4.5m at risk as severe drought hits Ethiopia

Abbout 4.5 million Ethiopians could be in need of food aid because of a drought in the country, the UN has said. Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia’s eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while pastures and water resources are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region, and northern Tigray and Amhara districts. Reacting to the UN’s claims that the number in need had increased by more than 55 percent this year, Alemayew Berhanu, spokesman for Ministry of Agriculture, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had “enough surplus food at emergency depots and we’re distributing it”.

When we were informed about the problem, the federal government and the regional state authorities started an outreach programme for the affected people.

Alemayew Berhanu, spokesman for Ministry of Agriculture

In August, the Ethiopian government said that it had allocated $35m to deal with the crisis that has been blamed on El Niño, a warm ocean current that develops between Indonesia and Peru. The UN says it needs $230m by the end of the year to attend to the crisis. UNICEF says that about 264,515 children will require treatment for acute severe malnutrition in 2015 while 111,076 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition between January and May 2015.

The absence of rains means that the crops don’t grow, the grass doesn’t grow and people can’t feed their animals.

David Del Conte, UN chief in Ethiopia

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