopians starving to death, said, “We can prevent this situation getting to much worse proportions.”

Although the government’s appeal for aid coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of over 1million Ethiopians, Ashdown claims such a doomsday scenario is less likely in the twenty-first century. “A number of factors are not in place that were in place then. There was a civil war, we didn’t have the institutions we have now to deal with problems, and we reacted late.” Although agriculture remains the mainstay of Ethiopia’s economy, and most farmers continue to employ outmoded practices, the country is better prepared to avert famine than it was 25 years ago. And, thanks to the well-publicized Band Aid and USA for Africa campaigns in the 1980s, the world is much more aware. According to the U.S. State Department, agriculture is responsible for more than 80 percent of Ethiopia’s exports and provides jobs for 85 percent of its population. Coffee production is the country’s largest source of foreign reserves, and, unsurprisingly, is closely monitored by the government. Other important agricultural exports include animal skins, pulses, and “khat”, a 6-12 foot flowering shrub whose leaves are chewed for their mind-altering effects. Ethiopian farmers who survived the last famine are wary of losing their livelihoods, and indeed their lives, to the vagaries of climate change. You might even say they are paranoid. “We did not work night and day before…but we do now,” said Mesele Adhena, a farmer supporting six children, in an interview with the BBC. The government, for its part, is stockpiling grain, though it’s been reported these emergency rations will run out before the rural poor are given their share. There is also a food-for-work program that, if properly implemented, will keep famine from rearing its ugly head.

Things that obviously have not changed since 1984 include Africa’s misplaced priorities and its predilection for strongmen. The 18-year tenure of Ethiopia’s khat addicted Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi is proof of this. Zenawi, who came to power in 1991, the year of the last major East African drought, has, through rain or shine, managed to keep a firm grip on power. And even though it’s been suggested that he’ll step down after next year’s elections, it is widely believed that, even if he does, he’ll stay on as chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). According to the Economist, Zenawi isn’t concerned with such speculation, dismissing it as “boring.” However, a separate report by the Economist on the recent release from prison of popular reggae artist, Teddy Afro, shows the government is desperate to improve its image ahead of elections. Mr. Afro had been jailed on trumped-up charges, not, as might be expected, for possession of marijuana, but for a hit-and-run accident involving a homeless man in the capital, Addis Ababa. His fans believe he was locked away, like numerous other dissidents, including the young judge and opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, because he “compared Mr. Meles’s lot to a brutal junta.” Yet, securing Zenawi’s position as de facto emperor has called for more than a domestic clampdown; international concerns pose an equally destabilizing threat. Backed by the United States, with its anti al-Qaeda agenda, Ethiopia has, thus far, managed to keep intractable Eritrea and lawless Somalia at bay.

And still, food insecurity, like Zenawi’s reign, extends unchecked. It was the great famine of 1972, in fact, that led to Emperor Haile Selassie’s downfall. Selassie, a direct descendant of King Solomon of Israel, was as much renowned for fending off European occupation of Ethiopia as for his deification by Jamaican Rastafarians. He succumbed, some would say, to “the will of god” when, after 44 years in power, a global oil crisis coincided with climate change to turn his people against him.

Zenawi’s reign began with drought, and nearly two decades later, this same scourge dictates his country’s economic policy. The U.S. State Department believes Ethiopia has the potential to be both self-sufficient in grains and an exporter of numerous agricultural products, but “undeveloped water resources, and poor transport infrastructure”, among other things, have made it reliant on food aid. Far from restricted to withering crops, the current drought has caused whole herds of cattle and sheep, those “chewers of the cud” who’ve grazed East African plains for millennia, to drop dead. This, reports the Economist, will only increase tensions among feuding tribes in southern Ethiopia, while, in the east, secessionists of Somali ancestry are also expected to intensify their struggle. Within Somalia, where food aid is often used “to control the people”, Islamist militants will win even more recruits.

According to Oxfam, the international relief agency, drought doesn’t have to lead to famine. If a government invests in irrigation, grain warehouses, and wells, people will survive no matter how long the clouds withhold their precious supply of rain. But Ethiopia will not put to rest the threat of famine till it addresses its underlying causes. A report by Action Aid, entitled Who’s really fighting hunger?, states 1 billion people are unjustifiably going hungry in the world today. The report goes on to explain that hunger is a choice people make, and “not a force of nature.” Although hunger has its roots in inequalities between rich and poor, says the aid agency, it is exacerbated by policies that commoditize food instead of treating it as a right. “It is because of these policies that most developing countries no longer grow enough to feed themselves, and that their farmers are among the hungriest and poorest people in the world. Meanwhile, the rich world battles growing obesity.”

Meles Zenawi’s solution is to ask for more food aid, which, incidentally, is an industry in itself, one monopolized by Western companies. He also expects $40 billion a year in compensation to Africa for foreign-induced climate change, reports the Economist, and has openly blamed Europe for making the 1984 famine worse than it had to be. Zenawi will be representing Africa at the much-anticipated climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December, and one can only expect him to negotiate further concessions. His decision to appeal for aid on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine proves that he’s either a shameless opportunist, or that, after years of helping himself to the country’s dwindling supply of khat, is delusional enough to think the brokering of such deals with the West, without the consent of his people, can continue indefinitely. It will take more khat than he can chew to ever make that dream a reality, and more coffee than he can consume to keep him awake that long.