UN agency calls for new funds to meet ‘critical’ needs in Ethiopia

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today sent out an appeal for $7.7 million to assist some 13 million people in Ethiopia, including rural populations in southern region whose needs, it said, are “particularly critical.”

The $7.7 million would be in addition to the FAO’s existing support programmes, the agency said in a press release issued in Rome, and would be spent on animal health, feed, fodder and non-cereal seeds. The agency said although previous contributions from Member States had been “unprecedented,” providing cereal and cereal seeds that had adverted a large human disaster, the new funds were needed by pastoral people in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), the nation’s poorest area.

“The funding of these projects is essential to strengthen the capacity of vulnerable farmers and pastoralists, to make them more self-reliant and less dependent on food aid,” said Anne M. Bauer, FAO’s Director of Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division. “Providing the poorest families with a minimum of agricultural inputs is a first step for them to resume food production. Especially pastoralists are in urgent need of support.”

Livestock diseases such as anthrax, black leg, bovine and ovine pasteurellosis are spreading in SNNPR and could even threaten other regions or neighbouring countries, FAO said.