Eternal bliss in Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi's inexcusable ignorance

Echoing the Ethiopian government’s recent call for food aid, British diplomat, Paddy Ashdown, has requested the international community’s urgent assistance in preventing a looming humanitarian crisis. Reuters reports that 160,000 tons of food are required if the devastating effects of poor rainfall are to be avoided. According to the Economist magazine, this year has seen the worst drought in East Africa since possibly 1991. Production of Kenya’s staple crop, maize, is expected to fall by a third, with subsistence farmers suffering the most. In several parts of the country, villagers are already dependent on monthly government rations of maize-meal and cooking oil. Somalia, faced with attrition from an escalating civil war, is now also considering the daunting prospect of supplying emergency food supplies to about 3.6 million hungry people. Yet, it is Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, that is most susceptible to climate change, and, confronting the specter of famine, will have to ask itself why it is once again in this perilous situation. Paddy Ashdown, speaking to Reuters about the possibility of 6.2 million Ethiopians starving to death, said, “We can prevent this situation getting to much worse proportions.” Although the government’s appeal for aid coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of over 1million Ethiopians, Ashdown claims such a doomsday scenario is less likely in the twenty-first century. “A number of factors are not in place that were in place then. There was a civil war, we didn't have the institutions we have now to deal with problems, and we reacted late.” Although agriculture remains the mainstay of Ethiopia’s economy, and most farmers continue to employ outmoded practices, the country is better prepared to avert famine than it was 25 years ago. And, thanks to the well-publicized Band Aid and USA for Africa campaigns in the 1980s, the world is much more aware. According to the U.S. State Department, agriculture is responsible for more than 80 percent of Ethiopia’s exports and provides jobs for 85 percent of its population. Coffee production is the country’s largest source of foreign reserves, and, unsurprisingly, is closely monitored by the government. Other important agricultural exports include animal skins, pulses, and “khat”, a 6-12 foot flowering shrub whose leaves are chewed for their mind-altering effects.