ETHIOPIA: THE BLACK HORSE RIDER UNLEASHED!
In 1983-1985, Ethiopia was among the many countries, not just in Africa but other parts of the world, which was terribly wounded by the struck of the World Food Problem. Unbelievably, some 300, 000 Ethiopians lost their lives to starvation; women and the children were the most affected. Once again a catastrophic long drought has hit parts of East Africa, especially the horn, due to temperature rise in the Indian Ocean since last year. The rains are falling off-shore and resultant dry air has been the gift of countries in the horn. Ethiopia is badly affected by this disaster; cattle are lean, crops are not yielding their best, and pastoralists are earning little from the sales of their animals because they have been of lean value due to lean body sizes.
NASA researchers have revealed that the cost of the uninviting dry air is due to high energies released to the atmosphere as a result rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean. By the Africa Report, about 4.6m Ethiopians are in high need of food and some 8m more are chronically food-insecure (FAO 2008). Recently, a cry was heard in the International Community that Ethiopia's food reserves are almost empty. This means, 7.2m Ethiopians who depend on government's purchasing power for their daily bread since they are too poor to afford the quantity of food they really require to live need to swallow their saliva to survive. Consequently, government foreign reserves are running at a deficit as more money is spent on food importation. Annually, Africa spends about $20b on food importation and I believe contributes significantly to this to this data.
Ethiopia is running a high inflation rate of about 28% due to high oil and food prices on the international markets. If humanitarian bodies do not respond in support of these beautiful Africans the government might just not be able to use its purchasing power any longer. Ethiopia does not only need food, hospitals and schools are also needed among many other things so the government might just give-up on using all its money on food imports. The monstrous image of the third horse rider of the apocalypse (Revelation 6:5) which represents famine is mounting momentum and lives might be lost wasted without mercy.
Out of over 70m people in Ethiopia, some 6.2m people depend solely on emergency food aid to survive. This means, there is a state of emergency in Ethiopia and believe this is because the government and private sector actors did not respond to the state of urgency in the country. Ethiopia's involvement in the Somaliland conflict may have distracted the government from focusing on and meeting the pressing needs of its people. Another thing could be an unforeseen fracture in government's commodity market initiative. The focus on building commodity market in Ethiopia is swaying many small-scale subsistence farmers into small-scale commercial farming producing mainly tea, coffee, and cereals for export. Though this have a good prospect for the economy it is gradually weakening the local food reserves as the production of basic staple foods may drop significantly as more farmers join the team of commercial agriculturalists.
The question is, will Ethiopia export food whiles its people starve? And how long will it take have a strong commodity market, what will be the plight of many Ethiopians? What farmers do not know is that though may earn a lot of money through commercial farming, their monies will be meaningless so long as the inflation rates are high due to the excess monies government use in importing the basic staples foods for its people production of which they are running away from partly because of money.
Foreign aid to Ethiopia amounts to about $1.94b while Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in-flows is about $254m. I believe with all this amount of money flowing into Ethiopia, government and private sector actors can team up and focus on how to get Ethiopia out from rain-fed agriculture into irrigation agriculture. This should be government top-most priority as its success will strengthen its commodity market where agric products are largely part of as well as decrease considerably any threat of famine.
Finally, I believe there should be a policy that permit some group of farmers to engage in commercial agriculture whether on a small-scale or on a large-scale whiles another group is encouraged to engage in subsistence agriculture whether on a small-scale or on a large scale. It is the surplus from the subsistence farming that enables the rural landless and the urban poor to even get food to buy at the market places. I think the Ethiopian government must know its pressing needs and get its priorities right.
FIDEL Y. TETTEH
Development / Accra / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com