ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Drought-ravaged Ethiopia should improve its “backward” farming systems to curb acute food shortages, which have left millions of people in need of urgent humanitarian aid, a top World Bank official said on Wednesday.

About 4.5 million Ethiopians need emergency food aid due to poor seasonal rains and high food prices in the vast east African country, according to the United Nations.

“Ethiopia has registered commendable economic growth over the last three or four years,” Justin Lin Yifu, chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank, told reporters on a visit to Addis Ababa.

“However, some parts of the country have been experiencing drought due to the backward farming system in the country.”

Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, needs $325 million to provide 400,000 tonnes of food, especially in the country’s hard-hit south and south eastern regions bordering Somalia and Kenya, according to the United Nations.

About 85 percent of Ethiopia’s 81 million population rely on subsistence farming and “this needs to be revisited,” he said without elaborating.

“Given good weather conditions, diverse natural resources and huge labour in Ethiopia, I don’t think it would be difficult to bring about a real change in the country”, he said.

Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Editing by Wangui Kanina