In 2011, East Africa was hit by the worst drought in over 60 years. A new report looks back at our emergency response programme in Ethiopia at this time.
Below is an excerpt from this report.
Every year, millions of people in rural Ethiopia are in need of emergency support in the form of food aid, nutrition support, health, water supply and sanitation, shelter and other emergency inputs and over 7 million are included in the annual Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). Even in times of good harvest, Ethiopia struggles to feed its population, with pockets of acute malnutrition regularly emerging due to periodic food shortages and the high burden of disease, especially in malaria endemic areas.
This evaluation has focused on emergency response projects implemented between March and December 2011. The situation in the Horn of Africa was alarming in 2011 as it was hit by one of the worst droughts in 60 years. FEWSNET reported the need for humanitarian assistance for more than 11.5 million people in the sub-region as emergency levels of acute malnutrition were reached (OCHA, 20 July 2011). The Revised Humanitarian Requirements Document launched by the FDRE on 11 July 2011 reported the requirement of relief food assistance during July to December 2011 for over 4.5 million people, which called for an additional USD 398.4 million in humanitarian funding to meet food and non-food needs in Ethiopia. The situation was further aggravated by the high general inflation level, extremely high food prices and average to below-average livestock prices and wages.