The Meles administration has continued working overtime to conceal the currently growing drought and the subsequent hunger of millions of people. Those who attempt to bring the catastrophe to the limelight are duly castigated. Deputy Prime Minister, Addisu Legesse, also minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), appeared before Parliament last week on June 25 to brief members of the house on the drought situation of the country. His speech made it obvious that the Revolutionary Democrats are still trying to justify their failure to address this critical issue on time.

And who is the scapegoat this time? Aid agencies. In Addisu’s second time appearance before Parliament, he criticized Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), accusing them of exaggerating the calamity to the donor community. Government has openly condemned the unfortunate foreign media for their alleged exaggeration of the drought.
 

To begin with, considering the crisis at hand, the figures quoted by international media organizations on the number of people affected by the drought - a cause of disagreement with humanitarian organizations - should not have been the primary concern of the government. In fact, credit should be given to the media for bringing the issue to the forefront, yet it is for this very reason that they are now despised. 

Despised or not, the media succeeded in pushing the federal authorities into admitting that, indeed, there was a problem – hunger had manifested itself in the country, although not on as large a scale as the drought of the 1980s. The government was even bold enough to publicize the statistics on the number of people needing emergency assistance. The media had played its part.

Early this month, Ethiopian authorities announced that nationwide, 4.5 million people and 75,000 children under five have directly been affected by the drought and therefore need emergency assistance. This figure exceeds the previous estimate made by the government by 2.3 million people.
 

The Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA), soon to be merged with a food security programme at the MoARD, had identified 2.1 million people in need of food relief assistance between April and June 2008, when it released its 2008 Humanitarian Relief Requirement. However, humanitarian organisations such as the UNICEF had earlier announced that six million people, of which 126,000 are children under five, were malnourished.

The DPPA, a government body responsible for detecting such situations and raising the alarm, appeared to have been in a deep slumber up to the point when disturbing images of children were broadcast on international TV stations. Neither did other senior government officials, including Addisu and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi appear on national television to give their views on the current drought. Nor were any words of solace and prayers sent out to the people affected. It took the media to bring the problem to the spotlight and stir those in slumber into action.

Once roused, the Director General of the Agency, Simon Mechale, had this to say, ‘the situation is under control.’

To the surprise of many in Parliament - and outside of it - although Simon could be vindicated, Minister Addisu reiterated this phrase. His motive in making such an outrageous statement is apparent: the less people understand about the causes and consequences of the drought, the less they are likely to question the double-digit economic growth that the government has been bragging about in the past five years, in the face of this catastrophe. Its boast, however, has not been endorsed by the low and middle class populace of this poverty-stricken nation who question the very meaning of growth in light of the continual suffering of the majority.

Although the government’s report to this effect are supported by multilateral institutions, such as International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, runaway inflation that is hovering around 26pc has been crippling the economic power of people, who fail to sustain a decent living from their incomes. This consecutive growth seems to be a shield that the federal authorities are using in the onslaught of criticisms for their utter obliviousness to the impact of the drought in almost all parts of the country, and their subsequent failure to address the problem.

On the current drought situation, however, the federal authorities and these international bodies now sit on opposite sides of the fence. The government accuses them of also making a mountain out of what seems to them a molehill – something that can be handled. Addisu boldly stated that they overstate the numbers because their existence hangs in the balance if they contend the actual figures.

The government should focus its energy towards confronting the grim face of the drought, however sluggish its moves, rather than on battling the media and NGOs. It is not a question of statistics on the calamity that should consume energies, but the stark reality of people dying because of it. The situation is definitely not under control. Humanity, and nothing else, should steer our resolutions on this problem.

Talking about the diversion of aid for unintended purposes, while ribs are protruding and children starving, even dying, does not augur well. Let extra funds flow in first, and then there will be ample time to debate on where to take the leftover donations. The United Nations is seeking 325 million dollars to provide nearly 400,000 tonnes of food aid, as well as health and other assistance through to November, to people in Ethiopia’s hard-hit south and southeastern regions, which border Somalia and Kenya. UNICEF needs 28 million dollars in funding to meet the immediate needs of children and women throughout the affected areas and 21.3 million dollars for mitigation and preparedness in broader vulnerable areas of the country. These funds should be secured first, before worrying about a possible diversion of funds. 

Long-term solutions should also be part of the government’s agenda. Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, should come up with appropriate agricultural policy and strategy mixes in a bid to keep hunger at bay, once and for all. In an age of mechanized farming, the country need no longer rely only on the produce of individual or small-scale farmers to sustain its population. Addisu stated, in a previous report to Parliament, that the Federal Government’s ambitious target of harvesting 28 million tonnes of cereals in the first three quarters of the current budget year had failed. The nation produced only 16.4 million metric tonnes. Government’s agricultural policies, so far, have not proved critics wrong as the nation is left to rely on the mercy of nature.

The Agricultural Development Led Industrialisation (ADLI) policy adopted by the government in 1992 is criticised for considering such farmers - often constrained by the repercussions of erratic rainfall - as the main actors in the country’s endeavors to develop. The wheels of change seem not to have turned the agricultural sector around; there has been no significant change here over the past 16 years. This was what Justin Yifu Lin, chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank Group asserted on his visit to Ethiopia two weeks ago.

The Ethiopian government’s five year (2006-2010) Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) envisions increasing cultivated land to 12.65 million hectares. Close to 38.21 million tonnes of crop production is expected by providing farmers with improved agricultural technologies, therefore increasing their productivity. Left with only half the plan period, the country, nevertheless, is facing food shortage.

 In recurrently drought affected areas, nearly 15 million people remain affected by chronic and transitory food shortage. Even in good harvest times, Ethiopia cannot supply the annual consumption for the areas with persistent food scarcity. The Safety Net programme is pursued as a temporary solution for such areas, while relief operations, at times of famine, are the solution for people affected by temporary food shortage. The Safety Net programmes were launched in 2003 and were supposed to last for five years. However, the speed and intensity of the programme execution has not been satisfactory. Once again, drought-driven hunger comes to challenge the country.

The current dire conditions have revived painful memories of the country’s 1984-1985 famine, which killed more than one million. In 124 drought-affected districts of Ethiopia, where about 85 percent of its 81 million people still rely on subsistence agriculture, children and women place their survival in the hands of generosity. Many linger at the gates of some therapeutic feeding centres of the country, having been denied access, as the centres are already full. The picture is grim.

Help must be given to those number of people that the government admits, albeit under duress, are critically malnourished. Bashing the media and aid agencies will not put food into the mouths of the hungry. The government must hold itself accountable for failing to tackle the issue head-on. Only when the Ethiopian people can feed themselves can authorities coin the current drought as being ‘under control’. Only then.