Global Policy Forum

By Declan Walsh

The "Emperor" watched the race from a plastic podium on the city limits. Beneath him hundreds of poor teenage athletes pounded around a rough track, all desperate to emulate his greatness. Some were so poor they ran in bare feet. But the track was baked-dry, its dirt surface fissured with cracks and carpeted in shrivelled grass. The great man shook his head. The twin plagues of drought and famine had again struck his country. Only a few hours away, peasants were going hungry. Within months millions could be starving.

"Of course this is painful," said Haile Gebrselaisse, the greatest middle-distance runner in the world, also known as the Emperor. "But we are asking one thing: why is this happening again and again?"

A scorching drought withered last year's harvest; now a widespread crisis threatens at least 11 million people. Western agencies are scrambling to help, much food has come but more is needed. Otherwise, aid workers warn, there could be a replay of the 1984-85 disaster, when a BBC report and Band Aid stung the world's conscience into action, but only after a million people had died.

The scenes are painful yet drearily familiar. Two hours' drive south of the race track is a darkened hut where a desperate father cradles his hungry children in his lap. Outside, the parched soil has blown his crops to dust. "We are just praying to God," says Kedir Ido, rubbing the fingers of Nur, his two-year-old boy who has a swollen belly and thinning hair.

But if truth be told, a disaster of 1984 proportions is highly unlikely in Ethiopia this year. Then the vast country was ruled by a Machiavellian dictator fighting a hopeless war, Mengistu Haile Mariam. Today it has one of the world's best-oiled aid machines, equipped with sophisticated early-warning systems, helpful government officials, a small army of aid workers and bales of Western cash.

"We are determined to avoid death and suffering and so are the donors. I don't think we'll see a famine situation this year," said Berhane Gizaw, deputy head of the government Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission.

But Ethiopia's crises are getting bigger and more frequent. At least 4 million need Western food aid to survive – in a good year. The crisis has resurrected an old question: is Western aid really working? Certainly local factors, particularly a spectacular population explosion, are primarily to blame. Two decades ago there were 40 million Ethiopians; today there are almost 70 million, most of them peasant farmers trying to eke a living from ever-smaller tracts of badly degraded land. The war with Eritrea, which ended only three years ago, and plummeting prices for coffee – the main export – have also hurt. But foreign aid also has a case to answer.

Desperate to avoid stark images of skeletal children, Western governments plough money for famine relief into Ethiopia. Britain alone gave £32m last year. While the flood of funds is crucial to staving off death, it does relatively little to prevent the next crisis. During "quiet" years there is not much enthusiasm for development projects – such as irrigation or tree planting – that contain few dramatic images but could help to insulate Ethiopia from famine.

"It's very frustrating," said Anne Bousquet of the US agency Catholic Relief Services. "We could spare Ethiopians a lot of trouble if we could get ahead of the game, instead of having to pick up the pieces afterwards. And it would save our taxpayers money too." John Graham, of Save the Children-UK, said: "If you don't have starving babies you don't get the money."

In official circles there is a growing realisation that the sticking plaster of food aid cannot hold for ever. Last year Western donors pledged to give $3.6bn (£2.3bn) to Ethiopia over the next three years for a mix of emergency and development work.

The only long-term solution was to revitalise the local economy, said Haile Gebrselaisse, who expressed an interest in standing for the Ethiopian presidency once his running career ended. "It is not a solution to get money from foreigners," he said. "We can solve the problem for now, but what about next year? We are a proud people and our country has many resources. We must exploit them." Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, the food pipeline is empty after July.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.