Poverty Reduction

The current extent of poverty in Ethiopia is uncertain. The normal five-yearly cycle of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (from which poverty figures are derived) has not been maintained due to operational difficulties at the Central Statistical Agency.

Schoolchildren in Adwa, Ethiopia © Niamh Burke / UNESCO / ASPnet

The most recent survey dates from 2004/05, at which point the rate of poverty had fallen to 36.5% from 44.2% in 2000, the baseline year for the relevant Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in Ethiopia. In the country’s 2010 MDG progress report, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development confidently predicts that the 2015 poverty target of 22% will be achieved.

The Ministry justifies this projection of poverty reduction from 2005 by reference to strong rates of economic growth combined with pro-poor government spending policies. It concedes that the global economic turmoil of recent years may have undermined the assumptions.

Ethiopia’s new Growth and Transformation Plan for 2010-2014 does indeed focus both on growth and on achieving the MDGs. In the meantime, the 2010 UN Human Development Index continues to position Ethiopia as low as 157 out of 169 countries.

The UN Development Assistance Framework published in March 2011 reports that the pressures of poverty and lack of employment opportunities are provoking a “huge increase in migration in and from Ethiopia, in particular by the youth.”

Ethiopia is one of the world’s most aid-dependent countries, even by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa. More than a quarter of the national budget for 2010/11 was funded directly by donors.

This dependency carries added risk in light of criticism of Ethiopia’s authoritarian government for alleged misdirection of aid for political purposes. The 2011 decision to buy more than 200 tanks at a cost of $100 million may also prove controversial.
Food Security and Hunger

Progress
Ethiopia has a long history of hunger emergencies and the country is closely monitored by international humanitarian agencies. There is periodic tension between a government which is highly sensitive about Ethiopia's image and the global media thirsting for disaster scenarios.

US food aid in Tigray region © Jason McClure / IRIN News

The latest assessment is that 3.2 million people will require emergency food aid during 2011. The drought across the Horn of Africa - which may be linked to the La Niña climate phenomenon - is affecting the southern and southeastern regions of Ethiopia.

In addition, there are 8.2 million Ethiopians classed as chronically food insecure, being unable to overcome persistent drought conditions. They are assisted by the government’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) which provides cash in return for labour on community projects, or food for those unable to work. Both emergency food aid and the PSNP are substantially funded by international donors.

Despite these support mechanisms, Unicef reports that 38% of children under age five were underweight in 2008, still far above the MDG target for 2015. However, a 2010 joint assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme sounds a note of optimism in suggesting that “when new household survey data is available, (hunger) indices will show continued improvement.”

Causes
Most arable regions in Ethiopia anticipate two cropping seasons; the longer meher rains are complemented by the shorter belg season. This profile varies, both within and between regions.

Oxfam distributes food in Ethiopia © Crispin Hughes / Oxfam Great Britain

The primary cause of food insecurity is the structural failure of the rural economy to withstand the highly erratic patterns of rainfall that frequently disrupt this seasonal pattern. Almost 65% of rural households farm plots of less than one hectare, with primitive tools and negligible access to capital.

Although families enjoy lifetime tenure, there is no right to buy or sell land in Ethiopia, diminishing incentives for prudent management of soil and water resources. For example, poorly maintained hillside plots are particularly prone to erosion by intense rainfall. Widespread land degradation reduces yields.

Pastoral farming, undertaken by 12%-15% of the population, is also limited by extreme poverty in its capacity to cope with the increasing aridity of grazing lands. This sector is also threatened by pressure to convert land to other uses.

With 85% of the population dependent on livelihoods linked to this volatile agriculture sector, vulnerability to food insecurity is inevitable. And these structural weaknesses are aggravated by the relatively high population growth rate of 2.6% per annum.

In recent years, a very different volatility – global food prices – has imposed a new dimension of risk. Projected cereal production in Ethiopia for 2011 is much the same as the average over the last five years. The country continues to be dependent on imports and exposed to the latest round of unstable prices.

Reports suggest that food price inflation exceeded 40% for the year ending May 2011, causing serious hardship for poor families in both rural and urban areas.


Ethiopia Food Insecurity 2010. Interview with Roger Bracke, Head, Horn of Africa Operations IFRC

Solutions
Ethiopia’s medium term plans go beyond a vision of ending hunger and food insecurity. Ambitious growth in agricultural output is a key strategic component of the broader goal to achieve middle income status.

Food distribution in Ethiopia © Juan Carlos Tomasi / Médicos Sin Fronteras - España

Government plans describe this strategy as “agriculture development led industrialization.” The intention is to invest resources, not just in the chronically vulnerable households, but also in the more successful small farms which have potential to graduate from subsistence to “semi-commercial”.

Such investments would seek productivity gains through improved seed and chemical inputs, restoring degraded land and creating a rural infrastructure to develop market activity. The government has therefore announced its intention to maintain its financial commitment to agriculture. This is currently 15% of the national budget, considerably above the average for sub-Saharan Africa.

The cost of the programme is nevertheless far beyond national resources and extensive donor support will be essential. The government is pinning its hopes on recent commitments by world leaders to support national food security plans in developing countries.

Strategies to assist the poorest households will also continue to demand generous support. The second five-year phase of Ethiopia’s Food Security Programme commenced in January 2010 with the aim of “graduating” 80% of the beneficiaries of the flagship PSNP. This component alone has been costed at $2.26 billion. A parallel policy of holding strategic food reserves at regional level has been credited with success and will continue.

Stewardship of land has also been newly motivated by a radical certification scheme. In three years over 20 million plots have been certified, creating confidence in tenure and granting land rights to women where none existed before.

Foreign Investment
These plans for improving the average yield and market outreach of domestic smallholders are deemed to be insufficient to meet Ethiopia’s broader ambitions for agriculture. The government aims to meet the gap by attracting private capital to invest in “unutilised” cultivable land. Private capital on this scale can only mean controversial foreign investment.

Members of the Nuer tribe, Gambella © Ben Parker / IRIN News

By 2013, the government expects to have leased 3 million hectares in the state of Gambella and other western lowland regions, more than 20% of the area currently farmed by its own people countrywide. It claims that foreign investors will bring technology, jobs, infrastructure and tax revenues, facilitating the country’s transition to modern farming.

Amongst hundreds of relatively minor private investors, the programme has already secured individual contracts covering 100,000 hectares or more from corporations acting on behalf of foreign governments scouring the world for sources of food. Critics of the policy struggle to understand how a food deficit country such as Ethiopia, with more than 10 million people dependent on assistance, can address its problems by relieving the food insecurity of countries such as Saudi Arabia and India.

In addition, there are human rights concerns which assert that the land is not unutilised and that pastoralists from ethnic minorities are being deprived of their land, water and livelihoods. The planned relocation of 45,000 households in Gambella state is cited as evidence.

Accusations of land-grabbing are denied by the government. “This land is not used by anybody,” declared prime minister, Meles Zenawi, in May 2011. And his government has issued reassurances that investors are contracted to release an agreed proportion of their produce into local markets.

There are plans to construct both financial and physical infrastructure appropriate for 21st century farming. The capacity of traditional Ethiopian farmers to tap into such facilities may determine the success or failure of the foreign investment programme.


Farms are leased to foreign investors, while many still hungry in Ethiopia, from African News Live
Climate Change

Effects
Ethiopia’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions barely register in international tables but the potential effects of climate change on the country provoke anxious reports from development agencies such as Oxfam.

Drought at Denane, Ethiopia © Rachel Stabb / Oxfam Great Britain

Average temperatures in Ethiopia have been increasing at 0.3°C per decade, a trend that will continue, or possibly escalate, through the 21st century. Higher temperatures in this region have potentially serious impacts on the length of growing seasons, the aridity of the soil, the risk of disease such as malaria and dengue, and the timing and intensity of rainfall.

There is also a known connection between rainfall in Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean sea surface temperature, itself the subject of warming. Climate models are inconclusive in their projections of rainfall volume and intensity, especially during the periodic El Nino and El Nina phenomena. However, such a range of influences is unlikely to be neutral and observers are already concerned about the increased frequency of severe drought in the Horn of Africa over the last two decades.


Bob Geldof returns to Ethiopia to see the effects of climate change, from ONE

Adaptation
Climate change will therefore probe the existing weaknesses of Ethiopia’s rural economy, especially its dependence on rainfed crops. Poor households are already at the limits of their capacity to adapt to climate variability.

Family collecting water from an Oxfam well in Hadawe, Ethiopia © Rachel Stabb / Oxfam Great Britain

Renewed urgency of existing poverty reduction and food security programmes is therefore the optimum strategy for adaptation. Emphasis will be placed on irrigation structures and the use of drought-resistant seed varieties. Livestock farmers will be encouraged to switch from cattle to more tolerant herds such as goats.

Climate risk management techniques will also come to the fore and Ethiopia’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) identifies as its top priority the innovative idea of insurance against losses caused by drought. Other facilities familiar in richer countries – such as a network of weather forecasting stations - are obvious candidates for priority.

Adaptation strategies will be complicated by the country’s wide variety of climate zones which include the wet tropical region, the cool central highlands and the Somali region desert. Few of the NAPA proposals have attracted donor support and must await the outcome of international negotiations to establish the new Green Climate Fund.

The government’s emphasis on agricultural performance as the path towards industrialization should encourage all ministries to integrate their economic policies with climate adaptation. The Environmental Protection Authority is the agency responsible for coordinating the response to climate change in Ethiopia.
Deforestation

As much as 94% of Ethiopia's energy consumption is derived from the use of wood for fuel or charcoal. And the expedient needs of poor farmers for land and grazing further undermines prudent conservation of trees.

By 2000 forest coverage had collapsed to just 3%, a major cause of soil erosion and land degradation. The Ethiopian government and environmental agencies have made a Herculean effort to reverse this decline. In July 2010 the agriculture ministry claimed that its target to triple forest cover to 9% had been achieved, more than a billion trees having been planted in the preceding four years.

Ethiopia aims by 2014 to be eligible to participate in the global scheme for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD) which provides financial compensation for protecting forests. This will be a formidable task as the government is as yet poorly placed to deliver the standards of forest monitoring, law enforcement and tenure that REDD conditions demand.

For this reason, deforestation continues at a high rate. Furthermore, the REDD preliminaries have highlighted inconsistencies in Ethiopia’s long term plans. Expansion of agriculture and protection of forests cannot be reconciled with the demands for wood biomass from an increasing population. The recent introduction of plantations of fast-growing eucalyptus for this purpose may not be sufficient.
Rural Electricity Access

The damaging use of wood for fuel can ultimately be addressed only by adequate provision of electricity. Only 2% of rural homes are connected in Ethiopia.

The government’s strategy involves massive exploitation of the potential of hydropower offered by the country’s extensive network of rivers. The goal is to increase existing capacity by a factor of 15 by 2020, enabling export to neighbouring countries as well as domestic coverage.

The World Bank has warned that a strategy almost wholly dependent on hydropower should place “greater emphasis on ... climate change risk.” This would acknowledge that prolonged drought can disable water-driven turbines.

Another fundamental risk is the human and environmental impact of massive dams, an issue which is already placing the Ethiopian government under the spotlight of international condemnation. The controversial Gibe III dam on the River Omo, due for completion in 2012, is one of Africa’s major infrastructure projects and a focus of attention for global campaign groups.

Campaigners argue that the Gibe grid will not reach the rural economy. Investment to drive the transition from wood fuel to electricity would be better directed towards small-scale renewable projects in solar, wind and geo-thermal energy. Each of these has great potential in Ethiopia and may ultimately gain greater recognition in view of the references to carbon neutrality and universal access to electricity in the government’s long term plans.


Ethiopia’s strategy of meeting energy requirements largely through hydropower may undermine the culture of indigenous people such as the Karo tribe which farms alongside the Omo river, from RivInstitute