From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Nov 04 2009 - 18:41:43 EST
Eternal bliss in Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi's inexcusable ignorance
November 2, 10:40 PMAfrica Headlines ExaminerIsaac Ugbabe
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. Ethiopian farmers who survived the last famine are wary of losing
their livelihoods, and indeed their lives, to the vagaries of climate
change. You might even say they are paranoid. “We did not work night and day
before…but we do now,” said Mesele Adhena, a farmer supporting six children,
in an interview with the BBC. The government, for its part, is stockpiling
grain, though it’s been reported these emergency rations will run out before
the rural poor are given their share. There is also a food-for-work program
that, if properly implemented, will keep famine from rearing its ugly head.
Things that obviously have not changed since 1984 include Africa’s misplaced
priorities and its predilection for strongmen. The 18-year tenure of
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is proof of this. Zenawi, who came to
power in 1991, the year of the last major East African drought, has, through
rain or shine, managed to keep a firm grip on power. And even though it’s
been suggested that he’ll step down after next year’s elections, it is
widely believed that, even if he does, he’ll stay on as chairman of the
ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). According
to the Economist, Zenawi isn’t concerned with such speculation, dismissing
it as “boring.” However, a separate report by the Economist on the recent
release from prison of popular reggae artist, Teddy Afro, shows the
government is desperate to improve its image ahead of elections. Mr. Afro
had been jailed on trumped-up charges, not, as might be expected, for
possession of marijuana, but for a hit-and-run accident involving a homeless
man in the capital, Addis Ababa. His fans believe he was locked away, like
numerous other dissidents, including the young judge and opposition leader,
Birtukan Mideksa, because he “compared Mr. Meles’s lot to a brutal junta.”
Yet, securing Zenawi’s position as de facto emperor has called for more than
a domestic clampdown; international concerns pose an equally destabilizing
threat. Backed by the United States, with its anti al-Qaeda agenda, Ethiopia
has, thus far, managed to keep intractable Eritrea and lawless Somalia at
bay.
And still, food insecurity, like Zenawi’s reign, extends unchecked. It was
the great famine of 1972, in fact, that led to Emperor Haile Selassie’s
downfall. Selassie, a direct descendant of King Solomon of Israel, was as
much renowned for fending off European occupation of Ethiopia as for his
deification by Jamaican Rastafarians. He succumbed, some would say, to “the
will of god” when, after 44 years in power, a global oil crisis coincided
with climate change to turn his people against him.
Zenawi’s reign began with drought, and nearly two decades later, this same
scourge dictates his country’s economic policy. The U.S. State Department
believes Ethiopia has the potential to be both self-sufficient in grains and
an exporter of numerous agricultural products, but “undeveloped water
resources, and poor transport infrastructure”, among other things, have made
it reliant on food aid. Far from restricted to withering crops, the current
drought has caused whole herds of cattle and sheep, those “chewers of the
cud” who’ve grazed East African plains for millennia, to drop dead. This,
reports the Economist, will only increase tensions among feuding tribes in
southern Ethiopia, while, in the east, secessionists of Somali ancestry are
also expected to intensify their struggle. Within Somalia, where food aid is
often used “to control the people”, Islamist militants will win even more
recruits.
According to Oxfam, the international relief agency, drought doesn’t have to
lead to famine. If a government invests in irrigation, grain warehouses, and
wells, people will survive no matter how long the clouds withhold their
precious supply of rain. But Ethiopia will not put to rest the threat of
famine till it addresses its underlying causes. A report by Action Aid,
entitled Who’s really fighting hunger?, states 1 billion people are
unjustifiably going hungry in the world today. The report goes on to explain
that hunger is a choice people make, and “not a force of nature.” Although
hunger has its roots in inequalities between rich and poor, says the aid
agency, it is exacerbated by policies that commoditize food instead of
treating it as a right. “It is because of these policies that most
developing countries no longer grow enough to feed themselves, and that
their farmers are among the hungriest and poorest people in the world.
Meanwhile, the rich world battles growing obesity.”
Meles Zenawi’s solution is to ask for more food aid, which, incidentally, is
an industry in itself, one monopolized by Western companies. He also expects
$40 billion a year in compensation to Africa for foreign-induced climate
change, reports the Economist, and has openly blamed Europe for making the
1984 famine worse than it had to be. Zenawi will be representing Africa at
the much-anticipated climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, this
December, and one can only expect him to negotiate further concessions. His
decision to appeal for aid on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine proves
that he’s either a shameless opportunist, or that, after years of helping
himself to the country’s dwindling supply of khat, is delusional enough to
think the brokering of such deals with the West, without the consent of his
people, can continue indefinitely. It will take more khat than he can chew
to ever make that dream a reality, and more coffee than he can consume to
keep him awake that long.
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