QUOTES: “As every farmer will emphasize, there is no average household, average yield, average rainfall or average food security situation. Averages are imposed; they provide illumination but are not lived realities. Instead of focusing on averages, greater attention should be placed on the diversity of ways in which households encounter food insecurity” (p. 25-26) “One […]
Tags: #Ethiopia #Ethiopians #Famine #Food Security #Logan Cochrane
de Waal, Alex. 2018: Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. Cambridge: Polity Press. 264 pp. $24.95. ISBN: 9781509524679 As available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464993419836552 Readers with an interest in the topic of famine will have frequently come across the name Alex de Waal throughout the past three decades. As a researcher, practitioner and advocate, de Waal has […]
Tags: #Alex De Waal #Ethiopia #Famine #Food Security #Mass Starvation
Ethiopia and its people struggle with food insecurity and recurring drought. What are the pathways to overcome these challenges? Access to land, the establishment of justice, the creation of cooperatives, agricultural input distribution, farmer training, environmental rehabilitation, irrigation infrastructure, building institutional capacity, creating effective governmental structures. These are components of the narrative we hear in […]
Richard Pankhurst made significant contributions to the study of history in Ethiopia (see a listing of some of his works here). In this book, “The History of Famine and Epidemics in Ethiopia Prior to the Twentieth Century” (1985), published by the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, Richard Pankhurst brings together a series of others works: The […]
Tags: #Epidemics #Ethiopia #Famine #Food Security #Pankhurst
Rural live in Ethiopian history is largely absent in the historical record – historians are able to work with a wealth of material from the long written record in the country, but these tends to only reflect a small segment of society. James McCann’s “From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: A Rural History 1900-1935” […]
One of the earliest comprehensive works on famine in Ethiopia was “Rural Vulnerability to Famine in Ethiopia, 1958-1977”, written by Mesfin Wolde Mariam (published 1986). The author is noteworthy for a career advocating for human rights, for which he was nominated for the Sakharov Prize, and also for which he was imprisoned by the Government […]
Tags: #Drought #Ethiopia #Famine #Food Security #Mesfin Wolde Mariam
I enjoy reading books in the international development sphere than are dated. Sometimes it is encouraging to see how far the sector has come, and at other times it is depressing how little has changed. These books are often sources of inspiration for ideas, while at the same time provide a better grounding on where […]
Tags: #Famine #Food Security #Food systems #Nigeria #Poverty