USAID announces additional food security assistance to Ethiopia

July 22, 2022

The objective of the fund channelized through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is to help Ethiopia overcome the current food crisis and also to build further resilience to prevent and respond to future food-related shocks.

The United States has announced about $55 million in additional food-security assistance to Ethiopia. The objective of the fund channelised through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is to help Ethiopia overcome the current food crisis and also to build further resilience to prevent and respond to future food-related shocks.
The higher food and fertilizer prices due to the Ukraine war have led to the severe food crisis in Ethiopia.

President Joe Biden’s pledge had pledged to provide $2.76 billion in additional U.S. government resources to protect the world’s most vulnerable populations from the escalating global food security crisis at the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Germany in June. The USAID assistance to Ethiopia is part of that commitment made by the US president.

The USAID funding will support over two million Ethiopians most affected by the Ukraine crisis. It will also help the population including farmers whose water and supply systems were destroyed by the conflict in northern Ethiopia. USAID stated that the farmers will be helped by rebuilding water supply systems, granting agribusiness loans, training farmers’ unions, bolstering seed and fertilizer distribution networks, and helping farmers purchase vital farming equipment.

Additionally, Ethiopia will be supported to build a resilient food production by extending support to over 3,500 agribusinesses including pastoralists and communities suffering from the drought in the Horn of Africa. A part of the
funding will go to support beneficiaries of Ethiopia’s own Productive Safety Net Program which directly bolsters the food security of over eight million people per year while pastoralists will be supported to identify and attain alternate livelihoods through grants, expand a credit guarantee fund for loans in rural areas, and improve cross-border agricultural trade through new activities like livestock health screening said the USAID statement.

The statement added that during the last year, the United States invested nearly $1.3 billion dollars in various projects in development and humanitarian work in Ethiopia