The Real Cause Of Famine In Ethiopia - Statistical Data Included

Ecologist, The, Sept, 2000 by Michel Chossudovsky

Having sowed the seeds of famine in Ethiopia through structural adjustment, the IMF and World Bank are enabling US multinationals to exploit the disaster by providing GM seed as aid.

The 'economic therapy' imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in Large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wrecking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people. With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US biotech corporations, which, behind the scenes, have also been peddling the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of famine relief.

Crisis in the Horn

More than eight million people in Ethiopia -- representing 15 per cent of the country's population -- are locked into 'famine zones'. Urban wages have collapsed and unemployed seasonal farm workers and landless peasants have been driven into abysmal poverty. The international relief agencies concur without further examination that climatic factors are the sole and inevitable cause of crop failure and the ensuing humanitarian disaster. What the media tabloids fail to disclose is that -- despite the drought and the border war with Eritrea -- several million people in the most prosperous agricultural regions have also been driven into starvation. Their predicament is not the consequence of grain shortages but of 'free markets' and 'bitter economic medicine' imposed under the IMF-World Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

Ethiopia produces more than 90 per cent of its consumption needs. Yet at the height of the crisis, the nationwide food deficit for 2000 was estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAQ) at 764,000 metric tonnes of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum. In Amhara, grain production (1999-2000) was 20 per cent in excess of consumption needs. Yet 2.8 million people in Amhara (representing 17 per cent of the region's population) became locked into famine zones and are "at risk" according to the FAO. Whereas Amhara's grain surpluses were in excess of 500,000 tonnes (1999-2000), its "relief food needs" have been tagged by the international community at close to 300,000 tonnes. A similar pattern prevailed in Oromiya, the country's most populated state where 1.6 million people were classified "at risk", despite the availability of more than 600,000 metric tonnes of surplus grain. In both these regions, which include more than 25 per cent of the country's population, scarcity of fo od was clearly not the cause of hunger, poverty and social destitution. Yet no explanations are given by the panoply of international relief agencies and agricultural research institutes.

The promise of the 'Free Market'

In Ethiopia, a transitional government came into power in 1991 in the wake of a protracted and destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet Dergue regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was unseated, a multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Project (ERRP) was hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close to nine billion dollars that had accumulated during the Mengistu government. Ethiopia's outstanding debts with the Paris Club of official creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF economic medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straitjacket of debt and structural adjustment, the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) -- largely formed from the Tigrean People's Liberation Front (PLF) -- committed itself to far-reaching "free market reforms", despite its leaders' Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Et hiopia as Africa's post Cold War free market showpiece.

While social budgets were slashed under the structural adjustment programme (SAP), military expenditure -- in part financed by the gush of fresh development loans -- quadrupled since 1989. With Washington supporting both sides in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, US arms sales spiralled. The bounty was being shared between the arms manufacturers and the agribusiness conglomerates. In the post Cold War era, the latter positioned themselves in the lucrative procurement of emergency aid to war-torn countries. With mounting military spending financed on borrowed money, almost half of Ethiopia's export revenues was earmarked to meet debt-servicing obligations.

A so-called Policy Framework Paper (PFP) stipulating the precise changes to be carried out in Ethiopia was carefully drafted in Washington by IMF and World Bank officials on behalf of the transitional government, and was forwarded to Addis Ababa for the signature of the Minister of Finance. The enforcement of severe austerity measures virtually foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful post-war reconstruction and the rebuilding of the country's shattered infrastructure. The creditors demanded trade liberalisation and the full-scale privatisation of public utilities, financial institutions, State farms and factories. Civil servants including teachers and health workers were fired, wages were frozen and the labour laws were rescinded to enable State enterprises "to shed their surplus workers". Meanwhile, corruption became rampant. State assets were auctioned off to foreign capital at bargain prices and PriceWaterhouseCoopers was entrusted with the task of coordinating the sale of State property.