(Richard Alleyne, UNICEF USA) — EAST HARARGHE, Ethiopia — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has attributed the current surge in global food prices to a host of factors, including: escalating energy prices, lack of investment in agriculture, increasing demand, trade distortions subsidies and recurrent bad weather.
In the eastern Ethiopian province of East Hararghe Zone of Oromiya Regional State—a region with over 30 million residents—the effects of the food crisis and an extended dry season threaten the tenuous gains the country has made with regard to child nutrition.
Already among the countries in the world with the highest rates of child mortality and malnutrition, just how severe the problem becomes in this part of Ethiopia depends largely on the financial soundness of a community-based intervention model known as Enhanced Outreach Strategy (EOS). Developed and implemented three years ago by UNICEF and its partners, in conjunction with the Ethiopian government, the strategy delivers low-cost, high-impact interventions such as nutrition screenings, vaccinations, deworming pills and vitamin A supplementation to children in order to avert crisis when emergencies crop up.
Subsistence farmers throughout Ethiopia rely on two rainy seasons a year: the “meher” from June to July and the “belg” from January to February. This year the “belg” rains came late.
“Because there were no “belg” rains to speak of this year, we are seeing livestock deteriorate and crops that could not be ready for harvest,” said Samson Desie, UNICEF Nutrition Specialist in Ethiopia. “But what we’re also seeing are children who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.”
At the Bissidimo Hospital in East Hararghe, Desie explains the nutrition screening process and EOS at work:
“By conducting mid-upper arm circumference, height and weight measurements our workers at the community level are able to refer mothers with children diagnosed with moderate malnutrition to a supplemental feeding program,” said Desie. “Those diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition come here to this UNICEF supported therapeutic feeding program.”
Hospital staff members in Bissidimo prepare therapeutic milk supplied by UNICEF and known as F-75. It is administered following UNICEF feeding protocols for case management of severe acute malnutrition. In many cases mothers are also given packets of Plumpy’nut to feed their children in order to combat the effects of malnutrition. A ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), Plumpy’nut is a high protein, high energy peanut-based paste in a foil wrapper that can be administered at home rather than at feeding centers or hospitals and can be eaten without any preparation.
The number of referrals to Bissidimo and similar facilities has risen steadily since last December. One of UNICEF’s partners has been the World Food Program (WFP), which works with the government’s agency responsible for disaster prevention and preparedness in administering targeted supplemental food distribution. This distribution is meant for treatment of moderate malnutrition and prevention of severe malnutrition.
Because of the increase in global food prices, WFP has had to close down a number of supplementary feeding centers. Those in Oromiya region—where there were 118 sites—have now been reduced to 28; and in Haraghe zone where 21 sites were in operation, now only six remain open.
The head of WFP has called the current food crisis a “silent tsunami” which threatens to affect the over 70 million people globally.
“We know the system we have in place works, and we are beginning to notice behavioral change at the community level. Families are beginning to understand what to do to keep their children well nourished,” said Desie. “But if we’re unable to keep the system well oiled with resources and financing, we could end up slipping backward.”
Ethiopian Television Network interviews Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle. This is Part I of a 4-part video. The rest of the interview is available at ETN.
By Peter Clottey, VOA — Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says the country would not be a haven for criminals under its leadership. This comes after President Robert Mugabe’s government reportedly said former Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam will be protected in Zimbabwe despite being sentenced to death by an Ethiopian High Court. Mengistu, has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since he was overthrown in 1991, is unlikely extradited to Ethiopia to face punishment unless Mugabe loses next month’s election run-off. The Ethiopian government has however, not formally requested Mengistu to be extradited. From Harare, MDC international affairs secretary Eliphas Mukonoweshuro tells reporter Peter Clottey that the imminent MDC government would review the case of the former Ethiopian leader before taking any action.
“The position of the MDC is that it will accept people running away from other countries seeking refuge in Zimbabwe. If they are not needed by any country for crimes committed, then they would be free to stay in Zimbabwe. But Zimbabwe can never be a haven of criminals under an MDC government. If Mengistu has not committed any crime anywhere to the satisfaction of the incoming MDC government, then he has nothing to fear at all,” Mukonoweshuro pointed out.
He said the opposition party would review the case against the former Ethiopian leader to determine its next line of action.
“When the MDC comes to power, the MDC government will study the case pertaining to Mr. Mengistu. If it is satisfied that Mr. Mengistu has not committed any crime anywhere, of course, his refugee status would stand. But if Mr. Mengistu has committed crimes anywhere in any part of the world of course the MDC government would take that into consideration in deciding whether Mr. Mengistu has to remain as a guest in Zimbabwe or not,” he said.
Mukonoweshuro said it was important for the party to ascertain the full scope of the case against the former Ethiopian leader.
“We cannot prejudge the situation, and as a movement and a political party, at the present moment we do not have the facts pertaining to Mr. Mengistu’s case. But what we are saying is that the MDC government through the ministry of justice would have to study the papers, would have to convince ourselves whether or not there is a genuine case against Mr. Mengistu. And if there are no genuine cases he could stay, but if there is a genuine case, then of course the MDC government would not allow the country to become a haven for criminals who are wanted elsewhere for serious crimes,” Mukonoweshuro pointed out.
He described as ludicrous accusations by the government that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is a sellout.
“It’s very unfortunate because these are allegations, which are made without any substantiation at all. Mr. Museka’s statement did not chronicle where the MDC in particular and where the MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai has sold out to anybody. We have never been a government of this country and therefore there is no record to sustain those allegations,” he said.
Mukonoweshuro said the government is using the tactics of division to divert attention from the suffering of the masses.
“This is the tragedy in Zimbabwe. Instead of focusing on the issues that can resolve the crisis, people resort to mudslinging. It’s time that Zimbabweans, it’s time that SADC (Southern African Development Community) and Africa realize that no amount of mudslinging could ever even begin to punt in place the ingredients to resolve the crisis that has engulfed this country for the past 10 years,” Mukonoweshuro noted.
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Mengistu Death Sentence Kindles Expectations for His Extradition
By Howard Lesser, VOA — Ethiopia’s supreme court is awaiting confirmation from President Girma Woldegiorgis of this week’s death sentence against former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. The court overturned a previous life sentence on genocide charges for the Marxist lieutenant colonel and 17 of his associates, who were first punished last year after a decade-long trial. Donald Levine is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Chicago and the author of two widely cited books on Ethiopia, “Wax and Gold” and “Greater Ethiopia”. He says that Ethiopians believe the current government has a strong political stake in the new sentence.
“The current regime believes that it needs to be seen as very strong. They believe that the demonstration against them in June, 2005, following the election called for brutal, extreme, repressive measures and ever since, they felt they needed to be seen as very tough. The prosecution appealed only in July the sentence that had been handed down in January of the previous year. I’m really surprised and bothered that it took so long to bring this trial to conclusion,” he noted.
Mengistu overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and assumed absolute control after a bloody coup in 1977. In 1991, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe offered him refuge in Zimbabwe, where he has lived ever since. With the 84-year-old Mugabe seriously challenged with political changes in Zimbabwe after next month’s (June 27) presidential election run-off, Donald Levine sees a possible new opening for Ethiopians hoping to achieve Mengistu’s extradition.
“Not right now, but if President Mugabe is replaced, then his successor may well extradite him if requested to. If the evidence is reviewed, I think if a new government comes to be in Zimbabwe, that they would be wanting to abide by the standards of international law and would consider that he should be extradited,” said Levine.
For a new generation of Ethiopians, many of whom were born after the fall of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime, the process of coming to terms with the return and execution of an internationally recognized brutal war criminal could epitomize a momentous national experience. Professor Levine says that even though young Ethiopians lack direct personal contact with the troubled past, they have without doubt incorporated the tragedy into their sense of national consciousness.
“Those who were not born at the time, I’m sure have learned from their families about what happened during those years and I don’t know a single Ethiopian at home or abroad who doesn’t regard his (Mengistu’s) regime as absolutely horrible. Probably, almost everyone, even if generally they don’t believe in the death penalty, would say, well in this case, it’s deserved,” he pointed out.
The test of whether Africans living outside of Ethiopia, especially in Zimbabwe, will pass up seizing an opportunity for international justice or pursue it may rest in the hands of Zimbabwe voters and the Mugabe government. University of Chicago sociologist Donald Levine concludes there is no question that the crimes of the Mengistu era should not be overlooked by Zimbabweans.
“No way. The reason they’ve given him a home there is that he helped Zimbabwe during their liberation struggle. But on the merits of his own case and the horrible crimes of which he was guilty, I see that they would certainly have no reason to protect him any further,” he said.
As for Ethiopians’ stake in the Zimbabwe crisis, Professor Levine says he thinks Ethiopians would like to see Zimbabweans overcome President Mugabe’s resistance of the democratic process, much as many of them would like to see greater reform in their own country. In addition to wanting President Mugabe ousted for that reason, he says, they are also interested in seeing Mengistu Haile Mariam extradited back to Ethiopia to face justice.
Any report of famine from below the Sub-Saharan Africa has long ceased to be shocking news to the world. Consequently, those to whom it’s incumbent upon to ensure food security to their people have even lost any sense of shame and guilt in the face of massive starvation and plague that wipes an entire society. To one who is familiar with Ethiopian history, for instance, this is the pattern he sees clearly. During the “Great Ethiopian famine” in 1888-1892 known as “KIFU KEN” in local parlance, meaning evil days, Emperor Menilek took measures to avert or alleviate the disaster, albeit inadequate. Starting from ordering national prayer for divine intercession to doling out food to those who made it to the palace, he tried everything at his disposal. By contrast, Emperor Haileselassie hid the 1973 famine that consumed the lives of 200,000 Ethiopians from Wollo and Tigray.In fact, when one of his officials was informed of the influx of people from Wollo to the capital; he reportedly replied “It’s in the nature of Wollo to migrate.” One can see elsewhere in Africa that shirking of ones official duty cruelly like this is still endemic by recalling a news conference addressed by two cabinet ministers of the Ugandan government, Mr. Musa Ecweru and Mr. Aston Kajara (see Daily Monitor, 21 May 2008). After having defended recent deaths in Karamoja as caused largely by poor hygiene and not famine, they added that the Karimojong eat rats and herbs not because they are famished but because the rodents “may be a delicacy.”
The worst cruelty, though, is the holding of starving people as hostages for political ends. During the military regime, Derg used to divert aid meant for victims of drought to its own militias whereas the present regime of Zenawi blocks aid heading for the same victims/see “Ethiopia thwarting food aid to rebel regions in East” by Jeffrey Gettleman, July 22, 2007 The New York Times/.Ironically, the so-called international community, namely the west which blew the cruelty of Mengistu Hailemariam out of proportion became timid to face the callousness of Meles Zenawi even when he suppressed news of impending disaster by expelling journalists and staffs from humanitarian organizations such as Red Cross, Save the children, Norwegian NGO’s etc. Also, tycoons from the Netherlands whose nation achieved a landmark success by becoming the first to eliminate famine in Europe in the early 17th century, are hindering Ethiopia’s chance to do the same by colluding with the present rulers of Ethiopia in a water-thirsty and land hungry flower production business which causes the shrinkage of arable land.
To summarize, as has been said ad nauseam by various scholars, no functioning democracy has suffered famine. Ethiopians too proving themselves as capable of voting in a civilized manner elected those candidates in 2005 that exuded confidence by promising “to do away with famine, if not to step down assuming full responsibility and by apologizing to the Ethiopian people.”Unfortunately, that election was rigged brutally; hence we’re still stuck with tyranny that spread famine inter alia unabashedly with a host of misguided policies.
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The writer, an Ethiopian Refugee in Uganda, can be reached at [email protected]
This is a 20-page article by Berhanu Tessema on the sacrifices made by Ethiopian patriots during fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. There is a lot to learn by our generation from those patriots? Click here to read [pdf, Amharic]
(By ROGER THUROW, Wall Street Journal) ARSI NEGELE, Ethiopia — Babou Galgo, a 61-year-old farmer, proudly showed off his prized harvest from last season: two shiny gold medals from the regional and federal government and a slick certificate praising his “outstanding performance in increasing agriculture production and productivity.”
What he had done was boost his corn yields on his small farm in southern Ethiopia an eye-popping sevenfold over the past several years. Even more impressive, he had boosted the well-being of his family as well: With the added income, they moved out of a traditional mud-brick tukul and into a brick and concrete house furnished with a refrigerator, television and DVD player, rare luxuries for a farmer in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Indeed, not long ago, Mr. Galgo would have had no need for a refrigerator as meager yields had him struggling to feed his family. “It’s the seeds,” he says, noting the reason for his reversal of fortunes. “Hybrids.”
Africa’s nascent push to finally feed itself is turning the clock back to the early part of 20th-century America. It was in the 1930s and ’40s when Iowa-based Pioneer Hi-Bred International popularized hybrid seeds in the U.S., swelling corn yields throughout the Midwest. Seven decades later, African farmers and U.S. companies are trying to recreate the same boom that turned America into the world’s breadbasket, only this time in the harsh climate — environmental and political — of Ethiopia and greater Africa.
If agriculture has a final frontier, it is Africa. After agriculture transformations in Asia and Latin America since the 1960s, Africa remains the one place where the farming potential has barely been scratched. African agriculture has less irrigation, less fertilizer use, less soil and seed research, less mechanization, less rural financing, fewer paved farm-to-market roads than any other farming region in the world. Conflict in many parts of the continent has chased farmers out of their fields, and neglect by both local governments and international development experts have let Africa’s agriculture infrastructure fall into dire disrepair.
American farming interests, like those of agricultural icons Pioneer and John Deere, have avoided large swaths of Africa in the past, believing that farmers were too poor to pay for their products or wary of political instability that has rocked some of Pioneer’s other African operations. But now, with global grain surpluses down, demand rising and prices soaring, the calculations at home and abroad have changed and progress can’t come fast enough.
In Ethiopia, only about one-quarter of the country’s total corn area is planted with hybrid seeds. Hybrids, produced from conventional breeding to increase yields and to thrive in harsher climates and to resist pests, usually can double or triple harvests over the standard seeds passed down through generations. And there are only several thousand tractors for more than 50 million people who depend on farming to survive.
“Africa is the only continent where per capita food production is declining, so the need is there,” says J.B. Penn, the chief economist of Deere & Co. and a former undersecretary at the U.S. Agriculture Department. The present food crisis “is solved only through higher production,” adds Paul Schickler, president of DuPont Co.’s Pioneer unit. “That is what is needed in Africa, through the use of better technology, genetics and agronomic practices.”
Chombe Seyoum sees the need and potential every day. A farmer himself, Mr. Seyoum began selling John Deere equipment in Ethiopia two years ago hoping both to accelerate the mechanization of his country’s farmers and to fulfill his father’s vision. In 1968, his father bought a small John Deere tractor and introduced machine farming to his region of the country’s southern wheat belt. Several years later, Emperor Haile Selassie was toppled by a communist dictatorship, farmland was collectivized and some of the Seyoum family’s machinery was confiscated.
Mr. Seyoum studied to become an engineer. But when the communists were ousted in the early 1990s, he returned to farming and saw how far his country had fallen behind as he worked to rebuild the family farm.
Now, from his office in Addis Ababa, he sells Deere equipment — 100 in the past two years. While drought and hunger still plague parts of Ethiopia, the fertile Rift Valley and highland regions, given good weather, have the country rivaling South Africa as the continent’s largest cereal and grain producer south of the Sahara. Rising corn and wheat prices have spurred demand for machinery from farmers hoping to expand their acreage. Making up for lost time, Mr. Seyoum welcomes customers ready to purchase big-ticket machinery.
“We are in a rush,” says one customer, Abdi Abdullahi Hussein. Mr. Hussein once worked with nomadic herders before seeing the business potential in farming this year. The spring planting season was fast approaching and he badly needed a tractor. He and a partner have about 60 acres and he intends to rent the tractor to others. “Our idea is to introduce technology in our area and plow more land,” he says.
Mr. Seyoum suggests an 85-horsepower tractor costing about $30,000. Mr. Hussein doesn’t flinch at the price; He has pooled his savings with neighbors’ who will share the tractor. In Ethiopia and throughout Africa, banks are reluctant to lend to farmers who have little collateral; pooling money is a common way to raise the funds. But he cringes at the four-month delivery time from Deere’s factory in Brazil. Instead, he ponders a 65-horsepower tractor, which will be available sooner.
“We’ve got a long list of people coming to us for tractor service,” says Mr. Hussein.
As Mr. Hussein leaves, another farmer arrives to complete a purchase of a combine. Haji Kawo, like most wheat farmers in Ethiopia, plants by hand and harvests with a machine. After years of hiring others to cut his wheat, Mr. Kawo decided to get into the harvesting business himself. He figures he can pay off the $70,000 combine within a year given that there are 20,000 small farmers in his area who need harvesting service. He envisions moving from farm to farm during the harvest season much like combine services that methodically move up from the southern U.S. and into Canada.
Offering to help with financing, Mr. Seyoum sees Mr. Kawo as a model farmer who can demonstrate the benefits of mechanization to others and drive sales. Ethiopian farmers “see a success somewhere, and they want to do it, too,” says Mr. Seyoum.
Melaku Admassu, an Ethiopian who runs Pioneer’s operations here, uses the same farmer-to-farmer sales method that Pioneer employed in the U.S. He began by handing out seeds from the back of his pickup truck, particularly to farmers like Babou Galgo who worked land near the major roads so more people could follow the growth of the hybrids. At harvest time, Mr. Admassu would return with small scales to weigh the yields and compare them to the harvests of farmers who weren’t using the hybrids.
“When I heard that only 1% or 2% of the U.S. population are farmers, and they feed the whole country, I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Admassu says. “I started dreaming that if every farmer in Ethiopia increases production, we can change the whole country. We can change Africa.”
It has certainly changed lives in the Rift Valley lakes region. When Mr. Admassu first came to his village with the new seeds and advice on how to better till his land, Debebe Ayele, 47, was struggling to feed his family. “We were getting food aid,” he says. “I was ready to try anything to improve my situation.”
The new seeds were a risk. They were more expensive than the standard fare and they were new. He planted two acres the first year, then four and now he rents land from his neighbors to increase his acreage. His harvests multiplied and for the first time in his life he had regular surpluses to sell on the market. He replaced the thatched grass roof of his house with corrugated iron. He bought better furniture and better clothes. He wants his children to go as far as they can in school.
As Mr. Ayele recites his progress, Mr. Admassu beams. “When we see our farmers go from barefoot to shoes, we know that is because of increased production,” he says.
Farmer Galgo is ready for another upgrade. Sitting in his comfortable living room, beneath wall murals of Jesus and a peace dove, he tells Mr. Admassu, “I want to expand my land and buy a tractor. A big tractor, with a lot of power.”
Another tractor customer.
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Write to Roger Thurow at [email protected]
