Fourth Congress of the Association of African Historians

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Previously submitted debates

Land and the Challenge of Development

The Government Resettlement Program

Famine and acute food security crises have been major problems that have brought death, disease and suffering to a large number of people in Ethiopia, in particular those living in the rural areas.  In the last half-century alone, periodic occurrences of virulent famine, accompanied by large-scale deaths, have been documented since the 1960s. But behind these tragedies is a grim reality in which millions of people suffer, often silently, hunger and starvation, and serious malnutrition, especially among children, remains endemic throughout the country. In any given year, under normal circumstances, anywhere up to six million people are unable to feed themselves except for a small part of the year. The number of vulnerable people has continued to grow in the last three decades, and in consequence, the country has become critically dependent on food aid from Western donor countries.  

Food insecurity is essentially a consequence of structural problems: people go hungry because they are poor, and they are poor because of the inability, over a long period of time, of the agricultural economy to grow and expand on a sustainable basis. Consequently, acute forms of food insecurity are a regular part of rural life in particular. This insecurity is exacerbated by environmental vulnerability, high population pressure, periodic pandemics and inadequate levels of basic infrastructure. At the farm level, household plots are small and getting smaller, and there is very little opportunity for livelihood diversification and off-farm income opportunities.  

The government has recently embarked upon a new initiative called productive safety net. Under this program, two approaches are used to meet the problem of food insecurity. Those described as chronically food insecure households are supported by the safety net program which provides access to food through employment. There are an estimated 4 to 5 million people in the rural areas defined as chronically food insecure and these are beneficiaries of a food transfer scheme under the safety net program on a permanent basis. The second group consists of those who fall into what is known as transitory food insecurity caused by temporary environmental and other disasters. These only require emergency assistance which will be terminated as soon as conditions return to normal. While it is too early to judge whether or not the safety net program has been a success, it is clear that the program will not address the root causes of food insecurity and famine in this country. 

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