Afar region facing critical period

Poor rains have hit one of the remotest parts of Ethiopia, threatening severe food shortages, according to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

It said impending rains were "critical" in arid Afar region in terms of addressing the food security needs of the population. Afar is one of the driest places on earth and highly dependent on three annual rainy seasons - the sugum, karma and dada. According to the USAID food security report, warnings have already started to emerge of "serious shortages of pasture and water".

Although the region received near average rains from March to May (sugum), they did not suffice to replenish water supplies depleted by poor previous seasons. "This has resulted in poor physical condition of livestock and a shortage of milk, a main part of the pastoral diet," USAID's Food Early Warning System (FEWS) report said. "Current sources of food, including milk, are the few camels and sheep and goats that remained near villages," added the report, released on Monday.

As pastoralists the region's inhabitants roam over hundreds of kilometres with their livestock, irrespective of borders. This year, the nomads have also traversed hundreds of kilometres in areas outside the region in search of grazing, and many of them have not yet returned. "Normally, pastoralists migrate seasonally within and outside the region when pasture and water become scarce and return to their areas of origin when these improve," FEWS noted.

It pointed out that on this occasion, the Afars had moved to "distant grazing areas" along the edges of the highlands in Amhara and Tigray regional states. Skirmishes with rival ethnic groups like the Issa (ethnic Somalis) had exacerbated the Afars' problems by preventing them reaching scarce water supplies.

Afar is a lowland region of 270,000 sq km, constituting one-fifth of the territory of Ethiopia. It has a population of about 3.4 million, according to the last census in 1994. On average, the region receives 300 mm of rainfall a year – a quantity which can fall in the capital, Addis Ababa, in a single month.