11/30/2004

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The National Safety Net

The National Safety Net program hopes to ensure consistent support to the chronically food insecure through a mix of cash and food.  The targeting of 5.1 million people as being in permanent need marks a radical departure from a tradition by the Ethiopian government of pretending that only in times of drought does Ethiopia have a serious food security problem.  It is a statement of the political, economic and social reality of Ethiopia and as such has been applauded by Ethiopia’s friends abroad as much as by Ethiopians themselves.  

However, the Safety Net, despite the political breakthrough it represents, is in most respects no more than a formalization of business as usual.  Food for work, cash for work and direct relief assistance - the major components of the program - have been an integral part of life in the overpopulated and degraded highlands for decades.  There will be no graduation from the program unless and until there are both on-farm and off-farm economies that function well enough to be creating both surpluses and employment.  Until these things come to pass the Safety Net will produce few, if any graduates, but will have instead an ever larger number of people seeking enrolment, putting ever increasing strain on the finances of the Government.

Long-Term Solutions

Neither resettlement nor the Safety Nets Program will contribute much to solving Ethiopia’s food security problem. What is needed is heavy investment from the international donor community in a restructuring of the rural economy.  This will necessitate a change in the national policy on land tenure, implementation of a realizable population policy, and major investments in rural roads, markets/service centers, communications and education.
Most contentious is the issue of land tenure.  Since 1975 land in Ethiopia has been publicly owned and user rights have been guaranteed for all rural families in their area of residence subject to a proof of permanent residence, and a capability to farm and meet administrative dues and obligations.  These rights are dependent upon a family remaining on their allocated plot and cultivating it continuously.  An absence of a year is enough to risk landlessness.

This allocation of land into ever decreasing plots has been managed by the Peasant Associations.  It is estimated that 30-40 percent of those seeking land from a Peasant Association are no longer able to be supplied with it.  The system is choking and the basic resource, land, is no longer available in sufficient quantity.  By 1998 the Government itself had estimated that a quarter of all holdings were less than half a hectare in size and averages as low as a quarter of a hectare have been recorded for southern Ethiopia.   As demand for land increasingly outstrips supply the land allocation function, and thus power, of the Peasant Associations has inevitably begun to decrease in importance.  Instead factors such as the ability to match labor and draught power to available land have greatly increased in importance resulting in informal transactions that match supply and demand. The increasing use of such informal rental and share cropping arrangements has created an expanding market with de facto legal status.

The Government remains steadfastly against the privatization of land fearing the rapid accumulation of land by a small number of entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, accepting this constraint, freeing up the rental market by formalizing it and legislating for it would allow both the lessor and lessee greater security and flexibility.  Migration, despite the risks involved in leaving one’s land, is an important component of the rural economy.  For example up to 90,000 migrants travel each year to western Amhara to work on large sorghum and sesame farms.   The migrant worker risks losing access to land, has no access to health care in the receiving areas and no formal contract of employment. 

Migration is just one aspect of a growing demand for off farm incomes.  Given the paucity of rural markets and the lack of roads (28 kms per 1000 km2; amongst the lowest on the continent), opportunities are limited.  Small rural towns and their markets are an interface between the countryside and urban centers. Without them, and an interconnecting system of roads, there is little to stimulate economic development outside of the main towns and thus develop alternate markets for labor.  The freeing up of land markets and investment in roads and small towns would need to be complemented by dramatic improvements in both the quantity and quality of education and the availability of modern communications.

The Government remains committed to making smallholder agricultural development the engine of national economic growth.  In support of that position one has to conclude that resettlement makes no meaningful contribution to that commitment and simply diverts scarce financial and human resources away from activities that are potentially of far greater value to building a sound rural economy.  For the rural economy to grow the Government’s commitment should not be to spread a failed agricultural system.  Unless and until there is a realization that significant steps must be taken towards a series of market and land reforms there will be no escape from Ethiopia’s Malthusian trap.

Change should provide increased security for rural land users to trade rights and be free to migrate.  It should be incremental so as to be manageable and be supported by a long term investment in infrastructure for transport, markets, education and communications.  Until the donors themselves have a shared vision of how best to support Ethiopia’s commitment to growth the Government will continue to receive conflicting messages from its friends providing a poor platform from which to engage in meaningful debate with the Government.

Refugees International therefore recommends that:

• Donors embrace the Government of Ethiopia’s safety net program as an important intermediate step.  That support should be conditional on an understanding that its success will not have much positive impact on Ethiopia’s long term food security without a parallel engagement in a broad based, long-term strategy of market and land reform coupled with major investments in population policy, education, roads, and communications. 
• Donors provide emergency aid to resettled individuals and communities, and work with the government to assess resettlement sites and ameliorate the problems caused by resettlement. Such assistance is a humanitarian necessity.  Donors and NGOs should also be alert to abuses in the program and seek their redress with the government.