Famine in the Horn of Africa is an emotive issue for those who can recall the 1984/85 catastrophe, who remember the disturbing TV pictures of emaciated, ghost-like children and the record-breaking relief donations of Bob Geldof’s Live Aid.
So much so that this week’s warning by Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, that an even bigger disaster may be looming, will provoke in many a mixture of alarm and despair. How can this possibly be happening all over again? And what is being done to stop it?
A famine affecting up to 15-million Ethiopians by early next year is possible because, in the first place, the twice-yearly rains have largely failed and home-produced food supplies are running low. Even some drought-resistant cash crops have been lost.
The Red Cross has launched an appeal to help 120 500 people at immediate risk. The United Nations World Food Programme is also urgently seeking more donations.
Ethiopia is especially vulnerable to such emergencies since it remains a poor, predominantly agricultural economy where 80% of its 67-million people work on the land and the population is rising by 2,6% annually despite a one in 10 infant mortality rate.
Ethiopia is also a typical victim of the sort of global trade protectionism symbolised by Europe’s common agricultural policy and decried by British Prime Minister Tony Blair in his row with France’s President Jacques Chirac at the recent Brussels summit.
Even while European Union and United States tariffs have remained in place, coffee, Ethiopia’s main export commodity, has fallen sharply in price. Ethiopia has also suffered in recent years from inflexible International Monetary Fund budgetary strictures and from debt: an estimated 10% of all government revenues go to servicing loan repayments.
On top of all this, its senseless border conflict with Eritrea, in remission but not completely resolved, has inhibited economic growth and even now obstructs famine relief routes.
In some ways, Ethiopia is a better organised, more responsibly run country than it was 18 years ago. International awareness of its problems, and overall ability to respond, is certainly greater than it was then.
Britain, for example, has already sent 12-million pounds in additional food aid. But all that is of scant comfort to today’s starving Ethiopian children and to those who had hoped that such horrors belonged to the past.– (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002