-A vortex of climate change and rising population threatens Ethiopia’s gains in feeding itself
SHASHEMENE, Ethiopia — Abdala Wahilo finds relief from the midday sun
under the corrugated metal roof of a warehouse in Shashemene, a town not
far from the farm where he tries to support a family of 12 on a single
hectare of land. Here, at this emergency food aid distribution centre,
he also finds some relief from the hunger that his family has faced in
the last few years as repeated droughts have ravaged this region in
southern Ethiopia.
“We don’t want aid,” he says, waving at the wall of maize bags and
plastic jugs of cooking oil that will provide basic rations to his
family and more than 26,000 other people in the area. “We want to work
and support ourselves.” But without
aid, his children eat at most twice a day and he and his wife only
once, so Abdala says he’s thankful for the help. And he’s seen what
happens without it:
Last year, when the worst drought in decades hit, so
many people in this area became malnourished that feeding centres were
set up for children and pregnant women. To survive the past few years,
he also had to sell most of his livestock, which had produced milk and
butter he sold to raise money for food and school fees. Some of his
children had to suspend their studies.
A vortex of population growth, land scarcity and
a changing climate has
wrenched Shashemene and much of densely populated south-central
Ethiopia from an area that produced food surpluses less than a decade
ago to a place where food aid is regularly needed. But the country as a
whole has made steady progress in reducing poverty and blunting the
impact of droughts since the devastating famine of 1984. And, at eight
per cent, it has one of the highest economic growth rates in Africa, if
not the world.
Still, there’s much
more to do. After all, Ethiopia ranks 174th of 187 on the UN’s human
development index, which measures income, education and life expectancy.
It’s one of the world’s top aid recipients, and around a tenth of its
people, like Abdala, needs some kind of food assistance each year.Asked if getting a handout hurts his pride, Abdala pauses, then says: “I am happy because my children aren’t starving.” And
with that, he hoists a 50-kilogram bag of maize on his back and heads
out of the warehouse, back into the dusty lot where hundreds of others
await their ration, back into the hot February sun that he prays will
give way soon to the spring rains.
Ethiopia is a frustrating paradox to its many western aid donors, including Canada, which put more than $176 million into development projects here in 2011.
On
the one hand, the regime is often in the headlines for jailing members
of opposition parties and journalists — it’s not surprising it won all
but one of 546 seats in the last election two years ago — and, more
recently, for a Human Rights Watch report condemning the relocation of
tens of thousands of citizens to allow Chinese and Indian companies to
set up massive commercial farms to produce export crops. On the other
hand, many aid groups laud the government for a commitment to poverty
reduction that is far greater than many African countries.
“In Ethiopia, you actually see a government … that’s committed to try
and make a difference,” says Jim Cornelius, director of the
Canadian Foodgrains Bank,
an aid and development agency that’s worked in Ethiopia since the 1984
famine. “A lot of progress has been made in the country.” The
most obvious sign of progress is that droughts and other “shocks” like
food price spikes no longer cause full-blown famines — there’s hunger,
yes, but not death on the grand scale that burned itself into our
collective consciousness in 1984.
There’s now an early-warning system
for food crises, and Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program creates
public works projects to help more than seven million chronically
vulnerable people. From road repairs to terracing and replanting the
country’s eroded hillsides, at-risk farmers work in exchange for food or
the cash to buy it. (To avoid dependency on handouts the Ethiopian
government stipulates that, except in emergencies, food aid is never
given without work in return.) When drought hits areas not covered by
the program, emergency aid kicks in. Last year, 3.2 million Ethiopians
got emergency food aid to supplement their own reserves.
The paradox of repression and development stems from the same source:
The regime’s almost total control over its citizens and the economy.
From the control of land tenure — citizens cannot buy or sell land — to
the distribution of seeds and fertilizer, the government reaches deeply
into the lives of most Ethiopians. Once ruled by an emperor who
controlled all the land, then by a highly centralized communist regime
in the 1970s and ’80s, the country’s current government, led by longtime
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, models itself on the highly controlled
state capitalism of China, its biggest trading partner.
Meles,
heading to Camp David next week at U.S. President Barack Obama’s
invitation, will be one of four African leaders discussing food security
with G8 leaders. Although he’s reviled as a despot by his detractors,
he gets a lot of slack from western donors and allies because he runs a
safe and stable country amid the chaos of Somalia to the east and the
warring Sudans to the west.
As the World Economic Forum in Addis Ababa wrapped up on Friday, aid activist and Irish pop star Bob Geldof
urged Prime Minister Meles to
be more inclusive and tolerant of civil society groups. "If they keep
saying 'you can't write anything critical,' they're in trouble," Geldof
said. "Have them participate, allow the pressure valve to come off." More than $3.5 billion (U.S.) in aid rolled into Ethiopia last year,
but it’s buying less and less influence with the Meles regime, which
plays geopolitics to its advantage.
“The weight of development aid in terms of influence on the Ethiopian government has been decreasing and has been on the wane for a number of years,” says Nicolas Moyer of the
Humanitarian Coalition,
a network of five major Canadian aid and development agencies that
works in Ethiopia and around the world. “The increasing presence of
Chinese investments on the private sector side has largely decreased the
influence of the development donors on the Ethiopian government’s
thinking and strategy.”
The Ethiopian government may hold most of the cards in controlling the country’s destiny, but with it comes the responsibility of feeding 90 million people.Driving south from Addis Ababa to the country’s most densely populated areas, that challenge comes into sharp focus. The smooth, black highway that cuts through the dry season’s palette of
dusty browns and beiges is lined with Ethiopians on foot, carrying water
in bright yellow jerry cans or driving heavily laden carts pulled by
stoic donkeys. What’s missing here? Trucks carrying goods and raw
materials, the stuff of commerce. That, says Cornelius, shows how little
economic activity there is here beyond farming. Not only does this
limit Ethiopians’ ability to work off the farm for extra income in bad
times, he says, it limits their diet to what they can grow themselves
since many can’t afford to buy other types of food.
And in the big
picture, it means that as the population grows and everyone’s parcel of
land gets smaller, there isn’t enough opportunity for farmers, much less
their children.“We have to do something about moving people from the land to
livelihoods that may still be related to an agrarian economy,” says
Foodgrains Bank field representative Sam Vander Ende, who’s lived in
Ethiopia for more than 18 years. “But the peasant livelihood isn’t going
to get us there.” The highway winds past a vast greenhouse complex, more than two
kilometres long in all, where up to 10,000 day labourers are employed
growing roses for European markets. It’s evidence of the government’s
recent, and controversial, push for large scale commercial agriculture
that brings in much needed foreign currency. Still,
the vast majority of people remain on the land. The poorest families in
south-central Ethiopia subsist on less than a hectare of land — many on
much, much less.
Thomas Tora, a farmer in the Damot Woyde area, has only an eighth of a
hectare (about the size of an NHL hockey rink) on which to support his
family of six. Even in a good year, that’s not enough to feed everyone.
Last year’s drought left his children malnourished to the point that
they couldn’t stand up, he says, much less go to school — which he
couldn’t afford anyway. He left his village to gather wood to sell in an
effort to make ends meet. Eventually the Foodgrains Bank and its local
partners set up a relief program, and a government food-for-work program
also assisted him and thousands of nearby villagers in the same
situation.
Asked if he would move to an area with more or better land, Thomas,
shakes his head under a tattered ball cap. “I am too weak to go,” he
says, explaining that he has health problems. But among his neighbours
there’s wary enthusiasm for resettlement. “Everyone
would be willing to go,” says Zewdie Zebdewos, the chairman of the
local township where Thomas lives. “But they are worried about the land
and about malaria.” Many people here live higher up in the hills where
malaria can’t stalk their children or their livestock. Arable land in
low-lying areas often goes unfarmed.
Resettlement of any kind, large or small, is a hot button topic. Beyond
the current controversy over accusations of forced resettlements,
memories of the former communist regime’s disastrous mass relocations
are as close as the tractors rusting on abandoned collective farms.
Canada — and many other western donors — won’t fund anything tied to
resettlement efforts or commercial farming.But there is a recognition that something has to be done to deal with
the scarcity of land in densely populated places if Ethiopia is to
become self-sufficient.
“The
country does need to be looking at how it can develop its land, and it
should be making land available to those who don’t have lands,” says
Cornelius of the Foodgrains Bank. “The critical thing is that it’s
voluntary and there does need to be accompanying services provided to
make it viable.” Too often, he says, people have been resettled to areas with insufficient roads, schools and health care. With
land tenure firmly in the government’s control, migration to cities has
also been held firmly in check, observes Moyer of the Humanitarian
Coalition.
“The current system keeps rural populations in rural areas,” he says.
“If you did open up land title, then land would start to be sold and
more families would start to move to cities.” The government prefers
slow urbanization, adds Moyer, who lived in Ethiopia for three years. It
wants to avoid the experience of other developing countries where
migration spawned slums, dire poverty and crime. With such limited mobility, Ethiopians have few options.
“You have a huge, burgeoning population of people who don’t feel they
have any control over their destiny,” observes Vander Ende. “It’s in
the hands of God, it’s in the hands of the federal government, it’s in
the hands of the local government … it’s in the hands of (aid agencies
like) Canadian Foodgrains Bank.” “Ethiopia
struggles with promoting small-scale and community-led development
where Ethiopians could set up small businesses, improve their farming
practices and be part of the solutions themselves,”says Moyer. “Ethiopians don’t feel part of the solution.
The state has always been the source of their livelihood.”
Explore Aid online: Find data and analysis on Canada’s aid and engagement with the developing world at the Canadian International Development Platform at cidpnsi.ca. A few hours’ drive from Shashemene’s travails, the farmers in a
small township in the Kutcha district do feel part of the solution to
chronic food shortages. In fact, they no longer need food aid
The villagers in Dana resettled here voluntarily in the dying days of
the communist era, three ethnic groups speaking three languages, tossed
together in a forest of snakes, the occasional lion, and no services.
Life was very tough: clearing land, eking out a living from nothing.
It’s reminiscent of the hardships faced by the settlers of the Canadian
West, observes Cornelius, who runs the Foodgrains Bank from Winnipeg.
Its biggest supporters are the farmers who work the Prairies today,
people who know something about the vagaries of weather and working the
land.
Today, Dana is a different place.
Cellphone in
hand, farmer Oych Yaya walks along a ditch that catches water from a
nearby river, hops up onto the edge of a concrete trough, and follows it
to the other end, where the water flows into his own patch of insurance
against unpredictable rains: One-quarter hectare of irrigated land that
all but guarantees at least two good crops a year. More
than 230 of his neighbours got the same opportunity three years ago
when they dug the channels for this water diversion project funded by
the Foodgrains Bank.
Today, Oych is earning cash for the first time by selling surplus
crops such as onions, peppers and bananas. He can now afford to pay fees
and boarding costs so his seven children can go to school in Selamber,
the district town. For years, their education was interrupted whenever
droughts made paying fees impossible. His cellphone helps him track
prices in nearby market towns so he can get good prices for his crops.
While
aid agencies and the government take on similar irrigation projects and
promote more productive ways of farming around the country, development
experts say Ethiopia is not making the most of its land. According to
government statistics, 740,000 of its 1.2 million square kilometres is
arable, but only 150,000 square kilometres is being cultivated.
“The agricultural potential is there,” says Moyer. Despite being home
to the source of the Nile and being the ‘water tower of Africa,’ he
adds, only a small percentage of the arable land is irrigated. And
because farmers do not have tenure over the land and plots are rotated
between them every few years, he says, they don’t invest as much as they
could in the land. “Everybody knows they won’t have the same land 10
years from now, so there’s a lot less investment in terms of how to
maximize the use of the land, whether it’s irrigation … or being able to
use your land as collateral to get credit.” In the meantime, Ethiopians find ways to survive lean periods.
“People have been facing hunger for centuries, for generations,” says
Vander Ende. “And one thing that Ethiopians excel in is survival
skills. They know what to do.” While aid is sometimes needed, he says,
it’s “at best only a supplement” to generations-old coping strategies
and survival skills. These include planting “famine
crops” such as enset — often called false banana due to its appearance —
whose roots can be eaten when other crops fail. In good times, families
build up assets such as livestock, which can be sold in lean times. And
there is a strong tradition of villagers banding together to help one
another. There are even specific terms for each kind of mutual
assistance; afoosha, idir and iqub refer to groups that look after
social functions, funerals and rotating credit and savings associations.
Building on these traditions, local development agencies are now helping
women, who often have little say in community affairs, create self-help
groups of their own. Since 2008, the women of the village of Sere
Belaka have been meeting weekly under the shade of a grove of trees
overlooking a spectacular valley, each taking her turn to lead the
group, building her confidence. Each week, each member contributes one
birr (about five cents) to the group. The women, all illiterate and most
living on half-hectare farms, explain that the idea of pooling their
savings was a revelation that has made a sizable change in their lives.
The women have used the money to buy sheep and resell them at higher
prices, fatten up and butcher an ox to sell, and stockpile maize until
prices rise. With their earnings, they helped one mother get medical
help for her son who’d broken his arm, contributed to church and home
construction and invested in members’ micro-businesses such as
bee-keeping. And it sure beats going to the moneylenders. As one woman
explained, being able to pay school fees was the best insurance of all:
The women want their children to get an education, get good jobs and be
able to take care of them in their old age.
“No matter what community you’re in, parents want their kids to be in
school,” says Moyer. “They are limited in their options in subsistence
agriculture. Most, if not all, see the way out through education.”
In Shashemene, the rains Abdala Wahilo prayed for in February
didn’t come — at least not in time. And by the time any moisture hit the
ground in late April it was too late for most farmers like him, who
count on the “short rains” for crops that will feed them until the major
crops are harvested.
“The short rainy season has effectively been a writeoff,” reports
Vander Ende, noting that the season’s crops provide crucial food during
the “hunger gap” between the main growing seasons. In recent weeks rains
have come to some areas, and Vander Ende says that may help some
farmers prepare ground for planting main crops in June. “We’re on a knife-edge here,” he says, “seeing if we can salvage something from this very, very late rain.” There’s
not much they or anyone else can do about the weather, not even the
ever-present Ethiopian government. And the forecast is worrisome.
FEWSNET,
a famine early warning system funded by USAID, released two reports in
April that don’t bode well for the people of south-central Ethiopia,
where so much of the population lives. In the Wolayta area, not far from Shashemene, FEWSNET reported that the sweet potato harvest was a “near complete failure,” food prices were rising, as were admissions of
severely malnourished children to feeding programs and “stabilization
centres.”
“Increased sale of livestock and firewood,
consumption of immature enset and migration to towns in search of labour
are being reported by poor households,” the report says. “Given such
outcomes, thousands of poor and very poor households in these parts of
the region are currently experiencing a food security crisis.”
The second report looked at the long-term climate trend.
For many areas of the country, FEWSNET says, the outlook is good, with
rainfall expected to keep farms productive. That, it says, is likely
going to be needed to offset the problems facing south central Ethiopia
where farmers like Abdala and the women of Sere Belaka can expect a
drier future. The report concludes:
- Rains in this part of Ethiopia have decreased 15 to 20 per cent since the mid 1970s.
- Rising temperatures are making dry conditions even worse.
- The drop in rainfall is happening in the country’s most populated
and fast-growing areas, creating conditions that “could dramatically
increase the number of at-risk people in Ethiopia during the next 20
years.” Whether it’s called climate change or not, says Moyer, the reality on the ground looks the same to the people living there. “Whereas
these regions may have seen severe droughts every five years and
catastrophic ones every 10 years, we’re seeing them sometimes
back-to-back,” he says.
“If you’re going to face two months of severe
drought and a potential famine situation where you can’t access food, if
you have to sell off your livestock or your key household assets,
you’re going to be worse off for a long period and may be even less
equipped to deal with the next crisis that comes.” For Cornelius, that’s where relief comes in. And go ahead, he says, call it a Band-aid solution.“We
have Band-aids for a very good reason,” he says. “We need to cover
wounds so they don’t get infected and lead to bigger problems.
“We strongly feel that providing immediate relief is essential for
dealing with the immediate crisis, but it also makes a huge difference
in the long term. If you don’t provide relief and the family takes their
kids out of school, that’s compromising the future.” For
many Ethiopians, the future is measured by the next meal, the next
crop, the next rainfall. The longer term solutions, are, for the most
part, out of their work-weary hands.
Links to Canadian development and humanitarian organizations working in Ethiopia
There are dozens of Canadian organizations working in Ethiopia. Two mentioned in Citizen stories today are:
Carl Neustaedter is Deputy Editor of the Citizen. He
travelled in Ethiopia on a food study tour organized and funded by the
Canadian Foodgrains Bank. He may be reached at cneustaedter@ottawacitizen.com .
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