International
Ethiopia 25 years on
Ethiopian Moments
In early April I had the honour to be part of a delegation travelling to Ethiopia at the invitation of Bread for the World and the Protestant Development Service (EED). We saw some amazing projects and had numerous discussions about the development opportunities and challenges in Ethiopia.
On the flight back I had a long conversation with another delegation member, who is sort of the ambassador of the Protestant Church to Germany and the EU, about all the everlasting impressions the trip had on us. We could think of so many and I’d like to share some of these with you:
Primary health care in Ethiopia
Dr Gebreab Barnabas, Head of the Regional Health Bureau in Tigray province, talked to ONE recently about a primary health care programme that has been running in Ethiopia.
The scheme, which started 5 years ago, involves the training 30,000 female health extension workers nationally, including 1,800 in Tigray. Supported by the Ethiopian government, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, UNICEF and other partners, it also involves the building of more than 3000 heath centres.
Programmes such as this help put health care in the hands of the local community. Not only is primary health care less costly, but its impact can be huge. By eliminating the risk of the disease it helps reduce the costs of diagnosis, treatment and follow up.
Hear what Dr Barnabas had to say:
The power of irrigation
Less than 5% of irrigable land in Africa is currently being irrigated, which means a huge loss of potential cultivation and production of food.
But as UNICEF’s Indrias Getachew explains, an innovative scheme in Ethiopia shows how simple investments can transform agricultural production. This is the kind of project that could get much more funding if donor countries make good on their promises at last year’s G8 summit to invest US$20 billion into agriculture and food security over the next 3 years.
Hear what Indrias had to say when he spoke to ONE:
How climate change is affecting Ethiopia
Last month Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, visited Ethiopia, 25 years after he helped spur the world into action over the then famine in East Africa.
As well as finding out how much progress has been made since then, he saw first hand how climate change is threatening the development gains of recent years.
Watch the video:
Africa can and must be part of the solution to climate change
Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, contributed a piece in today’s Telegraph newspaper in the UK:
It’s now 25 years since the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s and the British public’s unprecedented outpouring of generosity to their fellow human beings on another continent. The question I’m always asked, of course, is: was it all worth it, what’s changed in Ethiopia and in Africa as a whole? A great deal, I answer – for both better and worse.
Recently, I was back in Ethiopia, where these two types of change are quite apparent. On the positive front, economic growth has boomed; indeed, next year Ethiopia is expected to be among the top five fastest growing economies in the world. Education enrolment has been doubled, malaria death rates halved and HIV/AIDS is on the decline.
Mobile telephony is spreading (though it would be faster if privatised) and rural roads are linking remote communities to markets and health and education services. Above all, while too many people are still reliant on food aid, famine will be avoided this year as it has been for the last 18 years, as distribution and early warning systems have improved. Certainly, the government could be more transparent, but on the whole this is a country making progress, in a continent that has been doing likewise.
Then there is the negative change – that of the climate. Many of the villagers I’ve met mark the mid 1980s as the moment when they really saw how their weather patterns were changing. Since then, increasingly erratic rainfall has forced them to radically alter their farming practices.
Communities we visited in Tigray have had to rename the months of the year because the names were based on the seasons. They’ve now given up as the pattern of the seasons has changed so quickly. People told us how reduced rainfall has cut their income from farming. This in turn strains the social fabric. Thefts are becoming more common, and the children are forced out of the home to work.
If allowed to spread and worsen to its logical conclusion, the kind of social disintegration we’re now seeing in Ethiopia could have a chilling trajectory. It is all too easy for extreme poverty and climate change to feed a vicious cycle, making communities more vulnerable to extremist politics. A band of extreme poverty and instability across the Sahel and Sahara – worsened by climate change – would be very bad for a Europe just eight miles to the north. It is completely avoidable.
The tension between the positive and negative changes in Ethiopia is palpable. Which direction wins depends on the choices Ethiopians make, and to some extent upon us. And it’s not all about us having to make sacrifices; there are opportunities, too. Whether or not you believe the scientific consensus about climate change, there’s an inevitability to the way our own economies are adapting – and an economic rationale for us to buy into this change.
The inefficiencies of the hydrocarbon economy will be replaced by clean, cheap renewables; carbon finance trading will be a major industry in the near future. China is charging into renewables as Germany has already, with green jobs the fastest expanding new source of employment. Rather than deny these inexorable processes, we should embrace the opportunity they present if we are not to be left behind.
Carbon finance and the market can help link solutions in the UK to solutions in Africa. For example, growing trees to capture carbon could become a new cash crop for Africa’s farmers if the right framework is agreed in Copenhagen.
Investing in agriculture in Africa, both through government aid and private funds, is critical; it can also be highly profitable. Of all our undelivered development promises, the rich world’s promises on agriculture are especially key.
Twenty-five years ago, the story was one of Africa starving. Now, in spite of ongoing food shortages in some regions, there is a new story. It is a story backed by hard statistics, of an Africa rising. The last continent to be developed, with a burgeoning middle class and 900 million producers and consumers,
Africa is where some of the best returns on investment will be made in the next few decades. We must partner as we have promised with these people, for the sake of our global economy as well as our global environment, because in another 25 years we may just need them more than they need us.
Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof on Ethiopia and climate change
25 years ago Bob Geldof, co-founder of ONE, was spurred into action by the images of famine in East Africa that flashed across our TV screens. The events that followed, such as Live Aid, helped inspire millions of people around the world to take action in the fight extreme poverty.
Last week Bob returned to Ethiopia to see how much progress has been made there, but also the challenges the country faces today.
Find out what he had to say:
As world leaders prepare to gather next week in Copenhagen for the international climate change meeting, Bob’s message is more pressing than ever.
Climate change not only adds another challenge for many of those living in extreme poverty, but it threatens to erode the development gains that have been made in recent years.
We simply cannot afford for the negotiations in Copenhagen to fail.
We’ll be posting more from Bob in Ethiopia soon, but in the meantime check out the excellent piece by the Independent newspaper’s Paul Vallely, who accompanied Bob on his trip.
Return to Ethiopia
ONE’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Jamie Drummond on a personal journey
Twenty five years ago, like many of my generation, I was called to action by images of drought and starvation – and by a couple of shaggy-haired, Irish rock stars with whom I’ve now been working for a decade. The Ethiopian famines and the world’s response through Band Aid and Live Aid have shaped the image of Africa for a generation and spurred concerted action to fight extreme poverty. A quarter of a century on, it is perhaps a good moment to ask how the aid that has flowed has worked and how the model of celebrity-led advocacy is faring.
A few weeks ago, I returned to Tigray in northern Ethiopia to look again at the impact of funds raised by Band Aid and the work of the World Food Programme. I travelled through this region in 1995 and visited a village called Daereda. Drought and a desperate population had denuded their valley of trees and greenery; fertile top soil had been eroded by seasonal flash floods. Back then, many of the villagers were grateful for the food aid they had received and quick to thank the western public and a far-off thing called Geldof. But they wanted more than handouts – they wanted to take matters into their own hands and heal the physical damage to their lands.
The food aid helped them do just that. It was being given through “food for work” programmes. Teams of thousands set to work planting trees, contouring steep hillsides to conserve soil and water, digging ponds and building check dams, all to raise the lands fertility. Today, the results are astonishing. The valley is lush and green; the river flows all year round; the land is more fertile and productive.
This success story is echoed in valleys across Tigray. The region receives many expert visitors to see how it was done. And in spite of the images of starvation we’re currently confronted with, it’s not the only positive story to have come out of Ethiopia in the past decade. The country has also halved malarial death rates through widespread use of insecticide= treated bed nets, and doubled school enrolment. Economic growth has been over 5% for a decade, 7% on average for the last three years.
But parts of the country, and region, are still on the verge of starvation. This could lead some quickly to assume that 25 years on nothing has changed. No serious investigation can lead to the conclusion, but it is still not acceptable that 14 million Ethiopians today rely on food aid and that for some rations are being cut.
The answer as ever is complex. Climate change is causing more frequent droughts, impairing rural communities’ coping mechanisms. Not enough has been spent on rural roads and the government hasn’t permitted mobile phones or developed local markets. But above all there has been insufficient global attention paid to agriculture. Spending on agriculture went down from 17% of global aid in 1980 to just 3.8 % in 2006. It’s stunning that after the famines of the 1980s we didn’t increase investment in long-term regional food security and agricultural productivity. The World Bank and IMF even counselled against it as part of their notorious structural adjustment programmes. Tough questions must now be asked about the international development business and how this was allowed to happen.
At last this year the G8 countries agreed to invest $20bn in agricultural productivity. The new policy focus is certainly welcome, though it’s not clear how much is new and it is clear that much more of this kind of support will be needed to help Africa’s rural poor adapt to climate change. These investments must flow quickly in support of nationally designed plans and build up the long-term response even as we quickly disburse the short-term food aid needed again this year.
Twenty five years on, where does all this leave celebrity advocacy? Bob Geldof and Bono for their part moved from charity fundraising to working on debt cancellation and the deeper structural causes of poverty. The largely successful Drop the Debt campaign they supported, along with many ardent development activists, grew into the Make Poverty History campaign and Live 8 concerts in 2005. Bono and Bob are now part of ONE, an Africa advocacy group with two million campaigners around the world.
Because of the strong movement in this country, the UK has now come to a remarkable place on development. Gordon Brown leads the world in his tireless lobbying for the poor; for this, Bono and others praised him personally at the Labour party conference. The Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties also endorse the drive to keep Britain’s promise to devote 0.7 % of national income to overseas development and maintain the push to improve aid quality.
It was in acknowledgement of this cross-party support that Bono also recorded a video message for the Conservatives’ conference. This was no party political endorsement, just a simple way to underline the importance of Britain’s continued leadership on the world stage, whichever party is in power after the next election.
Twenty five years after the Ethiopian famine, its legacy is palpable. As well as effective campaigning groups and celebrity activists, corporate leaders and former presidents are putting their second careers fully behind the fight against extreme poverty. What was once a backwater is now mainstream, “pop” even, and of course some hate that.
But 25 years on, this big messy movement – and, above all, the African individuals and groups who are increasingly taking charge – can celebrate and accelerate success. Next year’s World Cup in South Africa is indeed the greatest possible branding moment for the exciting forward momentum of the continent. “Africa Rising” is increasingly replacing “Africa Starving” as the story.
But we in the development world must learn from failures. African experts have long argued for increased investment in agriculture; their voices were ignored. Going forward therefore we must follow Archbishop Tutu’s counsel – that we always ensure that we are “listening to what Africans actually want, that Africans drive their own development”. Credible celebrity activists can help that process by encouraging public debate about both successes and failures, by backing African voices to lead that debate and then backing out of the way.
Oxfam’s ‘Band Aids and Beyond’ report
Oxfam’s new Ethiopia report , released on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 BBC famine reports, shows that despite some progress increasingly frequent droughts thanks to climate change are threatening the region with disaster again. Drought is estimated to cost Ethiopia $1.1billion a year, dwarfing development assistance.
To address this Oxfam call for an end to short-term responses, such as imported food aid, in favour of longer term risk reduction strategies that help communities prepare for and handle climatic shocks.
The report calls for an end to traditional ‘band aid’ responses and a new commitment to disaster risk management as a means to achieving equitable, long-term development in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia: 25 years on
It’s now 25 years since the world learned of the famine in Ethiopia that was to leave a million people dead and millions more destitute.
In October 1984, the BBC reports of Michael Buerk and Mohamed Amin brought images of biblical suffering into living rooms across the world.
A massive international response was launched. ONE advisor Bob Geldof formed the group ‘Band Aid’ whose single topped the charts from its release in November 1984, and was followed by the ‘Live Aid’ concerts in July 1985. Together these efforts raised £150 million for emergency relief.
The famine touched a generation and laid the ground for the future anti poverty campaigns in the UK and beyond.
A quarter of a century on, hunger is still stalking the Horn of Africa. More than six million people are now in urgent need of food aid in Ethiopia; 23 million in the region as a whole.
And yet, the crisis is nowhere near the scale of 1984-85. Much has changed for the better in Ethiopia, although new threats – especially the effects of climate change – threaten to derail this progress.
In coming weeks ONE will be looking at the causes of enduring hunger in the Horn of Africa, but also the progress that has taken place and potential solutions for the future.
Read our Questions and Answers to find out more.
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The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
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TAGS: Ethiopia, Ethiopia 25 years on, Germany