Ethiopia

Ethiopia is suffering a new kind of food crisis, caused by a lethal combination of drought, and rocketing food prices. Crops have failed, animals are dying, and families are unable to afford basic staples such as corn and wheat as prices have risen by over 175% in the past few months.

According to the Ethiopian government, 75,000 children under five are severely malnourished and will die if they don’t receive emergency treatment. Some of the poorest families are now unable to feed their families at all, with children in some of the worst affected areas of the country struggling to survive on a diet of weeds and roots.

The worst hit areas

Eastern and arid southern parts of the country have been hardest hit by the failure of the rains this year. Save the Children is responding in six of the worst affected areas including Oromia, the Southern Nations Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR), Somali and Afar Regions, and parts of Amhara and Tigray.

Resources in the country are already stretched to the maximum but the food crisis is getting worse, with growing numbers of children affected and hunger hotspots appearing in new areas.

International Community

A US$140 million (170,000 metric tonne) shortfall in funding to the UN’s World Food Programme means that aid agencies such as Save the Children, as well as the Ethiopian government’s rescue effort, don’t have enough money to provide essential short- and long-term feeding for chronically malnourished children.

What we're doing

Save the Children has been present in Ethiopia for 34 years and has 800 staff in country. When the Government of Ethiopia called on humanitarian partners to support their response to the crisis in June, we were well placed to give assistance across a variety of sectors including food distributions, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, livestock and agriculture support, education and child protection.

Our team continues to carry out assessments identifying people's needs. Our immediate response is focusing on key life saving interventions which will reduce the effect of malnutrition.

We have set up

Community based therapeutic care centres which target malnourished children. At these centres we provide them with high energy foods which contain all the essential nutrients that children need replenishing in this crisis. At these centres we are also able to respond to the needs of children who are showing health complications from the effects of malnutrition.

We are providing:

emergency health care, clean water, and sanitation items such as soap to nearly 160,000 children.
school materials and safe play spaces for at least 25,000 children, so they can lead as normal a life as possible.Food to more than a quarter of a million people across Afar and Amhara.
veterinary drugs and animal feed so that families can protect their livelihoods
schemes which will provide parents with a way to earn money and food.

We are protecting children by

Setting up Child Friendly Spaces near feeding centres where children can play safely and where we can support their emotional needs.

How you can help

Your money can help Save the Children provide life-saving assistance to hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian children.

20p will buy one sachet of oral rehydration salts for a malnourished child
£1 will buy a litre of vegetable oil for a family
£10 will cover one month emergency nutrition feeding for a malnourished child
£30 will feed a family of five for a month
£90 will buy six goats for a poor family to provide milk and meat for their children and sell the surplus for extra income
£1,500 will build a well that can provide water for 500 people and 4000 animals

Donate to Save the Children UK's Ethiopia Food Crisis Emergency Appeal online or by calling 0800 8148 148 in the UK, or find your national Save the Children organisation.

Ethiopia

The worst hit areas

International Community

What we're doing

How you can help

More about our response

Eye Witness Accounts

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