More than 6 million farmers across the country grow teff, but it’s here, in rugged Adi Ha, where rocks litter the fields like confetti, that this new kind of insurance may take root and spread. An initiative coordinated by Oxfam America and supported by more than a dozen partners, its goal is to help some of the world’s poorest farmers bounce back when drought destroys their crops. And the payout isn’t only in cash. It’s in confidence—the kind that may help propel people out of poverty.
“Without insurance, poor farmers who experience drought might run through all their savings, fall into debt, or sell their livestock and other valuables—often to ruinous results,” says Mengesha Gebremichael, the micro-insurance officer at the Relief Society of Tigray and one of the project’s managers. “In contrast, insured farmers will be more resilient to those shocks. They’ll be in a better position to take out small loans that could help them make big improvements in their next harvest—loans for things like high-yield seeds. They’ll be more confident that they can pay the money back knowing they have insurance to support them if trouble strikes.”
June to October marks the main rainy season in Adi Ha, a critical time for local farmers who depend on the skies to water their teff fields. For poor families living close to the edge, where even a $20 or $30 loss can push them over, there is no room for mishap. Without rain, they face disaster. That’s where the weather insurance comes in. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time, farmers who have purchased the insurance can receive a payout to help cover their losses.
In Ethiopia, families have always had traditional ways of coping with extraordinary expenses. If they lose their livestock in a disaster, such as drought, those who are better off will contribute an animal or two to help them rebuild their herds, for instance. Families may also share seeds for planting, or food when it’s in terribly short supply.
But with climate change—and the erratic weather that it brings—the traditional means of surviving bad times may no longer be enough.
“Climate change is dramatically increasing agricultural risk across the planet,” says Marjorie Victor Brans, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam America. “The frequency of droughts and other shocks in Adi Ha is likely to increase, and poor farmers will be among the hardest hit. It’s a hugely challenging phenomenon.”
With 85 percent of Ethiopians employed in farming, much of it rain-fed, the need for new tools to manage the risks is huge. But the market for insurance is miniscule: only about 300,000 people in a country of nearly 80 million now have it. Extending the option to rural areas is loaded with challenges, not the least of them being the concern that poor farmers simply don’t have the money to pay for premiums—even the smallest one.
This new program has solved that problem with a simple solution: It has arranged for the poorest farmers to use their labor to buy insurance, tapping into a new social security initiative the Ethiopian government launched a few years ago. Called the Productive Safety Net Program, or PSNP, it helps about 8 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents by providing them with food or cash in exchange for work. Through the PSNP, 130 Adi Ha farmers are now working extra days on community projects, such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation, to pay for their premiums. In this pilot year, Oxfam provided funds to the PSNP to cover this part of the project.
The option to trade labor for insurance has substantially boosted the number of farmers able to participate in the program, nearly doubling the enrollment that was expected.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Medhin Reda, a single mother who will be working 24 days for her premium. “That is the only asset I have.”
For Selas Samson Biru, who is spending 192 birr on insurance, it will help address the uncertainties that have always been part of farming, especially now that global warming may be altering familiar weather patterns.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” she says. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
And the insurance may be extra helpful because it was tailored specifically for farmers like Biru. In fact, she was one of five community members chosen by villagers to join the insurance design team. Twenty-one other farmers participated in a series of test workshops on climate change and financial literacy. Focus group discussions and economic risk simulations carried out in the community helped the design team understand what kind of insurance product would work best in Adi Ha. And on the day of enrollment, about 600 farmers showed up for a host of activities explaining the offerings, including musical performances, a play, peer-to-peer outreach, and financial training.
“Today is a historic day for the farmers of Adi Ha,” said Brans as the activities wound to a close that day and organizers counted the final tally of takers. Among the 200 were 75 women, which represents about 22 percent of all female-headed households in Adi Ha—one of the most vulnerable groups the project is aiming to help. On average, farmers are paying 138 birr for their premiums—or a little more than $12 each. Some chose packages that allowed them to pay as little as 76 birr, or about $6.75. The maximum premium was 288 birr, or just over $23.
“We are experimenting,” said Gebru Kahsay a few months after investing 192 birr into an insurance package. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”
Lots of learning has already taken place during the 18 months Oxfam and its partners spent in preparation for the launch of this project. And each of those partners has been contributing its own expertise. Besides the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST, one of the largest aid groups in Africa which has worked closely with the people of Adi Ha, other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company, an Ethiopian firm that is providing the insurance; Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers which has helped fund the launch and is providing technical expertise; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which is providing research on climate data. Additionally, the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI, the primary provider of loans to families in Adi Ha, helped both to design the pilot and to educate farmers about the pros and cons of insurance.
“We had to work very hard to design a risk management package that was affordable and attractive to farmers, while still being potentially profitable to the insurance industry,” says Bekabil Fufa, an agricultural expert in Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa regional office. “And we had to make it compelling to government and donors who feel it will address the threat of climate change.”
With a solid model now in place, Oxfam is planning in the coming year to expand the initiative into four new villages in Tigray--the region where Adi Ha is located—and into one village in Amhara, another drought-prone region to the south. Eventually, the project partners would like to see weather insurance offered to poor farmers throughout Ethiopia.
It will require a leap of faith by farmers across the country as well as support from the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector,” says Gebremichael. “But given the long lead times required to build resiliency to climate change, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to try.”
]]>Reda, 45, is a farmer in Adi Ha, a collection of small villages in Tigray, a rocky region of northern Ethiopia. Here, rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and for the farmers who depend on its regularity to ensure their fields will produce food for their families, the change in weather patterns is deeply troubling. Without rain, the crops of hundreds of farmers in Adi Ha won’t grow.
Already this year the rains were six weeks late, coming in mid July instead of early June. That meant the corn got a late start and some farmers didn’t bother with sorghum at all. Still, hopes were high for teff, the tiny grain that is a staple for people here—and across Ethiopia where 6 million farmers grow the nutrient-rich cereal. Reda is one of them.
But this year, she and 199 other small farmers in Adi Ha weren’t taking any chances. When Oxfam and its partners suggested a way to buffer the hardships Mother Nature might bring, the farmers embraced it—even if few had ever heard of such a thing. The proposal? Weather insurance designed for their teff. If the rain failed to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers who bought the insurance would receive a payout to cover some of their losses. The insurance is being offered by the Nyala Insurance Company and Swiss Re. Other organizations partnering on the project include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DESCI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
“Because of repeated drought, which really affected me, I joined the insurance with the understanding it might solve my problems,” said Reda.
For a long time, most people in the insurance business thought that poor farmers, like many of those in Adi Ha, were uninsurable. Where would they get the cash to buy the insurance? This pilot program has answered that with a simple, and ingenious, solution. Reda is paying for her premium—like she does for other important things in her life—with her labor.
Reda, along with 65 percent of all those who have signed up for the insurance, is a participant in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, an initiative that provides cash and food for some of the country’s poorest people in exchange for their work on community improvements. She’ll work 24 extra days this year on projects that benefit Adi Ha—such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation—to cover the cost of her premium.
“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Reda. “That is the only asset I have.”
A single mother and head of an all-girl household at the moment—she lives with three of her daughters; a fourth daughter lives in a nearby town; and a son is away studying—Reda works hard to keep together all the pieces of a difficult life. With one of her daughters, Abbadit Girmay, who is now 19, Reda hauled to their hillside site every stone of the hut they now live in. And to build it, she hired a mason to mortar the rocks together—paying him with a summer’s worth of weeding in his fields.
To get her own fields plowed—she has two, totaling a half hectare of land--Reda hires herself out each planting season, working three full days for the man who owns the oxen, in exchange for one day of his plowing.
Work is Reda’s currency.
"That’s why I’m thin," she says, with a wry smile.
In the corn patch just below her house, Reda stands bent at the waist , her hands flying over the weeds as she yanks and clumps them swiftly into small piles. Close behind, and weeding nearly as fast, Tekleweini Girmay, 7, follows her mother through the stalks. Reda—and necessity—have taught her well.
But a farmer’s life is not what Reda envisions for her youngest child—or any of her daughters. She wants them to have what she never had: an education.
“The season is not good enough for agriculture. Our soil has become poor and they need fertilizer,” she says. “I don’t want my children to be farmers. Those who have started their education I want them to continue and have jobs. And those who haven’t started, I want them to start.” Tekleweini will be among those newly enrolled when the next session of school begins.
And Reda will be, too.
She has signed up for an adult literacy program that REST is offering.
And though Reda can’t read, her mind is filled with news of the world beyond Adi Ha that she absorbs from a small radio she keeps tucked on a shelf in her hut. Voice of America in Tigrinya and Dmitsi Woyane or the voice of the ruling party are among her favorite stations. Sometimes, Reda will stay up until 11 p.m. listening—when there are working batteries, that is. They are expensive, about 10 birr each, or about most of what she would earn for a day’s labor.
There’s no electricity in this stone-walled compound, and few creature comforts. At night, light in Reda’s cramped hut comes from a hanging bulb hooked to a flashlight battery. She also has two small oil lamps. Household wares hang from the ceiling beamed with logs and storage vessels stand in the shadows in the corners. Two mud seats built into the walls near the door serve as beds.
In early August, green washes the hills that stretch below Reda’s hut, a sign that the rain—now that it has finally come—is ample enough for the moment. Her corn is doing well, she says with satisfaction.
And her teff?
The seeds have been in the ground for just a week and years of experience have left her circumspect.
“It’s too early to say if it’s good or bad,” says Reda.
]]>In a pilot program coordinated by Oxfam America along with a host of local partners, these farmers have bought weather insurance designed for their teff, a staple grain here and across Ethiopia. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time—and their teff does poorly—the insurance will cover some of their losses. Partners in the initiative include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
The rain gauges, like the one in Biru’s yard, measure the precipitation in different spots across Adi Ha where rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it ever harder for farmers to eke a living from this rocky part of the world.
“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” says Biru. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”
Biru, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance has become an expert at managing the vicissitudes of life in Adi Ha and together with her husband and six children, they have built a measure of security for themselves.
Now 48, Biru was married at 15. But unlike some of her peers at the time, she had managed to attend school through the fourth grade, and when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, took control of the area, Biru stood out. Perhaps it was because of all the questions she asked, she says.
She joined the organization in about 1979 and soon assumed a leadership role among other women—a twist of fate that allowed her to develop the confidence that continues to feed her successes today. Biru is not afraid to try new things—including insurance, a concept few in her community knew much about before this pilot was launched. Biru became a member of the local team that helped design the project.
But before that, she had other experiences that allowed her to see the advantages of managing household money in different ways. Through a local microfinance institution, Biru has taken out a series of loans that have helped her to build a herd of livestock that now includes goats, oxen, and donkeys. She has used the proceeds from the sale of some of those goats to support two of her children as they make their way through university.
Income from the goats, which at one point numbered about 70, also helped the family finance the construction of a new house with a metal roof a few years ago. It consists of a long, rectangular room with perimeter seats built into the walls, two beds at the far end, and a high ceiling that helps the interior stay cool on hot days.
And though the hungry season is inching closer—the time before the harvests when the food supply of many families runs low—Biru still has a supply a grain. In a shed separate from her house, tall vessels stand against the back wall. As she uncorks the bottom of one of them, the grain makes a satisfying rush as it streams out Baskets on the floor brim with corn, finger millet, and teff.
Biru’s family has another source of bounty as well: the Tsalet River, which feeds an irrigation system constructed about 10 years ago by the Relief Society of Tigray with funding from Oxfam. More than 400 households now benefit from it. Water funneled through a series of channels connected to a dam across the river irrigates a quarter hectare of land from which Biru harvests green peppers, bananas, melons, guava, and coffee beans. That regular supply of water may free her from some of the worry about rain.
But the irrigation system doesn’t water her teff. Across Adi Ha, farmers depend on the rainy season for that job. The main one, the kiremt, stretches from June into September. A shorter rainy season, the belg, runs from February to May. This year, the kiremt started late: the rain didn’t really begin to fall in substantial amounts until mid July, making it hard for farmers who plant sorghum and corn.
“For maize, the rain is not good. There was no rain early,” says Biru.
With her rain gauge, Biru keeps careful count of exactly how much rain falls, recording the precipitation on a small chart. Pulling it out to show some visitors one day in early August, she notes the range from half a millimeter the day before—barely a sprinkle—to 40 millimeters in a downpour on July 3.
Her crops aren’t the only thing Biru worries about when it comes to water. Her family also needs a steady supply for drinking and cooking. And often, the job of fetching it falls to her. Potable water is about an hour’s walk away, and someone in the household makes that trip once a day, sometimes with a donkey to haul the heavy load home. But a less reliable source that the family uses just for cooking, is a good deal closer—a 15-minute hike from Biru’s home.
Grabbing a jug, Biru heads down the path from her house, slowing her pace so the city slickers who are visiting can keep up. She’s going to show them what’s required to keep a family hydrated in Adi Ha, where there’s no municipal system pumping water through every household tap.
The walk includes a scramble down a steep ledge—and the knowledge of a return hike up, lugging the jug heavy with water. On the way, Biru stops at a mound of stones, bending to kiss one reverentially: below them, in an oasis of trees and thick bushes—one of the few forest-like spots still standing in the area—sits a local church. Tradition demands that the woods around the church be left alone. They’re sacred. And that may account for the small spring that still gurgles at their base.
It’s here that Biru stops to fill her jug, scooping cupfuls of water from the shallows while trying to leave the silt behind. Ten minutes later, she stands and heads home under a gray sky full of the promise of rain.
Will it be ample enough to guarantee a harvest?
“For teff, currently it’s good,” says Biru. But if it doesn’t last, she now has insurance to fall back on.
]]>But for Kahsay, a 52-year-old farmer in the Adi Ha area of Tigray in northern Ethiopia, a good deal has changed in the quarter century since so many of his neighbors lost all their crops including teff, a staple grain.
More than a third of the families in Adi Ha grow the tiny seed. It’s rich in nutrients and serves as the base for a pancake-like bread—injera—that many people eat. The hay left after threshing is also nourishing for animals. And for families that have some to spare, the grain commands a good price in the market.
Still, for those who depend on rain to help their teff thrive—it’s the second most widely cultivated rain-fed crop in Adi Ha—growing this cereal can be an iffy proposition, especially as global warming may be forcing a change in weather patterns. The rain came late this year to Adi Ha, preventing some farmers, like Kahsay, from planting early crops of sorghum—and heightening the need for a hearty harvest of teff.
But this year, Kahsay has a back-up plan if the rain doesn’t cooperate: weather insurance. He’s one of 200 farmers in Adi Ha who decided to participate in a pilot program organized by Oxfam America and carried out with the help of numerous local organizations, including the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST. Other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re: the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.
The farmers—some paying with cash, others with labor—have bought varying amounts of insurance designed specifically for their teff. If the rain fails to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers will receive a payout to cover some of their losses.
“According to my belief, this insurance is important to protect us from migrating in a drought in search of food,” says Kahsay, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance. “It saves the lives of the family during drought.”
Irrigation is also insurance
Kahsay has a large family to be concerned about. He’s the father of nine children, the youngest of whom is just 2. But the weather insurance he is trying out isn’t his only defense against bad times: irrigation also serves as a cushion.
Kahsay is among the more fortunate farmers in Adi Ha who have access to an irrigation system constructed by REST with funding from Oxfam a little more than 10 years ago. With concrete canals and a dam across the Tsalet River, the system has made major improvements to the traditional watering network that would clog with debris during heavy rains. In the month that it would take farmers to clean out the mess, their crops would often die.
For Kahsay, the modern system has been a boon. Though he irrigates just one quarter of a hectare of land, it provides him with an array of produce—oranges, coffee, papayas, tomatoes, onions—that he can sell. In fact, 95 percent of what he grows on his irrigated plot goes to market and the income buffers his family from the hard times that farmers, who depend only on rain-fed harvests, have no choice but to grapple with as best they can.
But Kahsay also tills two hectares of land that rely solely on rain. He sews them with corn, finger millet, sorghum, and teff—and most of the harvests from these fields get consumed by his family.
Wrapping a shawl about his shoulders and tucking an umbrella under his arm—it’s early August and it’s been raining, off and on, for several weeks—Kahsay strides down the slope from where his compound sits atop a rock ledge. Though he’s been battling malaria, he moves fast toward his fields, with a string of visitors straggling behind.
Soon, he reaches an expanse of sandy soil, dusty on the surface. Shoving up through the plowed ridges are shafts of green, so delicate they could almost be a trick of the eye in the brilliance of the afternoon sun. This is Kahsay’s teff field, well-guarded by his seven-year-old grandson, Aregawi Mulugeta, standing with a stick under the shade of a tree. Kahsay greets him heartily, and together they trek to the middle of the field to examine the shoots.
The teff is doing well, he reports.
But Kahsay says he would have liked to have had weather insurance that covers too much rainfall, not too little. In this region of sandy soils, heavy rains that come too fast can be as much of a hazard for teff as drought, and 1997 is still vivid in his mind because of that. That was the year flooding destroyed 70 percent of the teff he had planted.
Despite the water-logging, Kahsay has also seen a troubling trend toward increased dryness over the decades. Like all farmers, he watches the weather closely and analyzes the conditions.
Drought used to strike every eight years or so, he says. But now the cycle seems to be speeding up. And with drought comes the hardship of food shortages—for both people and the animals that help farmers plow their fields and provide them with milk.
With those trends becoming ever clearer, the purchase of weather insurance may turn out to be one of the best adaptations the people of Adi Ha can make.
“We are experimenting,” says Kahsay. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”
]]>I flew into Mogadishu in a plane full with nine tons of Oxfam aid. We took blankets, mosquito nets, medical supplies, and plastic sheets for families to build temporary shelters. We also took 3,500 buckets: Many of the families who have fled the fighting have lost everything they had, so they can use the buckets to carry clean water and store milk for their children.
At Mogadishu airport, I was met by some of our local Somali partners who quickly unloaded the aid for distribution. We carry out all of our work in the country through partners like them.
People are still fleeing the capital. Every day more buses, vans, and donkey carts carry families out of the city along a road called the Afgooye corridor. In the past few weeks, tens of thousands of people have fled down this road to escape the violence. They are settling in camps nearby, where about 400,000 people have taken refuge in the past two years.
The living conditions in the camps in Afgooye are some of the worst I have ever seen. Families are sheltering in tiny huts, pieced together from plastic bags and sticks. When the rains come, the huts are washed away. Oxfam is about to provide 10,000 new shelters, which will improve the lives of about 70,000 people.
The most urgent need is for shelter, but people also desperately need clean water, food, and medicine. The fighting has had an enormous impact on children's health. One doctor told me that there is so much gunpowder in the air in Mogadishu at the moment that it is making children sick.
When people leave the city and arrive in camps—which are so basic and overcrowded—diseases can quickly spread, and there are few health services. I saw young children lying on the floor of the shelters, too ill to move. Many children are suffering from diarrhea and cholera. Oxfam has helped set up an oral rehydration treatment center where mothers can bring their children for help. Oxfam has also distributed mosquito nets to mothers to help them protect their children from the spread of malaria.
To help address the critical need for water, Oxfam recently expanded its water system—which features large, circular holding tanks—to reach an additional 78,000 people. In total, we now provide water to more than 200,000 people in Afgooye—and we hope to increase the supply in the coming months. Despite these efforts, the need for water remains huge. People line up for hours to get clean water.
But it was the terrible condition of people's shelters that struck me most.
"Our biggest problem is shelter," Halima Abdi, a mother of six children, told me. "If people see this house and the conditions that we live in they will be shocked. It is raining heavily during the nights. Without shelter it is a disaster for us. My children are sick and I'm worried what will happen to them. They don't have enough water or food either.'"
]]>Ethiopia's finest coffee is grown in the shade of native trees, which allows the coffee cherries to retain their moisture until they are ready to be picked. Without the shade of these generations-old trees, the coffee bushes would produce bitter tasting, inferior quality beans.
Berhanu says he knows it pays dividends to protect the environment. "One of our family plots had its natural shade deforested and so the coffee beans that particular plot yields are not of the expected high quality," says Berhanu. "Our cooperative union will not accept lower-grade coffee to be sold in the international specialty market, so we sell it for local consumption and make less money from it."
To remedy this problem, Berhanu is getting technical support from experts at the local agricultural bureau to reforest the plot with indigenous trees. The agricultural bureau is providing Berhanu and others in the area with tree seedlings.
With the mid-day sun peeking through the canopy of trees and the birds calling in the distance, Berhanu says he is at his best when he is hard at work on his family's coffee plots. "You see, it is not just the coffee bushes that enjoy the shades," he chuckles as he makes himself comfortable under a giant sycamore tree. "After a long day's work, a little rest under the shade of these old trees rejuvenates my soul."
Parents to 12 children, Berhanu and his wife Aster have been growing coffee for the past 10 years. They depend on the income they get from growing world renowned Yirgacheffe coffee to support eight of their children that are still living with them and are attending school.
Berhanu and Aster were new to the coffee business when, in 2001, the price of coffee sank to a 30-year low and the global coffee crisis hit Ethiopia—the birthplace of coffee. Rather than giving up in despair, Berhanu and his family were determined to ride out the storm and come out stronger than when they started. Oxfam America was by their side as it led a global campaign to bring the plight of Ethiopian coffee growers to the attention of national and international policy makers, consumer governments, international coffee roasters and consumers.
The couple says they have come a long way since the coffee crisis, which threatened their livelihoods and caused a shock to the country's coffee economy. Gone are the days when they had to sell whatever meager assets they had to put food on the table. "Our living conditions have improved significantly," says Aster. "As a mother, I dream of even better things for my family, but right now, I am secure knowing that my family is well fed, healthy, and that my children go to school".
It was just a little over a year ago that 238 coffee growers in Werka came together to form a primary cooperative under the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union. Soon after Werka joined the Union, membership shot up to 300 when word got out that Oxfam America was launching a project to support coffee quality improvement by funding the purchase of an eco-friendly coffee washing station.
As a natural extension of its global campaign and advocacy work to help Ethiopian coffee growers earn better prices, Oxfam America is increasingly investing in coffee quality improvement, focusing on eco-friendly coffee processing. This is one component of Oxfam America's effort to help cooperatives produce quality coffee and generate additional premium by selling their beans on the international specialty coffee market. The Werka project is one of three such projects that Oxfam America has funded in three different coffee growing regions of Ethiopia.
The funding for Werka and the other two cooperatives was made available as an interest free revolving loan of about US$ 150,000 each to be paid back in five years to be re-invested in another cooperative, yielding much higher returns on initial donor investment. Financing the equipment with a loan makes cooperative members accountable for the loan repayment and solidifies the fact that they are the real owners of the investment.
By utilizing eco-friendly coffee processing, the cooperatives will not only increase their income as a result of selling washed coffee but also address environmental pollution related to the conventional coffee processing method. In the conventional method the coffee pulp and mucilage are removed from the beans and get discharged into nearby streams and ponds where they decompose and deteriorate the water quality of ponds and streams that the local community uses for household consumption. The eco-friendly method of processing reduces the amount of organic waste from the washing process and cuts water usage by 98.5 percent.
Members of Werka cooperative are eagerly awaiting the next coffee harvesting season to begin using their newly installed eco-friendly washing machine. They say having such a facility on site will allow them to kill two birds with one stone—increase their income by selling washed coffee and also in the process conserve the environment that is so crucial for their ability to continue producing high quality coffee. With minimum additional investment, the accumulated pulp and mucilage, which are organic by-products of washed coffee, can be converted into bio-fuel, fertilizer, and animal feed to boost the income of coffee growers; Oxfam America has plans to invest in such a pilot project in 2008.
"Producing high-quality coffee will give us the legitimacy to demand better price in the international market," says Berhanu, his fingers moving nimbly as he carefully picks the ripened coffee cherries and places them in a basket. "So, the way I see it, the Werka project represents the best combination of solutions—earn more for our hard work, while at the same time preserving the environment that we depend on for our livelihoods."
]]>In April, the Ethiopian government announced that 2.18 million people now need emergency food assistance. Citing the toll water shortages have taken on crops and pastureland, Ethiopia has asked donors for $67.7 million in aid to help it meet the nutritional needs of people in six of the country's nine states, as well as needs for emergency water provision, animal care, and seeds. The government has also said an additional 947,383 people would have their emergency needs met through Ethiopia's existing safety net.
Oxfam and the local groups with which it partners are responding to the crisis in the Somali and Oromia regions through a multi-pronged approach which not only addresses the immediate requirements families have for water, but also provides some help to reduce the risk of hardship during the next water shortage.
In Ethiopia, the daily chore of fetching water usually falls to women and children. In drought situations, when local sources such as shallow ponds or wells dry up, the trek for this essential resource becomes even more grueling.
The Liben Pastoralist Development Association, an Oxfam partner working in the southern part of the country, realized how acute the water shortage had become when it began receiving reports of women, some of them pregnant, walking more than 18 miles from their villages to the nearest water point. Laden with 20-liter jugs of water, some of those women miscarried. Others delivered their babies along the road.
In one part of the Somali region, Oxfam learned that people were selling jerricans of water for 30 birr, or about $3.20—a small fortune in a country where poverty is widespread. Some private businesses had even started importing water from Hargessa in Somaliland.
An assessment team that traveled to the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia reported in March that more than 17,000 animals had died since January in the 11 districts it visited. Herding families in the area depend on those animals—cows, goats, sheep, camels, donkeys—not only for food but also as a critical source of income. The team found that drought had prompted the closing of 29 schools in that area because there was no water for the students. And local officials told team members that many elderly residents were showing signs of malnutrition—a possible indication that the Borena people were using one of their traditional coping strategies. In their culture, the first priority of women during food shortages is to invest in the youngest generation: children eat before their elders do.
Families in these dry pastoral areas have developed a number of ways to cope with recurrent drought. Some of them have been able to keep reserves of hay on hand for their animals when the pasture dries up. Sometimes, people slaughter their cows and goats and use the meat to help feed their families. When they can, they hunt for wood to sell or to turn into charcoal. If families lose their entire herds, other families contribute animals to get a new herd started.
But over the years, the persistent crises have depleted the assets of many people and exhausted their ability to cope. For herders, their traditional means of managing are also running headlong into modern realities. For instance, the populations of both people and their animals are growing. The allocation of communal grazing areas to private investors and a system of regionalization is limiting the amount of land herders can have access to. And bush, once burned off by fires that have since been banned, continues to encroach on valuable pastureland.
One of the consequences of the current crisis is a plunge in the value of animals. Without enough water or pasture they become sick, and many die. The Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative, an Oxfam partner, reports that the drop in value of livestock has been extreme in districts such as Dire and Dillo in the Borena zone.
And herders are facing a double hit. As they are earn less for their animals, they are simultaneously confronted with spiraling costs for grain—a food staple. Gayo notes that grain prices have jumped by almost 100 percent in some districts.
To help ease some of the severe hardships caused by the drought, Oxfam is working with four local groups to distribute water, provide needy animals with feed and veterinary care, and rehabilitate a series of local ponds so they can provide water in the future.
With support from Oxfam, the Liben Pastoralist Development Initiative's plans have called for providing drinking water to 6,000 people in two areas in the Liben District of the Oromia region's Guji Zone. The water is being trucked in from wells about 28 miles away and stored in four large tanks—and providing enough to allow each person about 4 gallons a day.
The Liben group is also transporting hay and a wheat-bran feed into the region to help shore up the strength of the animals on which people depend. But in an indication of how challenging it can be to work in remote areas, the nearest place Liben can find the necessary fodder is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, more than 370 miles to the north.
In the Dillo and Dhas districts of the Borena Zone, Action for Development is restoring three wells that typically serve 4,000 to 5,000 head of livestock each day. But because of the drought and shrinking water supplies elsewhere, the number of animals relying on water from these sources could double. The plan calls for the purchase of generators and sub pumps to get these wells running at maximum efficiency.
Like the Liben group, Action for Development is also trucking water in to Dillo and Dhas to help more than 5,000 people with access to a clean supply. The trucks are transporting the water from wells up to 34 miles away.
An estimated 13,500 people and 2,500 head of cattle will benefit from a series of projects the Gayo Pastoralist Development Initiative is also carrying out with Oxfam's help, including the restoration of two ponds in the Borena zone. Ponds provide one of the central sources of water for animals in the area, but during long dry spells they dry up, especially if silt has made them shallow.
By hiring local people to deepen the ponds, Gayo is able to provide families with an important source of income while also helping them to increase the holding capacity of these critical water sources.
"Rehabilitation of ponds during the dry season tremendously increases their capacities and enables them to serve for a longer period of time during drought," said Gayo in its grant application to Oxfam. Gayo pointed to its successes with three ponds in the Moyale area during the 2006 drought.
"The three ponds rehabilitated in response to the drought have still enough water and serve the community at the moment," Gayo said.
]]>In the area near Dubluq, Borena clans have wells with earthen ramps leading their cows down to flat areas with mud troughs so their animals can drink water passed up, bucket by bucket, by teams of men in a vertical chain, all singing to keep rhythm. These traditional eela wells, also called singing wells, are crucial in the dry season, and the clans have a schedule for which herds can access the wells on different days.
One of the wells near Dubluq is a bit special. The Negelle well has a wider entry ramp leading to a large flat surface surrounded on three sides by concrete troughs and a large reservoir. Dida Ollo, leader of the Maleu Gida sub clan, stands next to the Negelle eela and smiles, showing his impossibly straight, white teeth. "My clan and my community are overjoyed," he says as his clan members pass water up to the troughs in preparation for several herds expected that afternoon. "Imagine," Ollo says. "We can water up to 1,600 cattle in a day. With our old eela we could only take care of much fewer cattle."
The contrast with the older traditional wells is clear: In some of the older wells the herders stand precariously on a rickety, makeshift wooden ladder, passing the water up to an earth trough about 15 feet long. Each day they must create a mud out of water and dust from a termite mound to line the trough to reduce seepage. It is more work to serve fewer cows: About 15 cows can drink at one time. The neighboring Negelle well can serve 70 cows at one time, and has a steel ladder and platform system on which the herders stand securely passing the water buckets up and down.
Dida Ollo's clan asked Oxfam America's partner in Dubluq, Action for Development (AFD), to help them rehabilitate their traditional eela. Clan members donated their labor, sold cows to buy materials, and worked with AFD to optimize the design. Oxfam America contributed a grant for part of the cost.
Just enlarging the entry ramp made a huge difference, decreasing the angle and widening the width from two to 13 meters. Nasir Tonea, the construction foreman for the project with AFD, says "Before we leveled the entrance, it was really steep. And only one cow at a time could enter. After they drank, they big cows had trouble getting out, we would have to get behind and push. Now we can have 70 cows leaving to one side so they can let another herd of cows come down—they let them in because they can see they are thirsty," he says. "They have better manners than most people on the roads nowadays."
Dida Ollo says the rehabilitation made a huge difference. "The difference between the old and new well is like night and day." He says they sometimes allow other clans to water their cattle at the Negelle well when the other nearby traditional wells can't cope with the demand in dry times.
Next to the Negelle well there is a plaque that reads, "Dubluq well rehabilitated with the partnership of the local community, Oxfam America, and Action for Development." Now 68, Dida says this is part of his legacy: "When I pass away future generations will know we accomplished this together." It's important to him because it enshrines his participation in important Borena traditions. "There are two sacred things in Borena life," Ollo explains later at his house. "The first is to raise a girl and give her hand away in marriage. The second is to bring the clan together to work on our eela."
]]>The reservoir is at the base of large, steep hill, more like a small mountain really. At the top is a spring, from which water flows through pipes to the pond. It was constructed three years ago by a nearby organization called Action for Development with support from Oxfam America. Before then Jarrso's clan members had to herd their cows up the steep hill, the only means to get water in the dry season. Every day cows would expire on the path up to the spring.
"During the dry time there is no grass to eat," Jarsso says. "They could not climb, so we pushed them up, and some would die." There were years in which more than 10 a day would die on that hill.
Piping the water down the hill helps tremendously. More cows can access the water, the herders and their families can retain more of their wealth and can better survive the dry season, and they get clean, fresh water to drink and cook with, and wash their clothes in.
But the reservoir does not help one ongoing problem: herders are reporting that good pasture for grazing their cattle is harder and harder to find, and not just in the dry season. Jarsso and others in his clan say there are three main reasons for the disappearing pasture:
"The Borena people have many different methods for coping with drought," says Abera Tola, director of Oxfam America's program in Ethiopia. "But some of these bushes are new to them, and the increase in tick infestation may both be related to changes in the climate. We want to research this to find ways to help them."
Bilalo Jarsso said the Borena are trying to survive despite these challenges, and are accustomed to traveling two to three days at a time looking for decent pasture.
"We used to find grass somewhere," he said. It is becoming more and more difficult now.
Oxfam America's partner AFD is helping herders take a more active approach, teaching the Borena to manage their range land more aggressively and actually clear away the encroaching bushes to improve the pasture for grazing. This would be particularly crucial in the dry season, says Tolusa Kemaio, a project officer for AFD.
"The dry season is a very serious time here," he says. "People really struggle, and they can't just slaughter their animals to survive."
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