RR: Ethiopia Food Security

Question 1

What were the physical causes of Ethiopia famine?

Answer 1

• Failing rains
• Drought - hot weather

Question 2

What were the human causes of the Ethiopia famine?

Answer 2

• Argued that it was due to the government

Question 3

What were the impacts of the Ethiopia famine?

Answer 3

• One of the worst humanitarian events of the 20th century, prompting a global response to bring food assistance + save lives
• Estimated 1 million famine deaths
• Millions were displaced & left destitute without resources to rebuild their lives

Question 4

What were the past attempts to help Ethiopia recover from famine on a national scale?

Answer 4

• Michael Buerk broadcasted famine & brought attention to it, helped feed them - many were moved & donated to relief effort
• Prompted Band Aid to make a song “Do They Know Its Christmas” which raised money for Ethopia
• Later influenced Live Aid concert

Question 5

What were the pros of the documentary & its approach?

Answer 5

• People know what to do - more infrastructure available, more communication doors
• Shocked the world, a lot of awareness raised causing people to help Ethiopia
• Brought unknown topic to light - as a result of documentary Ethiopia recovered
• Broadcasted on 425 TV stations

Question 6

What were the cons of the documentary & its approach?

Answer 6

• Make a choice of who should go into feeding camp: guilt
• Not enough food to go around - 50,000 children gathered hungry & sad, someone died every 20 minutes
• Depressing topic - made it hard to watch, videoing people suffering (ethics?)
• Victims of famine lured to feeding camps only to be forced onto planes & transported far away - reported deaths from this policy were higher than famine
• Government deliberate strategies to manipulation donations in pursuit of its brutal resettlement policies

Question 7

What made Live Aid a success?

Answer 7

• 16 hour super concert to raise awareness - more than 1 billion viewers in 110 nations
• Concert raised $127m for famine
• Band Aid song raised more than $10m
• Geldof staged “Live 8” concert in 11 countries around the world to help raise awareness - 3 billion watched, broadcasted on 182 TV networks

Question 8

What made Live Aid a “failure”?

Answer 8

• Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu, using money the west gave him to buy sophisticated weapons from the Russian - money mishandled meaning less money went to famine, causing no improvement in food security + increase in violence, war can destroy farmland
• Mengistu conducted resettlement marches - 100,000 died - rather than focusing on famine, put lives at risk + no food security & more death

Question 9

What is an attempt to achieve food security in Ethiopia on a local scale?

Answer 9

• Intensive & Organic farming
• Regreening the Highlands - sustainable land management program: communities decide & implement strategy of their choice
• Cut and carry bundles of grass to cattle - cattle fed at home so grassland has a chance to recover
• Structure built to capture more moisture - cache crops
• Conservation measures such as trenches above earth buns to catch water which soaks into soil