Dimensions of the Famine Problem in Ethiopia and Sudan

The number of food-insecure people and the intensity of food insecurity has increased in many African regions during the 1970s and 1980s and under likely scenarios will continue to rise in the 1990s (Table 1). The Horn of Africa was particularly hard hit by famines that claimed millions of lives. The intervals between famine events have become too short to permit reconstruction of the rural economies. Most survivors have been left with fewer assets, and with an increasingly risky agricultural income base that offers little buffer against future crises. In such circumstances, food insecurity is endemic.

Table 1 - Trend projections of consumption and production of major food crops in Sub-Saharan Africa to the year 2000

Sources: Leonardo Paulino, Food in the Third World: Past Trends and Projections to 2000, Research Report No. 52 (Washington, D.C.: IFPRI, 1986); FAO, "Production Yearbook Tape, 1986," Rome, 1987; UN, World Population Prospects (New York: UN, 1986).

There are a number of economic indicators that are important to the problem of food insecurity in Ethiopia and Sudan. Per capita incomes and average daily per capita consumption of calories are very low. During the last two decades, economic growth has been zero in Sudan and negative in Ethiopia. Food production in Ethiopia and Sudan in the late 1980s remained below 1979-81 levels and this showed up in decreased food availability (Figure 2). When availability drops below 150 kilograms of staple food per capita per year, famine prevention can no longer be a matter of better distribution of food.

In Ethiopia, the worst of the famines have been concentrated in the structurally food-deficit regions of the north, east, and south. In these regions, net annual incomes are among the lowest in the world (less than US$100 per capita), sources of off-farm income are few, credit markets are almost nonexistent, and average calorie consumption was less than 1,500 kilocalories (kcals) per capita per day during recent years.⁴ The death toll from famine has been great. An estimated half a million people died in these areas during the 1968-75 crisis, and another 1 million people died from 1983 to 1986. Armed conflict in some of the famine areas prevented effective famine mitigation.

Although famine has occurred repeatedly in a limited number of locations, food insecurity affects most regions of the country. During the 1980s, at least 2 million people were officially classified as food insecure in each year, a figure that rose to more than 8 million during peak famine years such as 1985 and 1991.⁵ Fifty to 60 percent of the severely food insecure are located in the famine-prone provinces with the remainder spread over other parts of the country, even in provinces that had nominal surpluses of food. Despite recent political changes and an end to military conflict, vulnerability to famine is likely to remain very high in much of the country through the 1990s because the drain on household resources was so great during the past decade.

Source: Ethiopia, Central Statistics Authority, and Sudan, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The same may be said of Sudan, which suffered loss of livestock and agricultural output, but hardly any loss of human lives, during the droughts of the 1970s, and then faced large-scale famine mortality in the 1980s. More than half a million people are believed to have died from famine conditions between 1984 and 1990, particularly in the western, north-central, and southern regions.⁶ In the south, armed conflicts disrupted effective famine mitigation. The food situation has worsened again in 1991. Those populations who are food insecure are now found not only in the famine-prone regions, but increasingly in the central and eastern regions as well, and most recently in major towns.