21 years on, fear of famine still stalks Ethiopia

A row of mud shacks stands there now, but Ayalew Ararsew remembers when there was a sea of aid agency tents, crammed with the hungry and the dying.

"So many people could not have proper burials," the elderly man said, gesturing at a field near Korem in Ethiopia's northern region of Tigray.

"Fifty people would die at one time, or seventy. Labourers hired by the government buried them all."

Mr Ararsew was here 21 years ago when the BBC reporter Michael Buerk and cameraman Mohamed Amin discovered a "biblical" famine on the plains outside the town. Their coverage horrified viewers and galvanised Bob Geldof into writing the Band Aid single, and launching Live Aid the following summer.

Two decades on, no one in Korem seems to have heard of Geldof, and they certainly know nothing of the concerts this weekend. Their concern is simply to eke out a living.

"I am hungry," said Alganesh Asefa, a mother of three, pressing her stomach with long fingers dyed black with henna. "I have eaten nothing today."

Trucks from aid agencies bearing sacks of grain still come to the town, and families gather to await their share, but food is still scarce.

Despite donations that saved millions of lives in the 1980s, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. Even in a normal year 5 million people face the risk of starvation.

Most of the children in Korem eat just once a day, and their parents, who remember the great famine of 1984-85, are stalked by a fear that a catastrophe like that could happen again.

Back then, Mrs Asefa knew disaster was coming when the rains failed.

"There was only one day of rain. We planted our crops in the dry soil and hoped for the best. But there was no rain. There was no food in anyone's house, so we came to the town [of Korem] to get food."

Aid agency rations kept her alive, but failed to save her two-year-old son, Nuguse, her firstborn.

Mrs Asefa earns around 60 Ethiopian birr a month (about £4) for weeding her neighbours' fields. She has a small plot of land but cannot afford oxen to plough it. So she rents it out in return for a share of the harvest.

"Now I am old and weak," said Mrs Asefa, in her 50s. "But I am the only person in my family who can work."

On a typical day, she and her children will get by on a single meal of lentil paste scooped up with injera, the flat bread made from Ethiopia's staple grain, teff.

A fundamental problem for the country is that its northern highlands, farmland which was once fertile, have become exhausted, while the country's population, which stands at over 70 million, is growing by 2.7% a year.

Many mouths to feed mean that fields cannot be rested, but are overworked until crops will not grow.

On the road to Korem, a yellow-grey dirt track hugging steep mountainsides, the environmental damage is plain to see in barren fields where the thin soil is crumbling away.

The Ethiopian government is trying to address the problem, and has announced a plan to resettle 2.2 million people from the overcrowded highlands to areas less heavily populated.

Some of the settlers have fared well, but population growth means the people who leave will soon be replaced.This year the government launched a new programme, the national food safety net.

The hungry are offered either food aid, or money to buy grain in the markets. In return they must lend their labour to public works such as road building.

Ayalew Molla, a local government official in Korem charged with disaster prevention, said: "There is a big change, a significant change, compared with 1984-85. People were encouraged to sit and wait for food aid. Now people are encouraged to take part in food-for-work activities, giving them the lesson that they can stand on their own feet. Now the big task is to address the causes of drought, and work to avert drought."

In Korem and the surrounding region, a quarter of the 4 million population receives assistance from the UN's World Food Programme.

In recent years, the UN agency has begun to shift from providing "sticking plaster" emergency aid to tackling the root causes. That means planting trees and building stone walls to reduce soil erosion, and digging ponds to provide water for irrigation and reduce the dependence on rain.

But by comparison with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia lags behind.

The country has 50cm (about 20ins) of road per head, compared with an average of five metres for the rest of the continent.

An unresolved war with its northern neighbour, Eritrea, has denied Ethiopia its easiest access to the sea.

There are some signs of hope. Ethiopia is emerging as a rival to Kenya in the flower farm trade, with a growing number of horticulture businesses growing blooms for export to Europe.

Elections last month were widely considered the fairest the country had experienced, with more open debate, public rallies by opposition parties and high voter turnout.

Ethiopia enjoyed a bumper harvest last year, but in Korem there is renewed concern over this year's crop.

"We have fears that the famine can happen again," said Mr Ararsew.

"Food is expensive in the market and there was not enough rain for the crops we planted in January."

At Mr Ararsew's family compound, where three thatched huts are arranged around a brown earth yard scattered with straw, his niece is grinding chickpeas for dinner. With a baby slung on her back, she rolls a heavy stone scraper over the peas spread on a ledge of hardened clay. It is a scene that has not changed in a thousand years, let alone the two decades that have passed since Live Aid.

In Ethiopia, the tradition is to always leave a little food on your plate. But in Korem, the custom has lapsed.

"When our parents were alive, the last generation, we did that," said Mr Ararsew.

"But no one does it any longer. We have no food to spare."