Famine Stalks Ethiopians While Politics Undermines Effective Responses

Dec 27 , 2025.

The latest pictures from weredas in Western Tigray Regional State are a punch to the gut. Elderly men and women lie stick-thin on ragged mats, too weak to crawl, recalling the grainy television images of the 1970s famine that once mobilised the world.

Back then, the promise was “Never Again!” Today, it sounds hollow. That promise was made not only in Ethiopia. Images from Bangladesh’s 1974 famine provoked a similar vow, equally unmet.

Hitsats, the town behind the images, sits in Asgede Wereda, south of the old frontline town of Badme and west of gold-rich Shire. Its camp is filled with people uprooted first by the war five years ago and now by a grinding stand-off between leaders of the regional state and the federal government. Local activists took to social media with the disturbing photos and video clips, reporting that at least 50 people have died in recent weeks from hunger, malnutrition or easily curable diseases. Another 1,700 are reportedly at risk.

Many call this a “man-made” catastrophe. Indeed, the charge of neglect by the country's political leadership lands awkwardly.

Only a few kilometres away, the top brass commanders of the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) control lucrative gold mines. Critics allege that smuggling has enriched the brass while they ignore their starving neighbours. TDF's chain of command appears to be loose, pushing accountability into a fog. Whatever the hierarchy, it seems that gold convoys pass huts where elders starve.

Predictably, blame is traded. The TPLF, the political party that controls life in the region, accuses Addis Abeba of a “continued policy of genocide” and urges foreign pressure. Federal officials, such as Shiferaw Teklemariam (PhD), who oversees national disaster management, recoil. He blamed TPLF leaders for “instrumentalising famine for political gains”. He insisted that two million quintals of grain and nearly 32 billion Br in aid have been delivered to the region this year alone.

Yet warnings from international aid agencies monitoring the humanitarian situation grow louder. Aid agencies still classify parts of the regional state as IPC Phase Five - catastrophe - months after the guns fell silent.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS) reckons that, by early 2026, hunger will move from forecast to fact for millions. The evidence already litters parched fields, empty granaries and crowded feeding centres.

East Hararghe in Oromia Regional State tells the tale. The "Meher" crop output has collapsed by 54pc, a brutal blow to subsistence households whose coping capacity has long been exhausted. West Hararghe has lost 34pc. The usual tricks of borrowing or buying cannot bridge such gaps because these point to a structural breach that will stretch until at least May 2026.

Children arrive at therapeutic centres late, thinner and harder to save; deaths are expected to climb. Severe acute malnutrition, once sporadic, is rising steadily. East and West Hararghe accounted for 26pc of all therapeutic-feeding admissions in September. South-eastwards, the pastoral belt slides deeper into distress. Somali Regional State, Borena and South Omo endured one of the driest October-to-December periods on record. Some localities received barely 30pc of their normal rains.

Weakened herds, shrinking milk yields and ethnic tensions that crimp movement push pastoralists towards crisis. Aid agencies warn that even good rains in March may only slow, not reverse, the descent.

The north remains fragile, as a partial "Meher" harvest has eased pressure in parts of Amhara and Tigray regional states, but the reprieve is thin. By mid-November, only a third of crops in Amhara Regional State and 60pc in Tigray Regional State had been gathered, as late-planted and moisture-stressed fields were yielding little. Losses cluster in lowland pockets of North Wello, Wag Himra and the southern, eastern and central zones of Tigray Regional State.

Therapeutic-feeding admissions in Amhara Regional State are up 19pc on last year and 42pc on the five-year norm. With stocks draining early, many families will enter the March-to-May lean season empty-handed.

Conflicts compound the misery. Fighting widened in Amhara Regional State in October and November, disrupting markets and travel when households should have been rebuilding. Renewed clashes in Tigray and Afar regional states displaced 18,000 people in one district in early November, most of them women and children.

Ironically, macroeconomic data could be misleading but comforting for policymakers. They could mistakenly believe that stability at an elevated level means assurance for families with falling incomes.

Headline inflation has eased to 11.7pc, and food inflation to 10.2pc. On paper, affordability is improving, but in reality, the Birr has slid 40pc against the dollar since September. Prices could remain lofty. Sorghum in Sekota is eight percent higher than a year ago.

The World Food Programme (WFP) pencilled in help for 6.8 million Ethiopians in 2025, but expects a funding gap that could leave 2.6 million without assistance by early 2026.

Famines rarely strike like lightning. They assemble slowly, from political and economic decisions that strip people of entitlements and dodge responsibility for the consequences. Ethiopia’s hunger episodes, notably in the Tigray and Amhara regional states, owe less to weather than to choices made by political elites.

Large famines are almost unknown in liberal democracies. They cluster in autocracies and war zones where power escapes scrutiny. Ethiopia’s repeated slides into hunger under conflicts and constrained accountability fit the pattern. The lesson is not that Ethiopia lacks grain. It lacks an enforceable “anti-famine contract”. Calling famine “political” is no slogan; it is a diagnosis. Amartya Sen settled the debate decades ago.

Mass starvation seldom stems from absolute food shortage. It follows the collapse of wages, the shutdown of markets, the flight from farms, and the politicisation of aid. Ethiopia has known droughts without mass death. What changed is the policy. Insecurity blocked grain and fuel; banking and telecoms were interrupted; movement was restricted; relief was looted or delayed.

These are not meteorological facts but man-made environments. By the time leaders admit failure, people have already pawned assets, skipped meals for days and crossed physiological thresholds from which recovery is unlikely. If such failures are not corrected — quickly, openly, and on a grand scale — hunger turns lethal.

Preventing starvation means restoring purchasing power when prices jump, reopening markets when war closes them, guaranteeing humanitarian access and reacting instantly when people start to die. It demands institutions that report bad news early and punish indifference. Until Ethiopia’s political elites face real costs for letting entitlement failure become mass death, the country will keep learning the same brutal lesson that people die when power looks away.

For donors, the danger is complacency. Ethiopia is not confronting a sudden shock but a slow-burning emergency fanned by climate, conflict and eroded resilience. Hunger now maps a broad crescent from the eastern highlands through the southern rangelands back to the north. Without decisive action, the wretched scenes in Hitsats will not be an exception. They will be the new normal.

Hitsats is one of 146 camps across Tigray Regional State, relics of the 2020 war that uprooted more than four million civilians. Shiferaw asserted that two million quintals of grain and almost 32 billion Br have been dispatched to the region this year alone. Yet, consignments shrink once they meet insecurity, bureaucracy and mounting need.

The FEWS Network, a donor bible for food crises, now maps most of Ethiopia in Phase 3 (crisis) or worse. Its analysts fear pockets will cross into Phase 4 (emergency) or Phase 5 by early 2026, a timetable that should alarm leaders but so far scarcely moves them.

However, the lesson from previous crises should not be lost that food security in Ethiopia has become a structural feature of the economy. Ignoring this reality will ensure that emergencies such as those now unfolding in places like Histetse become permanent.

PUBLISHED ON Dec 27,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1339]