Responding to drought in Ethiopia

Keeping animals healthy

Oxfam and its local partner, the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, has launched a programme to provide veterinary services for nearly 400,000 animals in four districts in the Borena Zone—animals on which people depend for milk, meat, and income. By being treated for internal and external parasites, herds stand a better chance of remaining healthy during hard times like these.

But already some herders have lost a good portion of their animals. One herder named Dida says 30 of his cows, 50 goats, and a camel died before the vaccination program took place. On the day it’s held, Dida brings 30 camels and 21 cows for treatment.

The father of 12, Dida says his family has been relying on relief food from the government and whatever they can find growing wild that is edible. Still, his meals mostly consist of a couple of cups of tea in the morning and a couple more in the evening.

“When the cattle are good and give milk, we drink milk any time,” he says. But he hasn’t seen that kind of sustenance in months. “The price of grain is very high. The cattle are not giving milk. The situation is very bad.”

Saving cereal

In a West Arsi community a half a day’s drive north, another potential solution to long-term problems of hunger and drought has given some people a cushion against these bad times. It’s a cereal bank—a way for villagers to join together and save their hard-won harvests for a while, allowing them to get better prices and re-invest some of the extra cash they earn into projects that will benefit them all.

Now in its third year, the cereal bank is one of ten constructed with the help of the Centre for Development Initiatives, a local Oxfam partner.

A simple storage building with light blue trim and a metal roof, the bank has earned its 167 members a combined profit of 70,000 birr, or £3685, this year, a small fortune in a region where so many people have virtually nothing. On top of that, the bank still has 300 quintals of corn stored in sacks heaped almost to the ceiling—a buffer against the hunger that is now stalking many members of the community.

“We have a stock in our bank and our members are not starving like other people,” says a storekeeper for the cereal bank. “Thanks to CDI, it has shown us the way, and it’s our responsibility to step forward. Our experience in the last three years has shown us we can make big progress in our lives.”

But this year, with hunger so rampant, the stored grain is also presenting the bank with a moral dilemma: Do members restrict its use to themselves only or share it, through sales, with the broader local community?

“We are confused,” admits the store keeper, and fearful, too, about the future.

Like everyone in this region, cereal bank members are facing the same weather-related challenges to their success in the fields. If the rain isn’t regular, and sufficient, the crops won’t grow—threatening an even deeper hunger in the months ahead.

Learn more

• Further information about the East Africa Food Crisis
• Learn more about the drought in Ethiopia