By Francis Elliot | Times Online
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — It wasn’t famine that killed Jamal Ali’s mother. She died in a cholera outbreak that swept through their Ethiopian village when at last the rains came. Twenty-five years later Jamal, now a parent himself, is lining up for handouts in a food distribution centre in Harbu, Amhara, His prematurely aged face, hollow with hunger, creases further when asked about this unwelcome return. “It is a very bitter feeling. No one likes this begging. I am ashamed,” he said.
Up a steep, dusty track from Harbu to Chorisa village the tiny, duncoloured terraced fields bare witness to the third poor harvest in a row. This village is supposed to be an aid showpiece but even here fields of failed cereal crops are being turned over to lean-looking cattle.
A villager strips an ear of the cereal crop tef and cups the inedible seed in her hand for a moment before casting into a relentlessly sky. It’s not that the rains didn’t come, she said — they came just at the wrong time. The field was supposed to yield 500 kilograms of cash crop; now it might just save a few cows from starvation.
The UN warns that 6.2 million Ethiopians will need some sort of food aid in the coming months. The Government also seems highly sensitive to the idea that it needs help. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister, would rather the world took notice of his position representing Africa in the climate change negotiations next month than his country’s never-ending dependency on food aid.
In Addis Ababa Ethiopian and Western officials voice disapproval of doom-laden reports that fail to acknowledge the progress being made, or the differences in scale between the famine of 1984, which killed a million people, and the situation today.
In private they acknowledge that Mr Meles and his Government are deliberately frustrating and delaying official assessments of the scale of the country’s humanitarian needs and blocking access to some areas where the situation is worst.
The latest UN estimate, to be released this Friday, is due to revise its figure upwards to nine million for those who will need help. Arguing that the definition of those in need is too broad — it includes those who are in a position to sell assets to buy food — the Government wants to change the way the figures are calculated to reduce that figure to 5 million.
Donor countries and the UN fear that counting only the truly desperate is a ploy that risks understating the true scale of the crisis. There are also allegations that food aid is being withheld from the regime’s opponents.
Criticism of Ethiopia has been muted by its success in improving local healthcare and expanding education, alongside its strategic importance in the fight against Islamic extremism in the Horn of Africa. Britain, which gives the country £200 million a year, and is Ethiopia’s second-largest bilateral donor, is stepping up the pressure on what was once regarded as its showpiece partner in Africa, amid growing concerns about what could happen in the coming months.
“The Government has just got to embrace the crisis and not be frightened of the statistics,” Gareth Thomas, a minister with the Department for International Development, said yesterday. “It is different from 1984 but there’s still huge need. There’s got to be a recognition that if we are going to stop children from being malnourished and keep people alive we have got to have accurate information and we’ve got to have it in a timely manner.”
Speaking before a meeting with Mr Meles, Mr Thomas said that he also intended to raise credible reports that aid was being withheld from opponents, but insisted he was satisfied that British aid was getting through. His main message, however, was that the Government had not yet grasped the urgent need for reform. The population, about 35 million in 1984, is now about 80 million and will have doubled again by 2050. At the same time, according to some estimates, most Ethiopian agriculture is still less productive than that of medieval England.
Mr Meles blames climate change for the erratic rainfall that has led to three successive poor harvests. The state’s ownership of land and its failure to provide seeds and fertiliser is at least as a big a factor, according to observers.
Similarly, the Government has overseen the building of an impressive road network — but in the absence of a thriving private sector and a more liberalised economy the traffic, other than convoys of aid vehicles, is light.
Two million Ethiopians a year are moving into cities as pressure on the land and education increase, a movement that threatens to overwhelm the state’s efforts to provide housing and jobs.
More than half of Britain’s annual aid budget of £117 million goes on helping to fund work schemes that keep 7.5 million Ethiopians out of the food distribution centres. With less than 5 per cent of the population becoming fully self-reliant in most areas each year, the dependency on foreign aid threatens to increase not diminish.
4 thoughts on “Ethiopia’s regime tries to cover up a new famine”
At present, donor countries give Ethiopia two billion dollars in development aid annually, amounting to nearly 60% of government expenditure. What does the ruling TPLF regime do with this largesse? As it has done all during its eighteen years in power, it diverts much of this donor largesse towards maintaining a tight grip on power through systematic repression, political imprisonment, and human rights abuses.
Among the thousands of political prisoners in TPLF jails is Ethiopia’s first female political party leader, Birtukan Mideksa. She was imprisoned for life for simply questioning government propaganda regarding the conditions of an earlier jail sentence.
Much of the political responsibility for this and other TPLF human rights abuses lies in the hands of donor countries. As any government is accountable to its source of funds, the TPLF is accountable to donor countries. Donors, by giving the regime aid, have assumed de facto majority control of the Ethiopian polity, marginalizing the Ethiopian people and reducing their democratic rights. In effect, Ethiopia has become a donor colony.
As funders of the TPLF regime, donors must accept not only political responsibility, but more importantly moral responsibility, for the regime’s abuses. They are morally responsible for all misdeeds and consequences of the TPLF dictatorship, including not only political oppression, but also economic mismanagement and the poverty and famine that continues to plague Ethiopia as a result.
There are only two ways for donor countries and their citizens to properly address this moral culpability. One is to find or negotiate a way of reaching directly the needy ones. The second solution is for donor governments to assert themselves fully, hold the TPLF regime accountable and force it to put an end to human rights abuses and move towards democratic governance.
To date, donors have done neither. In fact, they have not even been willing to subject the TPLF dictatorship to any significant
Woyane is buying airbus as a thank you gesture to its European backers (Germany, England and France) and to annoy USA for the cool diplomatic situation. Ethiopian Airlines has always purchased its planes from Boeing. Why do you think woyane switched now? This is a thank you note for the Euro diplomats in Addis who are currently bullying the opposition into submission. Ethiopians must start to accuse these people as an accomplice to genocide. And make it clear that any agreements made between woyane and any third party may not be honoured in the future democratic Ethiopia.
Most of the aids have never been used to help the poor people. Whenever donors give money to EPRDF, they are helping the party not the people. It would have been better if they help us in overthrowing meles zenawi’s party than donation.
No amount of aid given to Woyanne will solve the problem of famine in Ethiopia, period. I can’t stand the fact that Ethiopians call the regimes who support Woyanne “donors”, they are not donating money and food to Woyanne out of good will, they are paying Woyanne to implement their policies of subjugating the people of Ethiopia and the neighboring countries around Ethiopia, they pretty much run the show in Ethiopia, Woyannes are the thugs that give a native face to this hideous neo-colonial regime that we see in Ethiopia and pretty much most of African countries.
The best way to fight this menace is to identify your friends and enemies in this confusing mess of relationship between Woyanne and their masters, that is the single most important weapon the Ethiopian people have, once you identify your friends and enemies you can chart your course (which is not easy I might say) then you can organize your population and start the way forward, otherwise you will keep running in circles wondering where you were and where you might go next.