Ethiopia Faces Famine Again

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

As Ethiopians struggle to feed themselves amid a high food prices, fuel costs and the worst famine in 25 years the government in Addis Adiba raised the military budget by $50 million.

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As I eat my breakfast of lentils, eggs, and a small cup of strong coffee in a café in Ethiopia’s eastern town of Harar, old men and children linger at the entrance, trying to catch the gaze of the mostly clean cut, well-dressed patrons. When their eyes meet, the beggars extend a hand or put their fingers to their mouths to communicate their hunger.

As soon as I lean back in my chair after eating, two boys of about eight years old rush to my table and point to the half eaten baguette on my plate. I tell them to take it and one snatches it away. Immediately, the two are entangled in struggle, swinging punches at each other over a piece of bread. As the two scuffle, a waiter rushes them out onto the street. The breadless child shouts faranji, faranji—white man, white man—in the direction of our table in a plea for justice, but the other child escapes with the bread, leaving him in tears.

When I last came to Ethiopia three years ago, people were shocked and
insulted when I told them that most Americans associate Ethiopia with
starvation and hunger. To them, their country’s reputation should rest
on the fact that it defeated the would-be colonizers of Mussolini’s
Italy or the fact that their kingdom of Aksum, which started in the
first millennium AD was one of the most powerful kingdoms in the
ancient world. A famine that occurred over twenty years ago in one
part of the country hardly deserved to be remembered.

But things have changed. Now, people often talk about the looming
threat of hunger in Ethiopia—the food security in their country is the
worst its been in 25 years. The global rise in food and fuel prices
has pushed Ethiopia into a downward spiral of rising food costs and
the extremely poor are finding it harder and harder to eat. According
to the Ethiopian English language weekly The Reporter, the UN food
agency recently announced that it needed USD 222 million to avert a
major food crisis in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government and aid
agencies estimate that 4.6 million people in the country need around
510,000 tons of cereals to meet emergency food assistance needs until
November 2008 and another 8 million people are chronically food
insecure. So far, only 30 percent of the required food aid is
available or has been pledged.

In Awadia, in the eastern Oromia state, my friend Ibsa, a 23-year-old
law student, tells me apologetically that his family can no longer
afford meat when he invites me over for lunch. The cost of a goat, he
says, has gone from 15 USD to 45-50 USD in the past year. Their staple
food, sorghum, has tripled in price, going from 0.25 USD per kilogram
to 0.80 USD per kilogram. The cost of a piece of bread—which I
regularly see people eating with nothing but tea—has doubled.

“People are spending all of their money on food now,” Ibsa tells me as
we eat their usual meal of pasta and potatoes. “We used to be able to
save a little bit, but now we use it all to feed ourselves.”

“People in rural areas are moving to the city because they can’t eat,”
he says. “People who were farmers are cleaning roads and hauling waste
to make money.”

As I sit and talk with him and his friends, everyone is in agreement
that the main cause of the food crisis has little to do with Ethiopia
and more to do with rising fuel prices around the world. In Ethiopia,
a bus ride costs around three times what it did one year ago and more
gas stations seem to have no fuel than those that do. But they don’t
stop short of blaming the government for allowing them to get into the
situation their country is in.

“The government is spending its money on the military to fight wars in
Somalia and Eritrea,” said a 19-year-old student of rural development
named Mohammed. Just a week after appealing for international aid,
Ethiopia increased its military budget by $50 million, bringing it to
a total of $400 million.

Mohammed adds that the problem has been impacted by the impoverishment
of small farmers, which are the majority of the country: 85% of
Ethiopians make their money from agriculture. “The government should
be spending its money assisting people and giving farmers subsidies so
they can continue to produce.” He says that the country’s free market
policies have made it harder for small farmers to survive—the average
ox-plowing farmer can’t compete on the global market. “The rural
peasant can’t harvest his own land anymore because of lack of income,”
he says. “So many farmers moved close to the cities to work other
people’s land for $1 a day.” He added that since food prices began to
rise a year ago, their wages have gone up to $2 to $2.50 a day.

He also blamed the government for not intervening when middle men
horde food crops to create false surpluses and raise food costs, a
strategy that many say contributed to Ethiopia’s last famine, though
it’s not clear whether it actually contributes to the current crisis
in any way.

Mohammed’s brother Nabil argues that the Ethiopian government is
taking positive steps to avoid a more extreme crisis. To avoid what
many analysts point to as a major cause for the current rise in food
and fuel prices—the large-scale use of crops like corn for the
production of fuel instead of food—he says the Ethiopian government
has prohibited the use of food crops for fuel.

The government has also taken short-term measures to soften the impact
of the food crisis. According to The Reporter, the government has
spent USD 38 million to subsidize wheat and USD 366 million to
subsidize fuel.

But these measures seem unlikely to avert what might become a more
serious disaster. As I walk with Ibsa’s father to his field—down a
stony road that winds all the way to Mogadishu—he tells me that, God
willing, he’ll come back with something to sell today. He left his
house without eating breakfast and when we get to his field he fills
his mouth with khat—a stimulant leaf that raises spirits and reduces
hunger. As we slink between stalks of corn, he laments the fact that
there isn’t enough rain and grumbles on about his economic woes. All
he can bring back is a small sack of beans for his family to eat, but
nothing to sell.

He’s being hit by the double curse that is hitting Ethiopia this
harvest season: not only is the world in a food crisis, but large
parts of Ethiopia are suffering a drought. This means that people who
rely on subsistence agriculture—typically the poorest of the poor—are
stuck between two dangerous realities: food costs that are rising
beyond there means and little or none of their own crops to carry them
through the season.

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