It wasn’t famine that killed Jamal Ali’s mother. She died in a cholera
outbreak that swept through their Ethiopian village when at last the rains handouts in a food distribution centre in Harbu, Amhara, His prematurely
aged face, hollow with hunger, creases further
when asked about this unwelcome return.
“It is a very bitter feeling. No one likes this begging. I
am ashamed,” he said.
Up a steep, dusty track from Harbu to Chorisa village the tiny, duncoloured
terraced fields bear witness to the third poor harvest in a row. This
village is supposed to be an aid showpiece but even here fields of failed
cereal crops are being turned over to lean-looking cattle.
A villager strips an ear of the cereal crop tef and cups the inedible seed
in her hand for a moment before casting into a relentlessly sky. It’s not
that the rains didn’t come, she said — they came just at the wrong time. The
field was supposed to yield 500 kilograms of cash crop; now it might just
save a few cows from starvation.
The UN warns that 6.2 million Ethiopians will need some sort of food aid in
the coming months. The Government also seems highly sensitive to the idea
that it needs help. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister, would rather the world
took notice of his position representing Africa in the climate change
negotiations next month than his country’s never-ending dependency on food
aid.
In Addis Ababa Ethiopian and Western officials voice disapproval of
doom-laden reports that fail to acknowledge the progress being made, or the
differences in scale between the famine of 1984, which killed a million
people, and the situation today.
In private they acknowledge that Mr Meles and his Government are
deliberately frustrating and delaying official assessments of the scale of
the country’s humanitarian needs and blocking access to some areas where the
situation is worst.
The latest UN estimate, to be released this Friday, is due to revise its
figure upwards to nine million for those who will need help. Arguing that
the definition of those in need is too broad — it includes those who are in
a position to sell assets to buy food — the Government wants to change the
way the figures are calculated to reduce that figure to 5 million.
Donor countries and the UN fear that counting only the truly desperate is a
ploy that risks understating the true scale of the crisis. There are also
allegations that food aid is being withheld from the regime’s opponents.
Criticism of Ethiopia has been muted by its success in improving local
healthcare and expanding education, alongside its strategic importance in
the fight against Islamic extremism in the Horn of Africa. Britain, which
gives the country £200 million a year, and is Ethiopia’s second-largest
bilateral donor, is stepping up the pressure on what was once regarded as
its showpiece partner in Africa, amid growing concerns about what could
happen in the coming months.
“The Government has just got to embrace the crisis and not be frightened of
the statistics,” Gareth Thomas, a minister with the Department for
International Development, said yesterday. “It is different from 1984 but
there’s still huge need. There’s got to be a recognition that if we are
going to stop children from being malnourished and keep people alive we have
got to have accurate information and we’ve got to have it in a timely
manner.”
Speaking before a meeting with Mr Meles, Mr Thomas said that he also
intended to raise credible reports that aid was being withheld from
opponents, but insisted he was satisfied that British aid was getting
through. His main message, however, was that the Government had not yet
grasped the urgent need for reform. The population, about 35 million in
1984, is now about 80 million and will have doubled again by 2050. At the
same time, according to some estimates, most Ethiopian agriculture is still
less productive than that of medieval England.
Mr Meles blames climate change for the erratic rainfall that has led to
three successive poor harvests. The state’s ownership of land and its
failure to provide seeds and fertiliser is at least as a big a factor,
according to observers.
Similarly, the Government has overseen the building of an impressive road
network — but in the absence of a thriving private sector and a more
liberalised economy the traffic, other than convoys of aid vehicles, is
light.
Two million Ethiopians a year are moving into cities as pressure on the land
and education increase, a movement that threatens to overwhelm the state’s
efforts to provide housing and jobs.
More than half of Britain’s annual aid budget of £117 million goes on
helping to fund work schemes that keep 7.5 million Ethiopians out of the
food distribution centres. With less than 5 per cent of the population
becoming fully self-reliant in most areas each year, the dependency on
foreign aid threatens to increase not diminish.
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