Ethiopia applauds U.S decision to resume food aid

Ethiopia has welcomed announcement that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) would resume food aid distribution throughout the country.

Food aid had been halted in June following the signing of an agreement to monitor aid distribution.

USAID announced that it will resume deliveries next month December for a year, during which time the agency will monitor whether the Ethiopian government fulfills its commitments, despite allegations that aid has been diverted to benefit soldiers.

In June, Addis Ababa criticized the suspension of food aid by the American agency, a decision also taken by the UN World Food Program (WFP) because of misappropriations, claiming that it “punishes millions of people”.

USAID had already announced in early October a limited resumption of food aid deliveries to meet the needs of thousands of refugees in Africa’s second most populous country.

The resumption was to concern some thirty camps in Ethiopia, which hosts nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea.

According to estimates provided by the UN humanitarian agency (Ocha) at the end of October, conflicts and a historic drought in the Horn of Africa have caused 4.6 million people to be internally displaced throughout the country, making up about 20 million, or 16% of Ethiopia’s 120 million inhabitants, dependent on food aid.

After two years of fighting, the UN and the US withheld food aid from the war-torn northern region of Tigray in May and later expanded it to the entire nation.

At the beginning of October, the WFP stated that it had resumed aid deliveries “after a total reorganization of safeguards and controls” on refugee operations.

Ethiopia is plagued by serious internal violence, a deteriorating economic situation, and chronic natural disasters