By Woubishet Sisay – In his speech at the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the AU, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed urged all AU member states to struggle for food security and peace. He also stated “Our laser focus on wheat productivity is bearing fruit. And our ambition to begin exporting wheat this year has already materialized; a great achievement for Ethiopia and even greater achievement for our continent.
The speech comes right after the deadly drought in Oromia Regional state of Borena Zone gone viral and the issue was exposed and attracted both national and international media including supporting evidences of horrific and graphic images of both human and livestock cause by the drought that was going on for about two years now.
The ambitious plan of wheat export
In need of ensuring food security and perhaps tap the gap of wheat shortage created due to he war between Russia and Ukraine, PM Abiy Ahmed’s plan to mass produce wheat and export up to 52 million quintals of wheat, exclusively using irrigation program and rain fed agriculture was launched in last year.
Ethiopia needs 97 million quintals of wheat for local consumption per annum and the country costs 700 million USD up to one billion USD annually to import wheat. He recently said, “We have fulfilled what we promised and we have made Ethiopia’s wheat export dream real.” on the occasion of the launch of the program.
Wheat Export National Committee Coordinator Ambassador Girma Birru on 16th of February said “Ethiopia has the capacity to export over 32 million quintals wheat after quenching domestic consumption.” Also Ethiopia officially launched a national wheat export program to its neighbors Djibouti and Kenya in February 2023.
The drought
Whether intentionally ignored or not, the Ethiopian Government may have been afraid of the image it gives to the international community and facing questions such as how this damage was made and left un attended from a country boasting about a massive plan of exporting wheat. The tragedy did not caught the attention of all media controlled by the government till it went out of control, when horrific images of dead cattle lying all over the place and people waiting the inevitable due to starvation start to avail.
Within the same time period the government was intensifying its plan to produce wheat for export and allocate resources and inputs, near to minion Borena pastoralists were experiencing a severe drought. As a result, according to government data itself, around 3 million livestock population has already been perished to date.
During all this time victims of the tragic draught the Borena pastoralists got little or no attention at all. To emphasize this, a rapid assessment by FAO in October 2021 indicated “a delayed start to the rainy season.
This marked the third consecutive poor rainfall season resulting in loss of assets and severe food insecurity. Borena is one of the lowland areas of Ethiopia that have historically faced severe drought and the resilience of communities has been seriously tested. Households are yet to fully recover from the impact of the back-to-back droughts which have also been exacerbated by desert locust infestations in ten woredas.
In the same assessment report the zone’s Disaster Risk Management Office indicated that “Nearly 85,000 cattle deaths are reported affecting the livelihood of more than 32,000 families. The chronic shortage of water and pasture forced many to move far from their usual migration route.”
Despite these warnings made almost a year and a half ago, the government of Ethiopia neither acted upon it immediately in all its capacity nor called for international aid. Otherwise this catastrophe wouldn’t have happened. Now everybody is crying over spilt milk. The inaction and as a result the loss of three million cattle for a pastoralist community, whose main source of income and source of food as a community and as a country, within such a period is none other than negligence or simply not to harm its image of prosperity plan.
IDPs
As per DTM latest National Displacement Report (June/July 2022), “2.72 million IDPs have been identified across 11 regions in Ethiopia”, that number is already expected to rise over 3 mln, considering the Borena pastoralists already displaced due to the drought and almost 800,000 Borenas in need of emergency food assistance as of today. This means at least that much people need emergency food aid.
Inflation
Ethiopia’s general inflation rate decreased to 33.8 percent in December 2022 from 37.2 percent in May 2022, one of the highest levels in recent years. Compared to other basic goods, food price is relatively high. As of Dec 1, 2022 wheat price was USD 0.81 / kg. Although federal government and regional administrations have been implementing different solutions to control inflation, the results remain the same so far.
In conclusion
A mass production plan to export wheat is a healthy plan especially for an African country that is repeatedly hit by drought and hunger. The irony is that if a government is working towards food security for its people, how come a particular community that is part and parcel of the entire population, hard hit by drought and in need of emergency food assistance be left out? Or is the food security plan is meant for other countries that the locally produced grain is sold to, while our own people and livestock in millions are dying?
I cannot find any answer to the failure of the Ethiopian government and the regional administration not to act on the problem till it rises to this magnitude, despite a series of warnings from the concerned international agencies. And now it looks like the government itself is caught by surprise after the tragedy attracted almost all local and global media and humanitarian aid organizations. For me It is too little too late.
The enormous loss cannot be reversed and no excuses can justify this crime when it was at least with in all the capacity and capability of the government. The first priority for the Government should have been internally ensuring food security and then building the capacity to avert predictable disaster such as this and cope with it strikes. By no means have allocating resources and working towards being one of wheat exporter countries become a priority sending a wrong message to the world as well as exposing the needy pay unnecessary price.