Ethiopian Drought Threatens Growth as Cattle Die, Crops Fail
Saado Osman straps two bulging sacks of United Nations wheat to her donkey, one of the few animals the 70-year-old eastern Ethiopian herder has left since the rains stopped. Like millions of others in the Horn of Africa nation she depended on that precipitation to provide fodder and water for her livestock. Now drought has killed 20 of her cattle and goats, leaving her family of 10 with just four animals. A dead cow lies in Afar region. Photographer: William Davison/Bloomberg “There is hunger here,” Saado said as she stood among a crowd receiving food relief in Afdem town in Ethiopia’s Somali region on Oct. 8. “For one year it has not rained.” Rain failure from February to May this year in Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, was compounded by a short and erratic primary wet season from June to September. That’s left 8.2 million people in need of emergency support, with the crisis set to worsen through September next year, according to the UN. The ef