How Ethiopia can tackle famine

Ethiopia is a prime example: government is mainly responsible for the repeating disasters.

In 1975, the socialist dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam nationalised all rural land in Ethiopia, disrupting complex and troubled imperial tenure as well as evolved customary land tenure.

The stated aim was to seize land from exploitative owners, provide farmers with rights to use land, create agricultural cooperatives to feed the country, and keep people out of cities.

It failed. Exploitation was traded for oppression.

Without incentives to improve the land, output fell sharply and trade was outlawed.

Under Mengistu, farmers were not allowed to put crops aside for the bad times, nor money from their sales.

Entrepreneurs were not allowed to move food to areas where it was most needed.

These were all considered anti-social capitalist practices.

When drought struck in 1983, as it does periodically, millions were unable to get enough food and many died.

Has the government of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister since 1991, learnt the lessons of 1983?

Meles’s government has hardly changed the Mengistu policy of government ownership of land.

Under the 1995 Constitution, farmers continue to have use rights but not ownership rights.

They cannot, therefore, mortgage their land, so they cannot securitise loans for inputs to raise yields (seed, fertiliser, pesticides, irrigation....), hence the interest they are charged is much higher.

A host of ill consequences follow: families must deplete their limited savings or sell other property to survive; continuous subdivision leads directly to environmental degradation and lower crop yields which, of course, worsen hunger.

And, finally, efficient farmers are not allowed to buy property and build larger and more productive farms.