It's Payday: World Bank OKs $175 million in grant funding to Ethiopia to fight famine

[Castro]

Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:32 AM GMT

 

By Lesley Wroughton

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The World Bank on Tuesday approved $175 million in grant funding to help avoid chronic food shortages in Ethiopia, long prone to drought and famine, and said the program would not be affected by fighting against Islamists in neighboring Somalia.

 

Trina Hague, the bank's lead economist and team leader, said the funding is part of an estimated $1 billion in aid promised for the program by Britain, the European Union, United States, Ireland, Canada and other international agencies like the World Food Program.

 

Hague said there was a financing gap of $195 million but noted that the United States had not yet finalized its contribution.

 

She said the second phase of the Productive Safety Net Program, first launched in 2005, would cover about 7.23 million people in areas throughout the country most frequently hit by food shortages.

 

The project has helped ween families from humanitarian aid by introducing a jobs program in which rural farmers can earn cash or food in exchange for helping to maintain roads, plant trees and restore the environment in general.

 

"Three-quarters of the households that have been assisted have reported they are consuming more and better quality food, which 90 percent of them attribute to the program," Hague told Reuters.

 

The new funding comes amid a surge in conflict in the Horn of Africa as Ethiopia and Somalia's interim government oust Islamist fighters who took control of Somalia's capital Mogadishu in June.

 

The United States launched air strikes on Tuesday against al Qaeda suspects among fleeing Islamist fighters, believed responsible for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa and a hotel on the Kenyan coast.

 

But Hague said the conflict would not impact the operations of the program.

 

"The program is focused on the very poorest of the poor in Ethiopia and on its own merits it needs to continue," she said, "It doesn't cover the Somali region of Ethiopia and we will under the program be starting some piloting under the safety net. It won't be financed by the World Bank, but will have some bilateral food aid contributions," she added.

 

"The region of Somali will not be included in a fully fledged way until later," she added. "In the meantime, the Somali region does get assistance under the humanitarian system, which the government operates and we expect that to continue," Hague said.

 

Reuters

[-Nomadique-]

Ethiopian Governments have been notorious in their diversion of humanitarian aid/assistance. How can they expect a criminal government to live up to its duties?

 

I can't believe they churn this stuff out with a straight face. It defies comprehension.

[Faarax-Brawn]

Just out of curiousity, How much of this "AID" money will go to this puppet Govt? Or did they find out about these monies on the radio just as they found out when their country was being bombed?