Ethiopia: Despite better harvest, 7M people need relief

By Addis Getachew

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AA) - In spite of better harvest this year, Ethiopia still faces high number of people needing emergency food and non-food assistance, according to the National Disaster Risk Management Commission.

“The number of people requiring food emergency stands at six million,” Debebe Zewde, NDRMC public relations director, told Anadolu Agency on Friday.

He said one million people in the country were in need of non-food emergency assistance, bringing the total number of people in need of emergency assistance to 7 million.

The nation requires $1billion for emergency relief supply for the current year, he said.

The number of people needing food and non-food emergency assistance went down by one million owing to “good harvests of the main rainy season,” he said.

“An appeal has already been made for a total of $1 billion to cater for the food or non-food needs of the stated number of people,” he said.

“The cyclic drought which previously came once every decade is being more frequent in Ethiopia,” he said.

“The Ethiopian government caters for the lion’s share of the requirement meeting the needs of 4.5 million people,” he said, while the UN World Food Programme and NGOs cover for the balance.

According to him, $400 million will be used to supply emergency food for the needy while the balance will go into the supply of non-food needs such as health, education, clean water, among others.

Apart from this, Ethiopia has 7.9 million people who are brought under the fold of what has been termed as Safety Net -- a productive safety mechanism married with development whereby people are required to work for food.