Two Years of Drought Response in Ethiopia

El Nino has caused the third successive rainfall failure in some areas of Ethiopia, and from the middle of 2015 onwards the country has since been in a race against time to meet the resulting food needs of 10.2 million people. This precarious situation called for the collective resources of Governments around the world to help the Government of Ethiopia to provide enough food and aid, to enough people in time. The relief effort was calculated to require an estimated USD $1.4 billion of funding, 1.5 million metric tonnes of food aid, and the concerted effort of every aid agency in the country and beyond.

This is one of the largest humanitarian operations in the world, and has been led and coordinated by the Government of Ethiopia, which has itself committed USD $381 million during 2015-16. This report details the role and contribution of Save the Children, which is programming USD $90 million worth of relief activities, has raised USD $6.5 million of its own funding contributions, reached nearly 2 million people, and helped to save the lives of thousands of children.

The response phase is not over yet. The next six months of 2016 will determine whether all of the efforts to date to prevent a food security crisis of this proportion have adequate as the population faces the traditional lean season. Every effort must now be renewed and sustained to support the Government’s efforts to prepare for the impacts of such prolonged drought and assist the affected population to make a quick recovery.