Thirty-five years after haunting images of crying, skeletal Ethiopian children shocked the world, Tigray, the region that unwittingly became a poster child for famine, is taking on a new image &#8211; that of resilience.



In Ruwa Feleg, a highland community with vivid memories of the devastating 1984 famine, the 2016 drought, which experts said was the worst Ethiopia had seen in half a century, had minimal impact, local farmers said.



“A lot of the livestock was lost but there were no marked loss of (human) lives,” said Hidrom Haileselasie, 45. “It’s not comparable.”



For one, they had spare cash from selling temperate fruits and vegetables such as apples, apricots and almonds, and no longer live hand-to-mouth. Improved infrastructure meant food, whether to markets or as assistance, arrived faster.



So, despite food shortages, people did not starve to death, unlike during the 1984 “great famine” when a combination of severe drought and civil war killed up to 1 million people.



The lack of conflict and Ethiopia’s strong economic growth helped the arid and mountainous Tigray, home to nearly 6 million people, during the 2016 drought, experts and locals said.



Months of monitoring allowed aid agencies to deliver assistance quickly when things worsened, said Getachew Kalayu, head of planning and coordination with local non-profit Relief Society of Tigray (REST).



“Both the people and the government have learnt a lesson from 1984,” said Getachew, whose organization was set up in 1978 by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a former guerrilla movement turned political party.



Environmental rehabilitation work and efforts to diversify incomes were crucial, experts say.



“If you go back 30 plus years… (Tigray) was a moonscape, so denuded, with people cutting trees for charcoal and abandoning land,” said Betsy Otto, at the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Global Water Programme.



Through painstaking work, locals moved 90 million tonnes of soil and rock by hand, built infiltration pits and embankments, and planted trees to restore landscapes, said Otto, whose organization was involved in some of the projects.



“People migrate into Tigray now, which is kind of unheard of,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.



The groundwater table has risen and artesian wells that had not flowed for a long time now do, she added.



Tigray also looked to micro dams and watershed management to provide irrigation so small-scale farmers can improve crop productivity, said Fatouma Seid, representative for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Ethiopia.



All these contributed to “the communities’ capacity to withstand drought situations”, said Seid, whose organization has been helping farmers for years, including those in Ruwa Feleg.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">CASH FRUITS AND FREE LABOR</h4>



The changes are palpable in Abreha we Atsbeha, a village two hours southwest of Ruwa Feleg on winding, bumpy roads.



Here the community has been working for more than a decade to build terraces on hills to retain water and prevent soil erosion. With about 1,500 locals working 20 days a year, they have so far terraced 5,200 hectares, a local official said.



“Before there were no plants. After (we built) the terraces, the land breathed new life again,” Kidane Gebreselassie, the official, said proudly, pointing at the lush, green hillsides.



A large part of this impressive feat is due to a government program requiring locals to work up to 20 days a year on rehabilitating the environment.



This happens “after the harvest and when people have spare time”, said Zenebu Tilahun Negrash, an official with Tigray’s Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development.



Both Zenebu and Kidane are convinced such conservation work, which won a United Nations-backed award in 2017, helped the area during the 2016 drought.



People in Tigray have long memories of what it was like in 1984.



Tsega Asgedem, 63, a farmer at Ruwa Feleg, fled to Eritrea with her family and relatives, including two newborns. She ended up begging in the streets for a time to feed her children. They did not return for three years.



“It was very difficult to even bury the dead. There was nobody strong enough to do it,” remembered Tsega, who lost relatives in the famine.



Hidrom and Kes Berihu Hailu were only 10 and 9 then, but recall the hunger, the sickness, the food aid and the dead bodies lying in the streets.



So, when they learned of fruits they could grow and sell for cash, they jumped at the chance to leave the vicious cycle of subsistence farming.



“Previously… we planted cereals only for our own (animal) feed, and even then sometimes what we produce is not enough,” recounted Kes, 44, who is also a priest.



Now, Kes’ small plot of land grows only fruits. Life has improved leaps and bounds, he said, standing in front of a large, two-story stone building he had recently built with proceeds from the sale of the fruits.



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He spent more than 80,000 Ethiopian birr ($2,820), he said.



Aid agencies, particularly the FAO and World Vision, provided them with free seedlings and taught them technical skills, said Hidrom, the local pioneer who also keeps bees.



Despite struggling with getting enough water for his plants, he sees the fruits as his future.



“The land here is very small so planting cereal crops is not profitable. Highland fruits are the way to go.”



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">WHAT IS NEXT?</h4>



Demand for seedlings and technical knowledge is so high the government has not been able to keep up, said Zenebu, the agricultural official and leader of the team promoting highland fruits in Tigray.



About 33,000 people were producing fruits between June and the end of December, and they hope to raise the number to 96,000 by June 2020, to boost farmer incomes as well as nutrition, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.



In the decade between 2006/2007 and 2016/2017, Ethiopia’s economy soared, but the country remains one of the region’s poorest, with nearly one in four living below the national poverty line, according to the World Bank.



More than four out of five Ethiopians also rely on agriculture and livestock for work and income in Africa’s second-most populous nation after Nigeria.



This makes them particularly vulnerable to weather-related disasters, many of which are becoming more frequent. Even Tigray’s restored landscape may only be able to help so much, experts said.



“Thirty, 40 years ago, there used to be rain end of May up till end of October. Now the rain comes in middle of June if you are lucky and stops first week of September,” Ehiopian aid worker Getachew said.



“So, investment in environment and water security are critical,” he said.



Farmers say they do not fear working hard, but rather the unpredictable weather and a repeat of the 1984.



“This is peace value. It allows us to secure an existence,” said Hidrom, pointing to a basket of freshly harvested almonds in his hands. -Reuters



-Thin Lei Win @thinink; Laurie Goering and Elias Gebreselassie

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With Fruits and Green Shoots, Tigray Swaps Image of Famine for Resilience

Rescuers are moving hundreds of dehydrated Lesser Flamingo chicks from their breeding ground at a drought-stricken South African dam to a bird sanctuary in Cape Town, to save them from death by starvation and lack of water. 



Their birthplace, Kamfers Dam in the Northern Cape, is one of only three breeding grounds for the famously pink birds in Southern Africa, the other two being in Namibia and Botswana, according to researcher Katta Ludynia.



The rescued chicks take three to four months to fledge, and it is not yet clear whether they will eventually be released back into the wild in Cape Town or transported back hundreds of km (miles) to their home in Kimberley, she said.



“There are still several thousand birds breeding in the dam in areas that still have water,” said Katta Ludynia, research manager at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB).



“It now depends on the water levels whether these birds will pull through.”



Ludynia said the sanctuary was caring for around 550 chicks, most of them dehydrated when they first arrived on Monday after being abandoned by parents who went off in search of food.



The chicks are being moved to the sanctuary by plane and road.



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SANCCOB is one of several centers across South Africa caring for around 2,000 chicks that were rescued from the dam.



Although it hosts the biggest population of lesser flamingoes in southern Africa, Kamfers Dam, situated to the north of Kimberley, is often dry and depends mainly on rain water. It also gets some water from a sewerage works that releases water into its wetlands.



“The dam in Kimberley is so important because it is manageable, so we can secure the water level there and that might be the only site the flamingoes can breed in Southern Africa, if the drought continues in other areas,” Ludynia said. -Reuters



&#8211;Mike Hutchings and Sumaya Hisham

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Drought Threatens Thousands of Flamingo Chicks in South Africa

<h3>Claire Reid, 29 
Founder, Reel Gardening</h3>
South Africa is experiencing the worst drought since 1982, leaving farmers in debt worth billions of rands. Could Claire Reid’s gardening solutions be the answer?
Reid discovered her “revolutionary planting method” at the age of 16 when trying to earn pocket money growing a vegetable garden and selling the crop to her parents. That’s when she realized gardening was no child’s play.
“I would put more seed than necessary, I didn’t know how far apart or how deep it was. The whole thing was frustrating,” she recalls.
Frustration gave way to fortune. Her teacher encouraged her to enter a competition simplifying gardening, based on marking small areas of ground with biodegradable color-coded paper strips encasing organic fertilizer and seeds at the correct depth and distance. The paper helped save up to 80% of water. The project won her a gold medal.
The Department of Water Affairs sent Reid to Stockholm, where she became the first South African to win an international award, beating 28 other countries.
“All of a sudden I was being sent overseas to represent South Africa and being given an award by Thabo Mbeki [former South African president]. It was quite a whirlwind time being nominated for Checkers Woman of the Year while I was only 17.”
Reid studied Architecture, Geology and Civil Engineering at the University of Pretoria. While on internship, she landed a project with Anglo American that took her to Marikana, an area that needed her gardening skills. She pitched the idea to Anglo American that gave her a start-up loan to form her company Reel Gardening in 2010. A social enterprise that employs 10 mothers from diverse backgrounds, it has been rolled out in 280 schools. Though its focus is online, new mom Reid has recently set up operations in Kenya. The company has sold products in the UK and plans to expand to the UAE, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the US. In November last year, she also made it to BBC’s 30Under30 list.
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Tag: Drought

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

With Fruits and Green Shoots, Tigray Swaps Image of Famine for Resilience

Drought Threatens Thousands of Flamingo Chicks in South Africa

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