The History of the Famine

The 1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia was a significant famine in the history of Ethiopia. Drought and political instability contributed to the severity of the famine, which is estimated to have killed over one million people. Media activity in the West lead to Live Aid which raised the international profile of the famine and helped secure international aid. 

A food crisis that have been faced by the Ethiopia has led to the humanitarian crisis. Millions of them are facing the shortage of water and food. The statistics that related to this crisis. According to World Bank, current Ethiopia population are 102.4 million in 2016.

The records of 9.2 million people are expected not to have and get the regular sources and access to drink the safe water in 2017. Estimation of 300,000 children will become severely malnourished.

Factors of Famine in Ethiopia

1. Regarding the economy

This occurred because of the population that been arise on the country which approximately 80 million. The international food aid has provided Ethiopia with a short-help, but there are agencies that said food aid has made Ethiopia far too reliable on it and that using money for long-term solution should be priorities. 

Due to the drought, the economy of the country is falling down which is lessened by $1.1 billion each year. Before this, Ethiopian economy has been growing, but because of the famine crisis, other circumstances have happened. 

2. Climate conditions

The major sources of famine in Ethiopia is because of the heavy raining that not stable that they received each year. This include the drought and floods. However, the largest impact is to famine is more to drought disaster. 

Drought are more worst in some of the place that have destroy all of the plantation. Majority of the people in Ethiopia cannot survive and produced their plantation at all. Actually the drought has happened for almost 50 years until now (Aislinn Laing,2016).

According to the World Bank data, farmer’s production which is more on cereal production has reduced by an average of 1 percent each year. This is because of the land degradation and low fertility inputs and lands owners. 

3. Infrastructure

Ethiopian Government already works to improve the infrastructure of the country like builds roads so that they will engages with the food distributor easily. This is what happened in Ethiopia now which they are lack of roads and transportation and lead to this famine and it get into lack of communication of the food distribution.

In addition, because of the poor infrastructure in that country, the government counter back the situation by allocating varieties of seeds such as like vegetables, herbs, grains and many more.

The government also provide the donor-funded welfare program and built the roads so that the food supplies can easily reach to especially high famine affected area in Ethiopia. After observation, the observers see that Ethiopia are actually being no match and not suitable with the agricultural.

4.  Disease

Disease is the another factor that contribute to famine and malnutrition. According to WordPress.com, many of the population is suffer from various disease because of this famine. Adding most of them are onto the number of deaths. Even in non-drought year, the Ethiopian population that die is 472,000 which is comes from children because of the disease that preventable which is malnutrition. 

Millions and more than that are having HIV/AIDS. The HIV/AIDS will become a disease to them. In the large amount of Ethiopian are highly prone to various food and waterborne illness such as Hepatitis A. As refer to Charles Patrick (2014), Hepatitis A is an inflammatory disease of the liver caused by a virus.

There also a vector borne disease such as like Malaria and respiratory disease. A study of Elaine K. Luo (2017), malaria is a life-threatening disease. It is transmitted through bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito. The mosquito then carries the infected parasite and then released it into bloodstream. 

5. Education

Another contributing factor to the famine in Ethiopia is the lack of education. Not all of the people which lack of education is directly related and being causes of Famine in Ethiopia. However, it does contribute. By lack and no education in Ethiopia, it makes the children cannot grow up with the basic knowledge of life and cannot survive and learn for further. Many of the households cannot send their children to school because they not afford to do so. 

Illiteracy rate in the years of 1974, over 90% of Ethiopia had estimated illiteracy rate (www.wordpress.com,2017). Ethiopia country has low amount of institution such as like universities and school which compared to other nations in Africa.

6. Political setting

There are many of wars happened during the 30-year war against Ethiopian military dictatorship. As refer to Patrick Gilkes (2005), Ethiopia and Eritrea have been fighting for claiming the hegemonic which means the rural or dominant in a political or social context. The claims in the Horn of Africa and over “national pride” and territorial integrity.