By Kulani Jalata*

For the past three decades, Ethiopia has received more emergency food aid than any other African country. Looking at recent statistics for 2009, while Britain granted 316 million dollars in food aid, USAID provided an estimated 575 million dollars in food and disaster aid to Ethiopia. Amidst this constant funneling of large bundles of financial and food aid to Ethiopia, questions about when Ethiopia will not need aid and why hunger and malnutrition crises continue to worsen have arisen. Back in 2004, the administrator of USAID, Andrew Natsios, asserted that,

“While donors can assist, the ultimate responsibility for putting in place an enabling environment that will facilitate pro-poor economic growth [necessary to eliminate malnutrition] rests with the Government of Ethiopia.”

But if Natsios had realized that the very undermining of the nutrition of the poor and mostly politically unrepresented portion of Ethiopian society actually sustains the Ethiopian government, he would have had to reassess his statement. Instead of stating that “donors can assist,” there needs to be a realization that in order to address the malnutrition crisis of Ethiopia, Ethiopia’s political crises stemming from authoritarianism and ethnonational domination must be addressed as well. If not, sending financial and food aid to Ethiopia while turning a blind eye to the Ethiopian government’s policies and human rights abuses is instead consolidating a corrupt regime and also its use of hunger as a political weapon.

Because it was the famine of 1972-73 that led to violent civil unrest and the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime in 1974 and also the 1984-85 famine that led to the eventual topple of Colonel Mengistu’s regime, there is a noticeable pattern in Ethiopia of food crises eventually leading to social uprisings and political coups. Another noticeable pattern is successive Ethiopian regimes’ denial of the extent or existence of a hunger crisis. While recently the UN just announced that 5 million people in Ethiopia will be needing emergency food aid for the first half of 2010, the Disaster Prevention Minister of Ethiopia was quoted telling BBC that although “although 5.7 million people [are] currently getting food aid,” “in the Ethiopian context, there is no hunger, no famine.” Considering this denial is being made at the beginning this election year of 2010, the possibility of political uprisings partially triggered by neglected hunger and malnutrition crises does exist.

Institutional responses in the form of food aid and other assistance from international organizations and Western countries have not and cannot solve these economic and health disorders. If institutional responses from the West are limited to feeding the hungry through the agencies of the Ethiopian government and exclude pressuring for political reform by the which the peoples of Ethiopia could attain political and economic control over their lives, the problem of hunger and malnutrition will remain a permanent part of Ethiopia. In order to overcome poverty and related economic and health problems, the peoples of Ethiopia must be politically empowered and must have a representative, accountable government.

– Read the Full Article (Source: IOYA)

* Kulani Jalata serves as the Public Relations Officer of the International Oromo Youth Association (IOYA).