Abaynah Demeke of the country office of Welthungerhilfe in Ethiopia said this to the German news agency on Wednesday. The current humanitarian crisis has multiple causes: natural disasters such as locust plagues, droughts and floods, but also health crises such as the corona pandemic and cholera outbreaks have weakened the entire country.
Add to this the many ethnic conflicts, especially the recently ended civil war in the Tigray region. In November, the central government signed a peace deal with the Tigray rebels after two years of conflict.
According to the United Nations in Germany, more than twelve million people in the north of the country depend on food aid despite the ceasefire. “The economic outlook is bleak and the climate crisis has become a new constant,” said the head of the UN World Food Program in Germany, Martin Frick, of Editorial Network Germany (RND/Thursday).
On Thursday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her French colleague Catherine Colonna will travel to Ethiopia to, among other things, gain a picture of the humanitarian situation in the country on the Horn of Africa with some 120 million inhabitants. Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria.
(SDA)