(Bloomberg) — Ethiopia’s grain harvest from last year’s long rainy season was 334,000 tons smaller than forecast, the Central Statistical Agency said.
The Horn of Africa nation produced 16.1 million metric tons of grain during last year’s September to November harvest, compared with the 16.5 million tons forecast by the agency in January, according to a report published yesterday in the capital, Addis Ababa. The latest report uses a broader sampling method.
More than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa country are in need of emergency food aid, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance. The figure includes more than 5 million people who already receive aid six months of the year.
Rates of malnutrition among children continue to rise in Ethiopia, OCHA said in a report e-mailed to reporters yesterday. Much of the current hunger crisis in Ethiopia is due to the failure of the country’s short rains in February and March.
It’s official: one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport will take centre stage when the guns sound the start of the women’s 5000m on Friday evening, August 22. Tirunesh Dibaba, the recently minted Olympic 10,000m champion will square off against Meseret Defar, the reigning 5000m champion.
On Tuesday, both Tirunesh and Meseret easily won their semi-final rounds and are set to face off Friday. Watch videos of round one here: Tirunesh, Meseret
Since the 2002 World Junior Championships, when Defar took the title over Dibaba, the Ethiopian duo have met 22 times in the 5000m, with Defar holding a narrow 12-10 lead while building up her resume as arguably the world’s finest 5000m runner. But in June, Dibaba, who has dominated the 10,000m in recent years, took the World record from Defar in Oslo clocking 14:11.15. Defar tried to reclaim it in Stockholm a month later, but came up just a few metres short, clocking 14:12.88. The two are that close.
For whatever reasons, they haven’t met since the World Athletics Final nearly two years ago – won by Defar – but their paths will finally, and dramatically cross here as Dibaba aims to win her second medal of the Games while Defar hopes to hold on to a title she considers hers.
Each won their respective heats tonight with relative ease, Dibaba the slower first in 15:09.89 and Defar the faster second in 14:56.32. Their victories were remarkably similar as both were content to sit back in the pack and let others do the leading. Dibaba moved to the front just beyond the bell and held on, while Defar chose to wait until about 200 metres remained.
If either can be considered to have a slight edge, it would be Defar, who raced for the first time in these Games. The biggest question mark hanging over Dibaba will be how she’ll recover from her phenomenal victory in the 10,000m, where her stunning 29:54.66 performance was the second fastest in history.
Neither of the first round heats produced much drama for the remaining five automatic spots behind the Ethiopian pair, with the slots already more or less determined as the fields approached their respective bell laps.
Just a little more than a second separated spots two through five in the first race, with Kenyan Sylvia Kibet (15:10.37), Alemitu Bekele (15:10.92) of Turkey, Ethiopia’s African Champion Meselech Melkamu (15:11.21) and Gulnara Galkina-Samitova (15:11.46) of Russia moving on easily. Behind them, American Jenn Rhines, who ran with the leaders through much of the race, nabbed the sixth automatic spot, clocking 15:15.12.
The significantly quicker pace over the final kilometre in the second race would guarantee that the next three over the line behind the top six automatic qualifiers would also advance.
With Vivian Cheruiyot (14:57.27) and Priscah Jepleting (14:58.07) advancing, Kenya will have three women in the final, as will the United States, led by Shalane Flanagan, the 10,000m bronze medallist, and Kara Goucher.
Also advancing were Russian Liliya Shobukhova (14:57.77), who broke the European record last month, and former 5000m World record holder Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey.
While the Defar-Dibaba show will take the spotlight, behind them several other notable double attempts will be undertaken. Galkina-Samitova won the first Olympic gold medal in the 3000m Steeplechase on Sunday, clocking a World record of 8:58.81. Abeylegesse won silver in the 10,000m on Friday with a European record 29:56.34 (the third fastest performance in history) in what very well might have been the finest ever women’s contest over the distance.
It was at a railway crossing near Dire Dawa, the provincial capital in the Ethiopian Ogaden desert, that I saw them: small children’s hands, blackened by sun, clutching at the slats of a cattle truck dumped on a siding. The year was 1984, the height of the Ethiopian famine that claimed about a million lives. These young things must have expired, hours later, of heat and thirst in temperatures peaking at about 48C, in the truck where they had deliberately been left to die.
I know it was deliberate because I took quick photographs, muttered a few words they couldn’t understand, and headed in to Dire Dawa to get help. The famine relief office officials shrugged and directed me to the military police commander. He cut me short: yes, he knew where they were. They were ethnic Somali kids — Somalis, the majority population of the Ogaden, had been in rebellion against Ethiopian rule for years — and they had been caught throwing stones at a train.
But they would die, I persisted. He lit a cigarette. “So what: they knew the risks and they must pay the price.”
You did not have to be caught throwing stones to “pay the price” in 1984. That famine in the Ogaden, the worst-affected region in Ethiopia, was far deadlier than it need have been because, until the international outcry forced it somewhat to relent, the Marxist Mengistu dictatorship blocked food aid to rebel areas, using it as a weapon of war.
What the world saw back then they are seeing again: heart-rending photographs of wide-eyed famished Ethiopian children. What the world did not hear much about then was the criminal exploitation of suffering. What the world will not see clearly, even now, is that disasters like drought can cause crops to fail, but should never, in a half-decently run country, lead to mass deaths from malnutrition. Famines in this day and age are man-made, if not by the sins of commission perpetrated by the thuggish Mengistu regime (and by North Korea’s) then by culpable omission coupled with lousy policies.
Mengistu was overthrown in 1991, fleeing Addis Ababa to retire in the congenial climate of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Because Meles Zenawi, the Tigrayan rebel leader who ousted him, shed some of his Albanian-model Stalinist baggage, he was fêted by Westerners as a moderniser and showered with development aid.
A spot of election-rigging in 2005, followed by the shooting of up to 200 pro-democracy demonstrators, caused some temporary tut-tutting, after which aid quietly resumed and, in Britain’s case, doubled. Not so quietly, the Ethiopian Woyanne Army is again cracking heads in the Ogaden, burning villages and, according to Human Rights Watch, torturing and publicly executing not only rebels of the resurgent Ogaden National Liberation Front but also civilians sympathising with them. In the Ogaden, famine looms. Plus ça change.
Still, Meles and Mengistu are not la même chose. Meles is a bit of a thug, but he has introduced some judicial and commercial reforms, devolved powers from Addis Ababa to the regions, improved education, curbed child mortality through anti-poverty programmes and, importantly, advocated greater equality for women. He has also ploughed 17 per cent of government spending into agriculture, three to four times as much as most other African governments. He claims that farm production is growing by 10 per cent a year, and boasts that, two years ago, the country actually exported maize (odd, that, when in a “good” year millions of Ethiopians rely on foreign food aid).
After the last big drought, in 2003, the Ethiopian Woyanne government worked with donors to create a system designed to make famine history. It includes a Productive Safety Net, a public works programme providing seven million poor Ethiopians – nearly a tenth of the population – with food or cash, and a Famine Early Warning System that measures rainfall, livestock prices, household spending and signs of malnutrition.
Textbook stuff, and in stark contrast with the junta’s attempt to hide the 1984 famine from the world. And yet… how, then, has the failure of the “little rains” this spring, and the consequent loss of a single harvest, translated into a huge emergency affecting ten million people, by the aid industry’s probably inflated account, and 4.6 million by the government’s defensively conservative assessment?
Why are its emergency grain reserves so depleted that food rations have been reduced by a third, at least 75,000 children are already severely malnourished and hunger affects two thirds of the country and has, this time, spread to the towns? Why is Ethiopia, a country with lush two-crop breadbaskets as well as deserts and eroded hill farms, still so vulnerable that, as Meles himself admits, “one unexpected weather event can push us over the precipice”?
There are two big causes, and drought is not one of them. They are within the power of politicians to tackle, and tackled they must finally be, with the requisite sense of urgency. The first is Ethiopia’s population explosion; with families averaging 5.4 children, it has soared from 33.5 million in the 1984 famine to 77 million now. In a country where 85 per cent of the people rely on farming for a living, this means that, per head, food production has actually fallen since 1984 – by more than a third – and farm plots get smaller and smaller. A fifth of Ethiopian farmers try to survive on areas no more than 20 metres by 40 metres per person, yielding no more than half their cereal needs.
The second is Meles’s purblind refusal to reverse the Marxist folly of his 1995 law that put all land under state ownership. “Land holding certificates” graciously permit farmers to till land that their forebears have farmed for generations; but surveys show that 46 per cent still expect to lose their farms.
The policy is a disaster. It discourages careful land management; it deprives farmers of collateral to raise bank loans to buy fertiliser and agricultural tools; and they cling to plots too small to feed their families because, with nothing to sell, they have no alternative. The coffee and infant rose-growing sectors apart, most Ethiopians farm as their ancestors did, with hoes, wooden ploughs, oxen and an anxious eye on the skies.
Enough food aid is once more pouring in to stave off serious famine; but it will not remedy Ethiopia’s deepening aid dependency and rural despair. With a smaller – because more mobile – landowning rural population, able to access loans to invest in higher-yield seeds, tractors and drip irrigation, Ethiopia could feed itself. But will donor governments champion the farmers’ right to get back their land? On past experience, pigs will fly. And the next famine will be a matter of time.
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Rosemary Righter is an associate editor of The Times
From left are Jason Rubinoff and Elyse Lackie,
co-founders of Investment Program Ono (IPO);
students Kinneret Sahalo, Orly Sahalo and
Maor Sanvete; and David Schlesinger,
IPO recruitment chair.
TORONTO — After visiting the Ethiopian community in Israel, Jason Rubinoff and Elyse Lackie realized that something needed to be done to help the young generation.
“You could see these were people having a tough time. It wasn’t about the mothers and fathers, it’s about the next generation,” Rubinoff said.
“They’re in a standstill. Education is really the only way they can get out of this. That’s when we came up with an idea for a scholarship program.”
Two years ago, during a trip to Ethiopia and Israel, Rubinoff and Lackie developed Investment Program Ono (IPO).
This is a program that helps send Ethiopian Israeli students to Ono Academic College, a prestigious Israeli school in Kiryat Ono known for its business and law programs, by selling shares at $2,500 each.
IPO is an initiative of the National Ben-Gurion Society, a Young Leadership program implemented by UIA Federations Canada in co-operation with Canadian federations. The Ben-Gurion Society is made up of donors who contributed $1,000 or more to the United Jewish Appeal or Combined Jewish Appeal campaigns.
IPO has already raised enough money to send eight students to Ono. This summer, the organization has brought three of these students to intern in Toronto for one month.
According to Doron Haran, the vice-chairman for Resource Development at Ono, internships are invaluable to Israeli students.
“Israel is the land of connections,” he said at a gathering last week held at Lackie’s house, where donors met the Ethiopian students. “That’s how this system works. [Ethiopian students] don’t have connections because their parents are not playing the game. They must have an internship, but no one can find it. So we are calling. It’s working in an unbelievable way.”
Rubinoff and Lackie chose to work with Ono because of its enthusiasm for the program.
“A lot of schools aren’t interested. [Ono] loved the idea,” he said.
For Maor Sanvete, a law student at Ono who will be interning at a Toronto law firm, the college opened doors that did not exist in Ethiopia.
“I was born in a little village – we were in a separate village from modern things. I wasn’t allowed to go to school in Ethiopia. I was a shepherd, it was a simple life. We left all our important things – our house, money. We took what we could and just walked away to Jerusalem,” he said. “When I came to Israel, I started from nothing. I was just 12 years old, I started Grade 7. Everything for me was very hard.”
While addressing the group of donors last week, Sanvete refused to accept applause. Instead, he offered his thanks.
“Thanks for Ono Academic. They support us,” he said.
To Orly Sahalo, an Ethiopian Israeli who will also be interning at a law firm in Toronto, the college offers a chance to make her parents proud.
“My parents came through the Sudan in 1981. They lived in a small village… and dreamed about Jerusalem all the time,” she said. “One day, they said, ‘We’re going to walk now’ and snuck away at night. My parents walked through the desert with four little children… and lost their little girl,” she said.
“Me and my two brothers were born in Israel. My parents got a simple job. They wanted us to get an education. They didn’t want us to be like them. So I went to Ono Academic to study law, for my parents to be proud of me. This is for my parents and the next generation.”
Ono is both a prestigious college and an expensive one. For many Ethiopian Israelis, an education at a school like this is unattainable. When he was initially approached by IPO, Haran was surprised by that.
“We realized that we were not aware that this community is stuck in gridlock. The abilities are there,” he said. “Parents haven’t been able to create economic stability and support. [Ethiopian students] need a push at the beginning. It’s not affirmative action, it’s a total win-win. They’re good students.”
CHICAGO — Barack Obama will publicly disclose his vice presidential choice in the coming days, though the Democrat is keeping most aides who are preparing for the announcement in the dark and is giving away nothing to voters as he campaigns.
The Illinois senator has staffers in place to aide the No. 2 and his or her spouse, including more than a dozen seasoned operatives who have set up shop in a section of the campaign’s Chicago headquarters. They are running through various logistical scenarios involved in taking over the relatively normal life of a person unknown to them and thrusting them into the unrelenting glare of a presidential campaign.
Obama was believed to have narrowed his list to Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. While it seemed increasingly unlikely that he would choose his vanquished rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, some Democrats speculated Monday that he could pull a surprise and pick her.
Former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, a close Obama adviser, said Monday he had given the campaign personal information needed to examine the background of potential vice presidential nominees but was confident he wouldn’t be selected.
“I did give … documents a long time ago, but these matters have been resolved for a long time now as far as I’m concerned,” Daschle told The Associated Press in an interview.
Only Obama, his wife, Michelle, a handful of his senior-most advisers and his two-member search committee know for certain who was on the initial list, who made the cuts, whose backgrounds were researched, whose names were floated to divert the media — and who Obama ultimately will choose.
He planned to campaign Tuesday in Florida and on Wednesday ride a bus through North Carolina and Virginia, where he was appearing with former Gov. Mark Warner, also mentioned as a possible contender for the No. 2 spot. After that, Obama’s schedule is wide open, leaving the end of the week as a more likely time for the pick before the Democratic National Convention begins next Monday in Denver.
Campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed supporters last week telling them they would receive first word of Obama’s decision through a mass text message, but otherwise the team has revealed little about what to expect. Historically, presidential tickets then tour battleground states to maximize media exposure, and Obama is expected to do the same.
For his part, Republican rival John McCain is seriously considering naming his running mate between the end of the Democratic convention Aug. 28 and the Sept. 1 start of the GOP convention in hopes of stunting any uptick in polls for Obama. McCain has at least three large rallies planned in top battlegrounds Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, before the Republican gathering in St. Paul, Minn.
His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential pick in 2000 who now is an independent.
Since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, speculation has swirled about the prospective No. 2s.
Names mentioned included Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a national security expert who traveled with Obama to Iraq and Afghanistan; former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, another foreign policy authority; and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a prominent Hispanic with vast international experience.
While Obama’s search committee reviewed its list of potential candidates during the past several weeks, the campaign was busy building the vice presidential staff operation that includes chief of staff Patti Solis Doyle, who was Clinton’s campaign manager, and spokesman David Wade, who was 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry’s traveling press secretary. Rick Siger, advance director for Kaine’s campaign, came on to oversee the travels of the eventual pick, increasing buzz that his former boss could be the likely choice.
The drama of Obama’s impending announcement drew dozens of new reporters to travel with his campaign Monday. They listened in vain for clues as Obama held a subdued meeting with several dozen women in New Mexico on the topic of wage discrimination, sticking to his word that he wouldn’t say anything about the decision until his announcement.
Obama was more animated Monday afternoon at a raucous town hall meeting, where he was introduced by Richardson. He praised Richardson as one of the nation’s best governors, but otherwise gave no hint of the governor’s future status.
Even as they were kept out of the loop on the decision, Obama’s staff debated who would make the right choice. Many said if the candidate asked them, they would suggest Biden because of his foreign policy experience and strong debate skills; Sebelius because she’s a respected Washington outsider who has won a Republican state; or Bayh because he can appeal to Democrats uneasy about Obama and could help him win Indiana.
Each candidate could pose problems, too. An Obama-Sebelius ticket would be especially light on international experience. Bayh supported the Iraq war; Obama did not and has said that is a leading indicator of judgment.
Republicans are already envisioning their response to a Biden pick — Obama is so inexperienced that he had to pick someone with a 26-year record in Senate. Biden has spent a longer time on Capitol Hill than McCain, they point out, which doesn’t exactly represent the kind of change Obama says is needed in Washington.
Biden was far from the speculation Monday; he traveled over the weekend to Georgia to meet with President Mikhail Saakashvili to discuss the country’s military clash with Russia.
Other potential vice presidential prospects also seemed to be going about business as usual. Sebelius was traveling to Michigan on Tuesday to help boost Obama’s support among women there, while Kaine helped unveil a bust of explorer Meriwether Lewis in Virginia’s old House chamber on Monday.
Associated Press writers Beth Fouhy in Albuquerque, N.M., Liz Sidoti and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington, and Bob Lewis in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.
BEIJING — If Kenyans thought Kenenisa Bekele was done and dusted, then the bad news is that the unstoppable Ethiopian will reappear today when he competes in the 5,000 metres qualifiers in an attempt to clinch a double after winning the 10,000m gold on Sunday.
The Kenyans out to stop Bekele are Athens bronze medallist and former world champion Eliud Kipchoge, upstarts Edwin Soi and Thomas Longosiwa.
Longosiwa has been drawn in the most difficult of the heats and with the first four in each heat qualifying alongside the overall fastest three, he will be hard pressed to make an impression.
Delicately poised
Longosiwa’s heat three, which will be run at 3.55 pm Kenyan time has 2004 Olympic silver medallist and world record holder Bekele, world champion Bernard Lagat of USA, former Kenyan James Kwalia of Qatar and Australian Craig Mottram.
Soi will run in the second heat, which is also delicately poised, with double-chasing former Moroccan Rachid Ramzi of Bahrain Uganda’s Moses Kipsiro, Algerian Ali Saidi-Seif and Ethiopia’s Cherkos.
Kipchoge runs in the opening race from which he should qualify with ease, along with Kenenisa’s sibling Tadesse.
Today, Kenyan men will also start their quest to complete an 800m double following Pamela Jelimo and Janeth Jepkosgei’s brilliant 1-2 finish in the history-making women’s race on Monday.
World champion Alfred Kirwa Yego, former world indoor champion Wilfred Bungei and the dark horse in this entry, US-based Boaz Lalang, will carry the country’s flag.
“With the preparations that we have had, I’m sure we will make Kenyans proud – all the three of us running in the 800 metres,” said Bungei who is also the overall Kenyan captain at these Games.
Meanwhile, the three Kenyan women competing in the 5,000 metres all made it to the final after yesterday’s qualifiers.
Second heat
Last year’s World Championships’ silver medallist, Vivian Cheruiyot (season’s best 14:57.27), and Priscah Jepleting (14:58.07) finished second and fourth in the second heat won by defending Olympic champion, Ethiopia’s Meseret Defar (14:56.32).
Sylvia Kibet (15:10.37) had placed second behind 10,000m champion Tirunesh Dibaba (15:09.89) in the slowish opening heat that saw Ethiopia’s African champion Meselech Melkamu qualify in fourth place with fellow Ethiopian Alemitu Bekele in third.
The newly crowned Olympic steeplechase champion and world record holder, Gulnara Galkina-Samitova of Russia, also qualified in fifth place, as did other athletes chasing their second medals here, Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse, silver medallist in the 10,000m and USA’s Shalane Flanagan, bronze medallist in last Friday’s 10,000m final.
Bekele is one of the several athletes chasing double victories on the track and they include Jamaica’s 100m world record holder Usain Bolt who is actually going for a treble as, besides the 100m/200m double, he will make Jamaica’s 4x100m relay team.
Ethiopia’s Dibaba won gold in the 10,000m on Friday and she will be looking to improve on her Athens bronze medal in the shorter race where she is set to do battle with her countrywoman by fierce track rival Meseret Defar in the final that will be run on Friday.
In the 5,000m, Bekele will team up with his younger brother Tariku Bekele and world junior champion Abreham Cherkos.
It’s official: one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport will take centre stage when the guns sound the start of the women’s 5000m on Friday evening, August 22. Tirunesh Dibaba, the recently minted Olympic 10,000m champion will square off against Meseret Defar, the reigning 5000m champion.
