Substantial rains reported

Widespread rains have begun falling across Ethiopia as the country emerges from a two-year drought that affected 13 million people. Humanitarian agencies said the rains, known as the Belg or short rains, would help to offset the continuing effects of the drought across the country. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said the "substantial" rains would help the drought-hit areas regenerate crops. However, its weekly emergency report on Africa and the Middle East, released on 16 April, noted that there were still "pocket areas where problems remain". Ethiopia is one of the world's 10 poorest countries with 85 percent of its 70 million population eking out a living as subsistence farmers. The Belg rains are crucial to the growth of crops in some areas, whereas elsewhere they are needed in preparing the land for cultivation. "In Belg-crop producing parts of the country, the rains of the past two weeks have been helping to revive crops which had been wilting due to an earlier dry spell," WFP said. WFP said, however, that whereas the rains were welcome, food relief for families facing shortfalls remained vital. The country, it added, still faced a shortfall of food aid of 325,000 mt, which represents almost half the food aid needed from April to December. "However, there are substantial contributions under negotiation that are anticipated to cover a significant part of this shortfall," it said. WFP noted that the northeastern Afar region, parts of the Somali region in the east, the Amhara region in the north and the Southern Nations', Nationalities' and Peoples' Regional State had all received rain. It added that good rains had been reported from East and West Harerge zones, a traditional breadbasket in eastern Ethiopia where there had been fears that the Belg rains might fail. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) confirmed in a separate statement that "widespread Belg rainfall" had been witnessed throughout much of Ethiopia. "While generally lighter rains fell in parts of southeastern Ethiopia and western Somalia, locally heavy rains were observed in south-central Ethiopia," USAID said in its statement. In particular, it noted that pasture for nomads moving with their livestock in lowland areas in Ethiopia and northern Kenya was "generally favourable".