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Almost daily the Ethiopian government reports new pockets of drought and famine. Shoa province was thought to be receiving sufficient rain. Yet a recent government study found that nearly 12,000 Shoans have died of starvation. Early this year, a Norwegian-church relief team came upon a small settlement in Sidamo province that was deserted except for 62 rotting corpses, all victims of famine.
The Ethiopian government expects that it will have to provide emergency relief for 4 million of its 26 million people. Even the start of the spring rains may do more harm than good. In parched Harar province, four days of torrential downpours last month swelled the Awash River to 14 ft. above its normal level, flooding thousands of huts, killing dozens of peasants, and washing away tons of the topsoil that the area needs if it is ever to recover.
Last year a massive international relief effort, coordinated by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, mobilized 471,000 tons of grain and $130 million to keep most of Africa's famine victims alive. But, says an FAO official in Niamey, capital of Niger, "1974 is going to make 1973 look like the horn of plenty," and even more will be required. Soliciting aid from such donors as the U.S. and the European Economic Community and transporting it to Africa are only part of the problem. Incompetence, corruption and greed prevent much of the aid from moving quickly to the interior where it is most needed. In Mali, instead of distributing relief goods at no cost, some officials sold the grain to merchants, who then resold it at an enormous profit to their starving countrymen. In Ethiopia, truckers have balked at transporting aid, preferring to haul other goods for higher rates.
Malthusian Future. The region's backwardness and inaccessibility also impede distribution. A third of Ethiopia's people live more than 20 miles from a road or rail track; once the rains begin, the few roads that do exist in Ethiopia and the Sahel will likely turn to mud. Relief authorities are thus rushing to preposition aid before the rains start. But the grain, piled uncovered, is easy prey for thieves, locusts, bush rats and the quelea quelea birds, which can consume up to twice their weight in food daily. If the leaders of the relief agencies try to airlift the emergency supplies, as they did very effectively last year, they will find that the 500% jump in the price of airplane fuel in Africa may make the cost prohibitive.
Emergency relief may buy time for Ethiopia, enabling its new government to make the investments necessary to avoid future famines. The prognosis for the Sahel, however, is much worse. Even though the leaders of the six nations last autumn formed a committee that prepared a $700 million list of 126 development projects, including hydroelectric dams, deep wells and reforestation programs, the Sahel's chances of survival are uncertain. In the past six years the Sahara has crept continually southward, progressing as much as 100 miles in some places. If this is the result of a basic change in weather patterns, then, according to a British meteorologist, "all mankind's efforts to halt the desert encroachment of the Sahel will be futile."