Monthly Archives: September 2009

Do YOU believe every word you read in the press? in blogs? on the TV? How can we tell what is truth and what is stage-managed hype? When you see photos like the one below from IFRC how do you react?

[Photo credit: IFRC under a Creative Commons license]

The following article was on the H-Africa mail-list a while back, sent in by the journalist who wrote it. Although from 2003 it highlights a number of serious issues that need to be considered, in particular the dependency role between governments and food aid agencies. The highlighting in the story is mine.

Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007
From: lutzmuekke@aol.com

I would like to contribute my story about the “aid industry” in Ethiopia. It was published in the German weekly DIE ZEIT. Of course this is journalism, not science. But it took me many months to investigate it.

(Published in Die Zeit, 17/2003)

The stage-managed famine

By Lutz Muekke

The three-minute walk from the reception desk on the ground floor to his office on the sixth floor of the UN tower block in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, gives Wagdi Othman enough time to disclose all the necessary information on the current food situation of the country: the absence of rain will lead to crop failure for the farmers in the highlands, and to heavy cattle losses for the nomads on the plains. Should nothing be done to help, millions of Ethiopians will die of starvation. 42 year-old Othman is the spokesman of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the largest and most important food distributor in Ethiopia. And, to make quite sure that the dramatic quality of the situation is really appreciated, he adds: We are about to suffer an even worse famine than in 1984.

Pictures of Ethiopia were sent round the world at the time, and many people have not forgotten them: children with wide-open eyes in skulls that seemed enormous; apathetic-looking young mothers with thin babies in their arms; rescue camps full of hungry people who had set off for distant villages, following a rumour that promised food

Piled up next to Othmans desk, 64-page glossy brochures are ready to hand. Painting a very black picture, using charts, number columns and tables, they forecast a famine in Ethiopia for 2003 that will outdo all disasters ever experienced, even the famine of 1984. At the time, the WFP reports, a million people died. Presently, almost all regions of the country are suffering gigantic crop losses. In the regions of Amhara, Oromiya and Somalia alone, more than nine million people were in acute danger of starvation. With quantities calculated to the last digit, the press material specifies that Ethiopia will need 1.441.142 tons of food and 75.109.559 dollars in emergency aid this year to guarantee the survival of a fifth of its total population.

Othman, a former BBC correspondent, is currently receiving visits every day from journalists from all over the world in his air-conditioned office, in the hope that they will inform the world of these alarming figures. Their reports are the only way in which the international aid machinery can be effectively set into motion. The media are one of the main factors that determine how many million dollars will be poured into Ethiopia in the coming months. The USA, Great Britain and the Netherlands have already promised extensive aid in view of the forecasts, says Othman. Regretfully, Germany is still holding back.

After a two-day long journey over a distance of 600 kilometres, travelling at 25 kph along never-ending roads and tracks, the rugged Ethiopian highlands drop abruptly into the wide plains of the Somali arid zone. The further we drive into the valley, the higher the temperatures rise. We leave the mountains behind us, a monumental silhouette. The rattling bus turns into the bumpy main square of Jigjiga, capital of the Somali part of Ethiopia which, since colonial times, has been called Ogaden in the vernacular.

Jigjiga is a small town: a few pompous administration buildings, a busy market, shabby hotels and bars and a military station all cemented together by countless mud houses with corrugated-iron roofs. Christians and Moslems have divided the town between them. One group lives to the left of the high street, the other to the right. Military jeeps drive through the streets and squeaking garis, the horse carts typical for the region. At midday, the local temperature can rise to above 40 degrees centigrade. On the outskirts of the town, a few thousand displaced persons, civil war victims from neighbouring Somalia, have found refuge in a tent city in the course of the past ten years. It is a mere two-hour drive to the border. Smuggling goods to nearby Somalia is a thriving business. The military posts that were set up on the road after the 11th September to control every vehicle moving in the direction of Somalia do nothing to change this. The Ethiopian government, bosom buddy of the USA, has sent tens of thousands of soldiers to Ogaden over the past few months to control the 1500 kilometre-long border and, under the pretext of counteracting terror, has carried out military operations on the territory of Somalia, the old arch-enemy.

In the WFP paper, the sterile, brier-covered Somali region is described as one of the areas worst-stricken by drought. 1.1 million people are alleged to be affected. In the vicinity of Jigjiga alone, 264000 Somalis are at risk of starvation, and are said to be hoping for aid. There is talk of emaciated cattle and camels. It says that the present water situation is alarming both for man and beast, because the rainy season has not set in for two years in succession.

Over a vast area, however, there is no such evidence of this. In spite of the dry season, thousands of robust cattle, camels, goats and sheep move across the flickering plain of the arid zone. As if part of a biblical setting, hundreds of animals in good condition and with bulging humps gather around the well-filled watering place of Oman. Farmers and nomads within a radius of a two days march tell of no real need.

22 year-old Faisal Achmed – wearing a tattered Adidas t-shirt and sandals made from car tires – and his two tall, wiry brothers tell us in the singeing midday heat that all the watering places known to them bear water. None of their family members, widely dispersed over the infertile plain, are suffering presently from hunger. And nothing will happen to change that in the immediate future, either, they say, and laugh optimistically; they refer to the stars, from which the oldest members of their clan can forecast the weather. Then they drive their stamping and bleating cattle herd further on down the dusty slope towards the muddy, brown water.

In Jigjiga, the heat of the day has given way to the mild evening air. In the small garden of Hotel Africa, Mohammed Beul is sipping at a bottle of mineral water, Somali music is piping from a crackling loud-speaker box. In Jigjiga, the silent man with the peaked cap pulled down over his face is known by the knick-name of Pilot. Beul does not become talkative until he hears the keyword food aid. Born and raised a nomad in Somalias arid zone, life formerly washed the man, by now a pensioner, first of all into the Soviet Union, then to the USA, where he was trained as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. He finally ended up in San Diego, but visited his old home country from there time and time again. Youre writing about the present famine? Youre in the wrong place. Beul takes a sip of his mineral water. Ive spent the past two months travelling across the Ogaden region. There are problems here and there, but there is no nsign of a disaster.

When a big white Toyota Land Cruiser bearing a WFP sticker stops outside in the sallow light illuminating the hotel, Beul says: You should write about those guys! Two well-dressed men alight from the Cruiser. They drive the biggest cars, rake in the fattest salaries, and hardly any of them even have the faintest idea about the life of the nomads. Beul is full of contempt for the development organisations that have been distributing free grain for years in so-called feeding centres to the nomadic Somalis of his clan. By now, this has led to them changing their itinerant routes and moving to wherever free grain is currently being distributed. Most of it is fed to the animals or gets sold to others. And whats more, my people are growing accustomed to grain as a source of nourishment. The stuff is like a drug to them. Its ruining their diet, because in former times they lived from their animals alone.

Suddenly, Beul starts to laugh: Can you hear that? Your famine is just about to be washed away. Heavy raindrops crack loudly onto the roof of the hotel porch. It rains all through the night, the following morning and for several days. There is not a star left to be seen.

It is raining in Dire Dawa, too. The town, which is half a days journey away from Jigjiga, was established in 1902 by order of the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik as a trading centre on the railway line between Addis Ababa and Djibouti and is now Ethiopias second largest city. Every day, trains rumble at a snails pace along the rusty, narrow-gauged railway line in the direction of Djibouti to the Gulf of Aden. The tracks run directly behind Dire Dawas dilapidated custom house.

On the opposite side of the road, the ecclesiastical relief organisation, Hararghe Catholic Relief Services, runs its dull-looking centre. Dr. Paulo Pironti, a recognised specialist in nomadic affairs in the Ethiopian development workers community, works here. The lean Italian has been living in Ethiopia for the past 18 years. From a small, simple room he uses for work, the agricultural scientist rules, together with the resident bishop, over 80 development workers who work both with the nomads in the lowlands and with the farmers of the highlands. No-one is going to die of starvation here in the lowlands. Forecasts of that nature are dramatically exaggerated, and may, but just as easily may not prove true. Pironti shakes his head. The problem is that many of the so-called experts and politicians in Addis never leave their air-conditioned offices. They havent the faintest idea of the nomadic way of life, and because of that, take every sick camel as proof of an impending disaster.

A renaissance of Islam, financed by Saudi-Arabia

Pirontis face discloses the fury surging up within him. He takes a deep breath, lights up a cigarette and then says, “For over twenty years now, grain has not just been brought here to help the needy, but to reduce the production surplus of highly-subsidised farmers in the USA, Canada and Western Europe. Or what other reason is there for not giving us the money in cash? In this part of the world I could buy twice the amount of grain for the money: the prices are lower, and there would also be no need to fund the cost of long-distance transport.” His gesticulations grow wilder. “Why should the West bother so much about Ethiopia? Because the country is a strategic bulwark between the Islam of Sudan and Somalia and located opposite the Arabian Peninsular!”

Ethiopia too, however, would seem to be threatened. Whereas the Christian orthodox contingent of the population is diminishing in this country, Islam is experiencing a renaissance. Money, coming above all from Saudi-Arabia, is funding the building of numerous new mosques, Islamic schools and hospitals in many regions of the country. The development that official statistics have concealed for some time is now becoming evident: approximately half of all Ethiopians are Muslims.

Reason enough for the USA to pump even more military support and food aid into Ethiopia after 9/11 in order to support the Christian government. No-one bothers very much where these aid supplies go to in the end, Pironti comes round from behind his desk and reaches for the next cigarette. Theres no doubt about it, people are starving here and there is great need. But we must ask ourselves, why that is still the case. If you want your famine story you should drive further on to Mieso. Some of the villages suffered a total loss of crops there last harvest. They are really in a bad way. Thats where the famine pictures come from on television. Thats the region most of the journalists go to. Even the president has already been there for a few hours.

Its raining cats and dogs outside, the streets have been swept empty, and people have found shelter in cafés or stand closely packed in the doorways of houses and under porches. Theres a smell of damp earth.

Bend after bend, the serpentines wind their way up the steep hills to a height of 2500 metres. At a speed of 30, the four-wheel-drive digs its way along the road that has sunk in the rain and mud in the direction of Mieso. The heating is defective, and thick clouds obstruct the view into the deep valleys. Its cold.

Farmer Aliye Mumed lives at the roadside of the village we have reached named Melkahora. The man leaves his round mud hut and hurries to meet the visitors across his boggy field. He is shivering and, for just a short moment, pushes out a hand to greet us from under the thick, colourful cotton cape. Rain is running down his wrinkled face. We cower beneath an acacia. The 2.5 hectares of land cannot feed him, his wife and the four children. The weather hadnt played along with them. Was he pleased about the rain now? The 53 year-old takes a deep breath: The rain is good for our two oxen. Well have grass again within a week. But its no help to us otherwise. In the meantime, Mumeds neighbours have hurried over to join us. One of them says of the aid supplies they receive, We get 10 kilos of corn per head each month. Weve been eating nothing else for months. But the worst part is that you cant sow this strange foreign corn. It’s sterile!

Aliyes neighbours begin to chide: Without any seeds they’d always be dependent on aid deliveries. Aliye Mumed raises hands made strong by work up to the sky, only to drop them again with a helpless gesture: Just look at my field! It is ploughed, its all ready. I could start to sow now! Maybe Id be lucky this time. He falls silent, an uneasy look on his face and, when the rain grows heavier, returns to his hut.

For various reasons, the corn delivered as food aid to Ethiopia is barely able to germinate. Some kinds are generally not suited for sowing, others are from such old stock that they have lost their ability to germinate, and others again have previously been thermally treated. Although the Ethiopian government has recognised the problem with the seed stocks, it is making a deal out of it. It has set up an agrarian package programme, in which seeds and manure are sold to the farmers on credit. The package, however, is of little help, particularly to those farmers who are really in need. Not only do they subject themselves to a dangerous degree of dependence because of the repayment rates, but also because of the seeds.For the seeds in question are highly-cultivated hybrid seeds from an American company named Pioneer Hi-Bred International, which guarantees the yield of a rich crop for only one season. It cannot reproduce itself and has to be bought again year after year.

One and a half hours after take-off in Addis Ababa, the small Ethiopian Airlines passenger aircraft begins the approach to land at Bahir Dar. The enormous 3500 square kilometre surface area of the water of Lake Tana is glistening in the blazing sunshine. This is the source of the Blue Nile. All of the land surrounding it is densely populated. It is easy to see from the air how the farmers put every bit of their towel-sized fields to use. From the airport of Bahir Dar, a town famous for the orthodox monasteries of the region which are up to a thousand years old, a journey of 100 kilometres still lies ahead to Debre Tabor, a small town in the Amhara province of South-Gondar.

This is where Klaus Feldner works. From the veranda of his house, the agricultural expert, head of the project Integrated Food Security Programme South-Gondar for the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), looks down onto his garden which is overflowing with flowers. According to the official version, his region, too, has been badly affected by the drought. The bearded Franconian shakes his head in disbelief after studying the figures and statistics of the disaster that has been forecast. Once again, a few more districts have been classified as nutritionally instable. During the seven years Ive spent here, I haven’t yet experienced a single one of them being removed again from these statistics. Their status simply persists, irrespective of whether or not it has been a good or bad year for crops. In the villages of this region, the occasional single family may need help. But it is never the case that an entire village is affected. Feldner is absolutely convinced that Ethiopia could not only feed itself, but even export grain. This country has huge potential.

After 36 years as a development worker, Feldner is shortly due for retirement. South-Gondar is his last project and his first success, as he says: he has planted a type of grain named Triticale, a stabilised hybrid of wheat and rye. Cultivated at the South African University of Stellenbosch in two varieties suited to the tropics, Triticale was re-introduced to Ethiopia by Feldner, after earlier attempts of the Ethiopian government to grow other breeds of Triticale in the region had failed. In the meantime, the corn with the long beard has spread rapidly in the small fields of the farmers of Amhara, independent of the GTZ endeavours. For Triticale can more than double its yield and bear its own new seed. Some Ethiopian ministers and ambassadors of EU countries have even set out from the distant city of Addis Ababa for Debre Tabor to examine Feldners masterpiece.

Infuriated by the collar-and-tie development workers

To achieve this success, however, the sturdy 60 year-old had to employ quite unconventional methods: determined to avoid waiting for months in customs, importation costs and tedious debates with the government over the advantage of Triticale, he simply smuggled the seeds and equipment into Ethiopia. On several occasions, Feldner was also obliged to argue with the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, as it prevented the highly-religious farmers of the Amhara highlands from working in their fields on countless public holidays. The farmers of the region are only allowed to work on around 120 days of the year.

In his dusty working clothes, Feldner is the living contrast to the men managing the disaster in Addis Ababa, a man who still struggles to improve matters in Wellington boot projects way out in the sticks. He finds it annoying to witness how development work in Ethiopia is becoming an increasingly academic issue. According to him, the number of highly-qualified scientists manning the desks in collar and tie in the capital city is increasing constantly. What is needed, Feldner remarks critically, are people who can still push a plough themselves.

He accuses the World Food Programme of having double moral standards. He considers it to be much too close to the government and also very much in pursuit of its own interests when, at regular intervals that are hardly perceived as such by the people of the world, it announces famines. If there were no more famines, the WFP would no longer be able to finance its huge organisation. They get money for each ton of food they distribute. That is why they have such a vested interest in blowing up crises. Ethiopia, South Sudan and Bangladesh were, over the past decades, an ever-flowing source of money for the WFP.

Without influential friends, however, Feldner would not be able to do a thing to make things move in South-Gondar. One person he knows on his side is the high-ranking government official, Jonas Bekele*. Only one phone call from Feldner is required to render Bekele willing to give an interview. Key positions like his are, almost without exception, staffed by members of the all-pervasive governing party, the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). They are all bound to follow the official line of thought. Bekele, however, says things which one very seldom hears from a governmental employee, and could cost the little man with the piercing eyes his job. The weather is not so much to blame for the present food shortage, Bekele says, but much more so the issue that, having been given food aid for decades, between five and six million people are now permanently dependent on it. That has encouraged the emergence of a decadent self-service mentality among the farmers. We have become accustomed to aid like we have to the rising sun. The saying We are praying for rain in Canada has been doing the rounds amongst the farmers of the region for years!

The government wastes no time with its critics

His staff members chuckle, but Bekele himself remains serious. We have to make it possible for our farmers to feed themselves, the economist continues. We cannot allow it to be the duty of the aid organisations just to provide the ordinary people with bread. The development workers should show them how to bake it for themselves. Over the last 20 years, huge amounts of money for development aid have been squandered. We must put an end to that! Many development organisations make the problem they are supposed to actually solve even worse. Thats because the organisation of food aid, the civil servant proceeds to argue, provides the functionaries with a basis for their existence. A grave reproach, shared by 141 members of the association of catholic aid organisations in Ethiopia. It is assumed in these circles that, in the meantime, one third of the 325 aid organisations registered in the country are dealing exclusively with the distribution of food. The objective of helping people to help themselves, a much-lauded concept of sustainable development in Sunday sermons and in draft papers, would seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Bekele tells us of an enormous surplus of grain that is produced in Ethiopia time and time again and in different parts of the country. He reveals that the last record harvest was in 2001. But neither the people in need nor the producing farmers benefit at all from these surplus supplies. On the one hand, this is because a functioning marketing system has not been established, but on the other hand, because food aid is even poured into the country in good years. Experts estimate that between 20 and 40 percent of the 800.000 tons of grain imported on average each year for distribution are eventually sold at a ridiculously low price in the markets of the towns and villages. No farmer can be competitive in the light of such dumping prices. That is why grain is simply no longer planted in many regions. Instead, bushes of the chewing drug named Khat, with active ingredients (Katamins) that have a similar effect to those of amphetamines, thrive on enormous expanses of land in East Ethiopia, and transfer people over entire regions of the country on the Horn of Africa into a state of joyous lethargy.

The green leaves of the drug guarantee the farmers fat profits, as well as happy hours beyond all care. For the Khat market is growing, both within Ethiopia and on the Arabian Peninsular, and in Europe and in the USA. In recent years, Khat has advanced, along with coffee, oil, pulses and cattle, to one of the most important agricultural export products of the country.

In public announcements and conferences, government representatives in Addis Ababa affirm time and again that the country should endeavour to manage without food aid. But instead of that, they control the aid industry with growing perfection. To the present governing party, the EPRDF, that governs alone and unopposed and has a widely ramified financial empire at its disposal, food aid is not an emergency solution, but a real blessing. The people in power have benefited from the 14 million tons of grain imported between 1984 and the present day.

Huge trading and transport companies that distribute food supplies within the country and are owned by the governing party earn up to 150 dollars on each ton of food. Depending on the degree of emergency which is proclaimed, this means that sums of money often amounting to three-figured millions are poured year after year into the partys pockets. And in addition, the EPRDF uses food supplies to systematically reward its supporters and by doing so keep them in line.

Around 30 percent of the food supplies are channelled into the State of Tigray, for example, the area where leading members of the EPRDF come from, even though it houses a mere 10 percent of the total population and the need for help was only estimated there as being average. A survey conducted by the Grain Market Project came to this conclusion in 1998. It also revealed that only 22 percent of the food supplies actually reach those in need; most food simply ends up where much of it has gone to all along: in places, that is, where the government and development organisations have made long-term investments in staff, contacts, offices and vehicles. The team of American and Ethiopian academics were not able to determine a significant connection between under-nourishment and those who were given aid.

As soon as these highly explosive results were published, the Ethiopian government decided to terminate the research project immediately. Shortly beforehand, it had been acclaimed as a shining example of co-operation between Ethiopia, the American development aid authority USAID, and Michigan State University. As Thom S. Jayne, professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University and in charge of the project at that time, has since revealed, We were individually put under pressure by very high-ranking Ethiopian politicians to revise the findings of our survey and replace some of the Ethiopian colleagues participating in it with functionaries who were true to party principles. When we did not comply with either of the requests, since we questioned neither our findings nor our colleagues, we were obliged to leave the country.

The American cannot understand to this day why his survey has attracted hardly any international attention. His theory is that Ethiopias geo-strategic position has always been of such significance to the West, even before 9/11, that political economics have dominated everything. The Ethiopian government is in full control of the development organisations. This is tolerated by Western donors, who are obviously only concerned that the power should remain in the hands of the Christian elite who are presently governing Ethiopia.

Instead of being concerned with upholding Christian values, however, this elites only objective seems simply to be the sheer maintenance of power. The Ethiopian government generally wastes no time with its critics. Countless political opponents disappear into prison without trial, government opponents are executed, protesting students are bludgeoned, disagreeable development workers are banned from the country and Ethiopian journalists are locked away.

Economist and citizens rights leader Berahanu Nega, one of Ethiopias most prominent members of the opposition, was one of those thrown into prison because of his participation in the student protests of 2001. Nega arrives late for his appointment to give an interview at the Sheraton Hotel Addis Ababa – where a stay overnight costs one and a half times as much as the average Ethiopian earns in a year (150 dollars) - because half a dozen delighted supporters waiting along the 50 meters of the elegant marble lobby have been giving him a warm welcome. The small, agile man apologises for his late arrival, orders some water and comes quickly to the point: Do you think a famine must automatically follow a period of drought in this country? Of course not. There are structural reasons that cause such a development. One of them, for example, is that the State still owns every acre of land. Private investments, such as in irrigation systems or in the introduction of new production methods, are therefore simply not made. Our farmers work the land with wooden ploughs, just as they did 3000 years ago. The average farmer cultivates a mere hectare of land nowadays, and that applies to 85 percent of the 65 million Ethiopians.

Nega gets up for a moment, takes a few steps to contain his emotions, sits down again, then continues: Our government does not want to change a thing. It neither wishes to privatise land, nor to develop strategies to industrialise the country. Why is this so? Maybe its because thats the only way it can remain in power. It has long lost its support in the cities. Food aid from abroad, 45 year-old Nega is convinced, contributes little in the way of solving these problems, and is more likely, on the contrary, to cement them. The donor countries and the development organisations should focus their attention on the democratisation of Ethiopia. A sustainable development can only come from within.

All television teams are taking the same famine pictures

The EU delegation has its headquarters in Addis Ababa between the city centre and the airport, behind the large steel gate of the former embassy of the German Democratic Republic, East-Germany. Although the EU was involved in the compilation of the official forecast of the imminent famine, the people there tend to take a critical stance with regard to the figures, at least as long as no-one is mentioned by name. As one member of staff familiar with the subject matter comments, the figures can only be given limited credibility, since there is no functioning administration at all in many parts of the country, and it is consequently not possible to collect reliable data. The two dozen teams on whose work the figures are based, consisting of members of the Ethiopian government, the UN and development organisations, assessed the situation in November 2002 in a kind of out-of-the-jeep-and-back-into-the-jeep inquiry. Afterwards, the people responsible for it haggled over the details while they drew up a report on the millions of people expected to suffer in the famine. The report also reflected the dispute over how the food supplies handed out each year should be distributed. For months, a wave of support had been rolling for the starving in southern regions of Africa. To be noticed at all, dramatic figures were required.

The representatives of the Ethiopian government and the World Food Programme even argued that the people of the world should be confronted with an even greater number of famine victims, but the EU staff wanted lower numbers. Somehow, agreement was reached, the staff member continued.

Aid organisations and media have one thing in common: They survive on disasters, as Hans-Josef Dreckmann remarks. Before he returned to Germany in 2001, he worked for 13 years as Africa correspondent to the ARD (Allgemeine Rundfunk Deutschlands Germanys 1st television programme). He knows Ethiopia well. The emotive name Ethiopia is an effective tool which can be used to exert pressure on wealthy governments, because many people can still remember the devastating catastrophe of 1984/85, says the 64 year-old. At the time, the Ethiopian government and the international community allowed tens of thousands in the north of the country to die of starvation. That was the first time that this indescribable suffering could be seen from such close quarters on television. These pictures shocked the world, and Ethiopia has played this joker time and time again ever since. It is just as easy for the aid organisations, too, to mobilise the public with the symbol of Ethiopia.

Dreckmann had his last drastic experience with famines in Ethiopia in 2000, when shocking pictures of Ethiopia suddenly appeared overnight on the television screens. Once again, the World Food Programme had mobilised publicity and flown in television teams whose pictures were bound to have the right effect. BBC, Reuters, CNN, and all the big names in the field were reporting. Ethiopia 2000 became a fast-selling item: The editorial staff on the home front wanted reports from their Africa correspondents on what they had already seen on television. The headlines of the yellow press could hardly keep pace with developments. As Dreckmann recalls, however, this was all just happening in the one small township of Gode in Ogaden. But the television pictures concentrated on the issue to such an extent that everyone was bound to get the impression that the whole of Ethiopia was once more stricken by famine. Practically every television crew was shooting the same film of the famine and interviewing the same people. That one isolated situation was applied to the whole country and figures were circulating which told of more than ten million famine victims.

This exaggeration was even too much for the head of the WFP, Catherine Bertini. But her announcement that this was not a widespread famine fell on deaf ears, the catastrophe reports were being broadcast one after the other, and a differentiated version of the story could no longer penetrate the fiction. When ARD correspondent Dreckmann did not comply with the request of the editorial office at home for him to fly back to Ethiopia to get a story of the catastrophe that would ensure good quotas, they simply sent his colleague, Hans Hübner, in his place.

When he arrived, Hans Hübner, now 63 years old and a former Africa correspondent, too, could only find people suffering from under-nourishment, but no one was starving. He reported back to the Tagesschau (the most important german news programme) in Hamburg, but his report did not provide material that was sufficiently dramatic to launch a donation appeal. Without regard to the outcome of his research, the Tagesschau launched the appeal and got donations to pour in, as Hübner recollects. This consequently – caused disagreement between himself and the editorial office.

The Ethiopian government and Wagdi Othman in Addis Ababa, spokesman of the World Food Programme, forecast that this years famine will reach its peak in the months of April and May. They remind us to hurry. By then, the several millions of dollars and food parcels ought to have arrived in the country.

And no-one will be able to blame them for not reminding us in time.

* Name changed by the editor

Lutz Muekke

Suggested Books

• Enough with Famines in Ethiopia: A Clarion Call
• Famine: A Short History
• Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.
• Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal