IMPENDING war in Iraq could block vital food aid to Ethiopia, where people are facing a famine more severe than in 1984. Without aid, malnutrition there will rise dramatically, say aid experts, and tens of thousands will die.
Last year, the rains failed across much of Ethiopia. The UN World Food Programme expects more than 11.3 million people to be totally dependent on food aid by April, and says another 3 million are at risk. In 1984, 8 million faced starvation, and a million died.
Brenda Barton of the World Food Programme’s regional office for Africa in Nairobi says 70 per cent of the 1.4 million tonnes of grain Ethiopia needs by June has been pledged to aid agencies. “We need the rest pledged now.” It takes three months for promised grain to reach Ethiopia, and there are no emergency stocks. Worse, agencies have only a third of the special high-protein food they need for starving children.
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The shortfall means that people who rely on food aid are getting only 80 per cent of the normal ration, leaving them vulnerable. “Any break in the food pipeline could lead to a sharp increase in malnutrition,” warns Barton.
Such a collapse could be triggered by the expected war in Iraq. Donors are already sending food aid to Iraq’s neighbours to feed an expected influx of refugees. Aid workers say privately that some donors have bluntly informed them that Africa will get no more food if war starts soon.
“There is no reason to think the flow of food aid won’t be affected,” says Barton. Past conflicts, such as the fighting in Kosovo, had similar effects.
Why is Ethiopia suffering again? Intensive efforts to boost agriculture have increased harvests by 70 per cent since the 1980s. But while farmers in some parts of the country may be producing surplus grain, there are few roads and traders to transport and sell it in regions where the crops have failed. Even if they did, the hungriest people would not have enough money to buy it.
There were bumper maize crops in south-central Ethiopia during the past two years, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, but that food could not be transported to the starving region of Tigray, just 800 kilometres away. Worse still, the surplus depressed local grain prices so much that farmers did not earn enough to pay off the loans for the fertiliser they needed to grow the surplus, so they may not bother trying again.