Africa accused of masking true scale of hunger crisis

In the next few months 6.2 million Ethiopians will need food aid, the United Nations will warn this week. But the country seems reluctant to admit to the rest of the world that it needs help. Twenty-five years since the famine that killed about one million Ethiopians, when Bob Geldof appealed for people to feed the world, and the world rushed food aid to five million starving people, the country still can’t feed at least 12 million of its people even in its good years.

Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi is keen to shift the focus to his position representing Africa in the Copenhagen climate change negotiations next month. He blames climate change for unpredictable rainfall, leading to poor harvests. While in public, they talk up the progress the Eastern African country has made since the 1984 famine, Ethiopian and Western officials privately accuse Mr Meles of burying his head in the sand, according to reports in The Times newspaper. There have been claims that official assessments of the scale of the country’s humanitarian needs have been delayed and obstructed and access to some areas where the situation is worst has been blocked. On Friday, the United Nations will announce that the number needing food aid has risen to nine million. But the Government wants to change the way the figures are calculated to lower that figure to 5 million. The UN and donor countries are worried this will mask the true scale of the crisis. There are also allegations that food aid is being withheld from the regime’s opponents.

Britain is Ethiopia’s second biggest donor and gives the country £200 million a year, but it is now turning up the pressure on the Horn of Africa country amid growing concerns for the coming months. “The Government has just got to embrace the crisis and not be frightened of the statistics,” Gareth Thomas, a minister with the Department for International Development, said on Monday. “It is different from 1984 but there’s still huge need. There’s got to be a recognition that if we are going to stop children from being malnourished and keep people alive we have got to have accurate information and we’ve got to have it in a timely manner.” Speaking before a meeting with Mr Meles, Mr Thomas said his main message was the need for change, and that while food aid does help in the short-term, it won’t stop the hunger crisis reappearing. In 1984, the country’s population was about 35 million. It is now about 80 million and will have doubled again by 2050.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children