High and extreme levels of food insecurity persist in southern and southeastern Ethiopia following successive seasons of below-average rains, flooding in riverine areas, livestock disease, an armyworm infestation, conflict, inadequate humanitarian assistance, and extremely high and rising food prices. Preliminary findings of a government-led, multi-agency assessment suggest that about 12.8 million people require immediate food assistance for four to six months beginning in August in Gambella, Harari, Dire Dawa, Benshangul Gumuz, Somali, Afar, Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's (SNNP) Regions. Shortfalls of food and non-food assistance are currently impeding the size, scope, speed, and quality of the relief response to date.
Oromia, SNNP, Tigray, Amhara, and Somali regions are currently the most food insecure, with 297 woredas considered hotspots, with critical and serious levels of acute malnutrition reported in some areas. In particular, all of Somali Region, but mainly Fik, Warder, Gode, Dagabhur, Korahe, Liben and Afder zones, requires urgent assistance given the rapid declines in food security conditions in the region over the past year and a half.
Prices for food and non-food items continue to rise, reducing food access for the urban poor, poor rural farmers, and pastoral and agropastoral populations. Cereals prices are extremely high compared to the same time last year, as well as the five-year average. In Addis Ababa, for example, the nominal retail price of white maize was 176 percent and 224 percent higher, respectively.
A woman carries a box of soyabean oil during a food distribution in Buge village, Wolayita region in southern Ethiopia in this picture taken on September 8, 2008 and released by ...
