This paper considers the scale, causes, and consequences of food and humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa, with a focus on Ethiopia. Also examined are proven, promising, and innovative actions taken by food assistance actors, along with major lessons learned and implied research issues regarding food systems in conflict situations.
Scale
The Horn of Africa is suffering from the impacts of the most severe and protracted drought in decades, followed by torrential rains and flooding.[1] Across the region, at least 31.9 million people require lifesaving and life-sustaining assistance, including 17.2 million in Ethiopia, 8.25 million in Somalia, and 6.4 million in Kenya (FEWSNET, 2023; OCHA, 2022). The recent heavy rainfall may improve the situation in several areas, but torrential downpours have resulted in flash floods and loss of homes and livestock in areas already impacted by the drought. Acute food insecurity is widespread (Figure 1).
Over 23.4 million people are enduring high levels of acute food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. About 13.2 million livestock have died since the beginning of the drought – 6.8 million in Ethiopia, over 3.8 million in Somalia, and 2.6 million in Kenya (OCHA, 2023a), eroding the primary source of livelihood, income, and nutrition for pastoralist communities. Water insecurity is leading to a rise in diseases and protection risks, further compounding the situation. Significant outbreaks of cholera and measles are ongoing in all three countries, seriously impacting vulnerable children. The recurring climatic shocks, widespread food insecurity, and damaged livelihoods are exacerbated by conflict and displacement that contribute to towering humanitarian needs in persistently complex emergencies.
Causes: Focus on Ethiopia
Ethiopia is highly vulnerable to multiple interacting hazards (Figure 2). In 2022 and 2023, these hazards included the effects of severe and unprecedented drought in the eastern and southern parts of the country, and heightened levels of violence in other parts of the country, most notably in western Oromia, pushing more people into displacement, food insecurity, malnutrition and increased protection concerns. Failed rains severely impact pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities, particularly in the eastern and southern parts of the country, aggravating food insecurity, malnutrition, access to water and a worsening health situation with an increase of disease outbreaks. Many parts of Ethiopia are simultaneously affected by both weather shocks (drought and flooding) and conflict, including large parts of Afar, Amhara, Oromia, and Somali regions (Figure 1) (OCHA, 2023b).
The signing of the cessation of hostilities agreement (COHA) at the end of 2022 brought peace and improved access in Northern Ethiopia (Afar, Amhara and Tigray). But humanitarian needs stemming from the two-year conflict remain high. Increased support is required to facilitate returns and scale-up recovery efforts. Conflict has continued or escalated in other parts of the country, most notably in Oromia, impeding humanitarian access and driving high needs and displacement within the region and to neighboring Amhara region (Figure 3). In Benishangul Gumuz region, hundreds of thousands of people remained displaced for most of 2022. As hostilities with armed groups ebbed and flowed throughout the year, small numbers of IDPs started returning spontaneously while the regional government unveiled plans to return the several thousands of IDPs to their original areas by end of first quarter 2023. However, the frequent blockage of the main supply routes by conflict in neighboring Oromia is economically isolating Benishangul Gumuz, causing serious economic shocks and price inflation and destabilizing access to refugee camps in remote border areas. Inter-communal violence in several regions, including Oromia, Sidama, Somali and SNNP, also continues to trigger displacement and ensuing humanitarian needs (OCHA, 2023b).
Consequences: Focus on Ethiopia
The 2023 Ethiopia Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) requires US$3.99 billion to support more than 20 million people across the country. This includes an estimated 4.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs). Under the HRP, an estimated 13 million people are targeted for humanitarian response in drought affected areas. The food assistance component of the HRP targets 20.1 million people at a cost of $2.6 billion (OCHA, 2023b). Between April and December, WFP alone requires $1.34 billion for its relief, nutrition, and refugee operations (WFP, 2023). Following findings of massive diversions of food assistance across the country, WFP and the US-supported consortium of NGOs suspended food assistance operations in June.
The current challenges are not new. Following Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s rise to power in 2018 and the fundamental political, economic, and social reforms he led, Ethiopia endured one major convulsion after another due to interaction of the disruptions unleashed by these reforms with drought, flooding, inter-ethnic conflict, massive internal displacement, desert locust invasions, COVID-19, and, ultimately, civil war in northern Ethiopia. Food assistance was at the heart of each response to the humanitarian impacts of these convulsions. The number of people requiring food assistance rose from 14.5 million in 2018 to a peak of 22.8 million in 2022 (WFP, 2018; WFP, 2022.
Proven, Promising, and Innovative Actions Taken: Focus on Ethiopia
The central questions are clear:
- Where are the vulnerable and food insecure?
- How many are they?
- How can they be reached?
- What is driving their vulnerability and food insecurity?
- How can this vulnerability and food insecurity be overcome – using which instruments, programmes, and platforms?
- How do we know that the vulnerability and food insecurity has been overcome – which measures are relevant?
- How can we prevent future descents into vulnerability and food insecurity?
Food assistance comprises a unified response to these questions, where food assistance refers to multi-faceted efforts to empower vulnerable and food-insecure people and communities to access nutritious food. It seeks not only to save lives and livelihoods in the short term, but also to combat the root causes of hunger over the medium to long term. Food assistance thus includes instruments such as in-kind food, vouchers or cash transfers used to assure recipients’ access to food of a given quantity, quality, or value. Focused food procurement is a powerful demand-side tool (Omamo et al., 2010).
These instruments are applied in specific programmes to pursue a range of objectives for targeted populations, such as nutrition improvement, increased agricultural productivity, gender equality, education expansion, or disaster risk reduction. Several supporting activities and institutional platforms such as early warning and preparedness systems, vulnerability analyses, needs assessments, supply-chain arrangements, information and communication technology, and capacity development of national agencies, safety nets and social-protection systems define the effectiveness and sustainability of these instruments relative to the objectives. Food assistance thus extends beyond the traditional view of “food aid” as transfers of food commodities to hungry people to include development and implementation of interventions to prevent hunger and address its myriad drivers and implications (Omamo et al., 2010).
The key innovations entail new processes and new routines that change when, how, and where given instruments are applied, aiming to empower vulnerable communities in their own food security while strengthening food systems (Figure 6).
Lessons: Research on Food Systems in Conflict Situations
Much has been said and written of late about the linkages between conflict and hunger and food insecurity. Typically, two claims are made. First, that conflict breeds hunger. This claim is supported by ample evidence. Second, that hunger contributes to conflict. Support for this claim is largely anecdotal, but perhaps the lack of definitive evidence of causality is not significant. Hunger does plenty of damage without a contributory connection to conflict.
For the first claim (that conflict generates hunger) to hold, the pathways from conflict to hunger must run through food systems. But how? How exactly does conflict impact food systems in ways that promote hunger? Through which processes and mechanisms does this happen?
Recent developments in Ethiopia’s conflict-impacted food systems suggests six conflict-to-hunger channels in food systems: (1) conflict turns self-reliant rural producers into dependent urban consumers, abruptly; (2) conflict destroys trust-based relationships that underpin food trade; (3) conflict always creates black markets for food – always; (4) conflict empowers dispersed and anonymous security officials as primary decisionmakers in food systems; (5) conflict disrupts the “transformation functions” that connect food supply and demand; and (6) conflict clouds and distorts humanitarian decision-making, hobbling the humanitarian food system. At the end of each pathway are food shortages and hungry people.
1. Conflict turns self-reliant rural food producers into dependent urban food consumers, abruptly. Many wars play out significantly in rural areas, causing large numbers of farmers, herders, and traders to flee from their homes and communities, usually to the nearest significant settlement, hoping to find safety, shelter, and access to services. Suddenly, small towns that may not even appear on maps must absorb thousands of people. Despite the staggering generosity of local communities, these huge and unexpected influxes of people are never fully accommodated and served. Severe hardships appear almost immediately in these new “urban” locations, with hunger prominent, driven by food shortages and surging food prices. Urbanization is a global trend, meaning more and more food is being consumed in urban areas. But this brand of sharp conflict-driven expansion of urban food consumption is grossly premature, with immediate hunger as its companion, and with the seeds of future hunger sown in the abandoned fields it leaves behind.
2. Conflict destroys trust-based relationships that underpin food trade. Everyone has an irrefutable force majeure reason for not following through as agreed. Long-standing bargaining relationships between sellers and buyers are disrupted or upended altogether, undermining the trust on which food trade is based, turning everyone into a liar as contracts can be honored only in the breach. Conflict also fragments seasonality in food prices, blunting a vital incentive for private food storage, and disrupting the complex trust-based arrangements that govern this central dimension of food systems. Local food stocks dry up, open trade dwindles, shortages appear, prices rise. People go hungry.
3. Conflict always creates black markets for food – always. The demand for food rises and falls as prices change, but it never disappears. Given the shortages created by disrupted relationships and networks in food markets, anyone who can acquire, store, and move food with any kind of predictability makes a lot of money during conflicts. Such people can traverse even the tightest of blockades. Not surprisingly, such people are often military leaders or those close to them. Important incentives to take decisions that boost food availability are weakened, at best. Shortages persist and intensify. Prices soar. People go hungry.
4. Conflict empowers dispersed and anonymous security officials as primary decisionmakers in food systems. There are countless examples. Think of the armed soldier or police officer on alert at a checkpoint near a conflict frontline. He or she is the beginning, the middle, and the end for the convoy leader seeking passage for a column of trucks loaded with food to be given or sold to people caught on the other side of the line. For the soldier or police officer, only his or her local commanding officer’s opinion matters. And for that local commander, facilitating the movement of food across the frontline is an unwelcome addition to already fraught and complicated responsibilities, even if there are thousands of hungry people waiting for that food. Even the most powerful national political leader pressing for the food to reach those hungry people will quickly back down when confronted by security-clad facts forcefully conveyed by a local force commander. So the food does not move. Shortages persist. People go hungry.
5. Conflict disrupts the “transformation functions” that connect food supply and demand. Again, food demand is never-ending. So, too, therefore, is the need for food transformation – i.e., for food transport, storage, and processing, and for the finance and insurance that lubricate them. Irrespective of its scale or reach, every food system features physical locations and areas where concentrated food transformation is undertaken. Invariably, the locations and areas where these transformation activities must take place are also locations and areas over which warring parties fight the hardest. Think of the one all-asphalt road connecting two major towns in a contested area – a road that food transporters use routinely. Picture the town with the only fuel depot within a 200 km radius and thus the town where scores of mid-size grain millers have situated their operations. Imagine the main town on the long and vulnerable road from the border to the capital – the town with reliable power and internet connectivity and thus home to a regional army command base, but also the town where transporters position their fleets, and where warehousing capacity is significant. The factors that define the efficacy of food transformation are also militarily potent. With every outbreak in fighting, transformation stalls. Shortages persist. People go hungry.
6. Conflict clouds and distorts humanitarian decision-making, hobbling the humanitarian food system. The humanitarian system is not immune to the political fault-lines and animosities that underlie and drive conflict. Often implicitly but sometimes explicitly, global humanitarian leaders take sides based on their personal friendships, ambitions, religious beliefs, political allegiances, and cultural biases – buying into polarizing propaganda, ignoring glaring facts, promoting questionable narratives. Issues that need to be prioritized or voiced are not prioritized or voiced, and vice versa. Trust breaks down. Humanitarian country teams that routinely respond with speed, accuracy, and unity to natural disasters are almost impossible to effectively coordinate in conflict situations. Context-sensitive decisions of local representatives of donor countries and international humanitarian agencies are overruled from donor capitals and agency headquarters. Mixed signals abound. Inertia, delays, and unnecessary complications plague humanitarian responses, and thus also the humanitarian food systems that dominate those responses. Shortages persist. People go hungry.
These six conflict-to-hunger channels through food systems signal the challenges to be addressed if this deadly relationship is to be weakened or broken. Viewed together, they suggest a rich and deep research agenda for food policy and programme analysis in conflict contexts. They also reveal the opportunities to be seized so that the second claim about the link between conflict and hunger (that hunger contributes to conflict) does not come to be supported by hard facts.
References
FEWSNET. 2023. The emergency in Ethiopia is far from over, as food aid remains vital to saving lives. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET). Ethiopia Food Security Alert May 30, 2023. Accessed 01 May 2023.
OCHA. 2023a. Horn of Africa Conference 2023: High-level pledging event on the humanitarian response in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia – Concept Note. Accessed 16 August 2023.
OCHA. 2023b. Ethiopia Humanitarian Response Plan 2023. United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Action (OCHA). Accessed 01 May 2023.
OCHA. 2023c. Ethiopia National Access Map. United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Action (OCHA). Accessed 01 May 2023.
OCHA. 2022. Horn of Africa Drought: Regional Humanitarian Overview and Call to Action. United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Action (OCHA). Accessed 01 May 2023.
Omamo, S. W., Gentilini, U. and Sandstrom, S. (Editors). 2010. Revolution: From Food Aid to Food Assistance – Innovations in Hunger Solutions. Rome: United Nations World Food Programme.
WFP. 2018. WFP 2018 Ethiopia Country Briefs. Available at https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000140825/download/ Accessed 01 May 2023.
WFP. 2022. WFP 2022 Ethiopia Country Briefs. Accessed 01 May 2023.
WFP. 2023. Regional Drought Response Plan for the Horn of Africa: 2023. UN World Food Programme. Accessed 01 May 2023.
[1] The Horn of Africa comprises the dryland areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.