As Oxfam releases a new report highlighting the need to rethink food aid in Ethiopia, famine survivor Birhan Woldu explains why she agrees.

My name is Birhan Woldu. In 2005 I came to realise that I had become the face of the Ethiopian famine, although as a young child in 1984-5 I knew or understood little about this disaster. I was featured in a Canadian TV documentary as the ‘face of hope for Africa’ who survived the famine and that TV interviewer Brian Stewart became a friend of my family. Twenty years later, in 2005, I was on stage with Madonna and Bob Geldof for the Live8 concert in London. I have now graduated with a diploma in agriculture and a degree in nursing.

All of this has been possible because, 25 years ago, my life was saved by Irish nursing sisters who gave me an injection, and food aid from organisations like Band Aid. So it may seem strange for me to say now that to get food aid from overseas is not the best way. As well as being demeaning to our dignity, my education has taught me that constantly shipping food from places like the USA is costly, uneconomic and can encourage dependency.

We are a big country and when there is famine in one part of the country there is plenty in another. So we need better infrastructure and communications to move food around to where it is needed. Above all we need education. We Ethiopians are an intelligent, tough, and hard-working people with a culture going back thousands of years and all of us want education. For example, my father is a farmer but he is not educated. With my diploma I have been able to show him better ways to farm more efficiently and get better yields.

But until these longer-term programmes take effect we cannot simply rely on imported food aid. We know our vulnerabilities. We are a proud people. Let us grow our own food and help manage our own systems so we are not hit so hard when the next drought or flood comes. We need to approach disasters in a different way, that is more dignified and more sustainable than imported food aid. We can do this by building on communities’ own approaches.

I finish with a quote from Bob Geldof from when I was on his 2005 Live8 show in Hyde Park, London: ‘Band Aid was supposed to be just that - a “band-aid”. And it is a disgrace 20 years later we should be here today, with half the youngsters in Africa still going to bed hungry.’ What happened in 1984-5 was bad, and while we should not dwell on the past we should learn from our mistakes to ensure a better future and a country free from famine, starvation and poverty.

Read the report

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