The Food Aid Scenario in Ethiopia: pro-poor or pro-politics?

Ethiopia is one of the leading aid recipient countries in the world and Africa with 5-6 millions peoples approximately requiring urgent food assistance on a non-stop basis in rural areas alone. The country receives between 20-30 % of the food aid allotted to sub-Saharan Africa. Attributed to ill-favored aid architecture including the local political economy and targeting mechanisms, according evidences drawn from empirical research works, currently in the country, food aid is bringing more harm than good with a serious of debilitating repercussions on local development especially, on the socio-economic issues. This paper is based on critical review empirical research works of the scenarios of the sate of food aid and food aid dependence in selected regional states of Ethiopia (Amhara, Tigray, Somali, Afar and South Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional States) with the main objective of assessing the impact of food aid dependence on social and economic issues across the various regions of the country and to see whether food aid provisions are married to patronage of politically motivated objectives to maintain the political interest of the government and donors or to really support the needy. The result of this review show that food aid has substantial impacts on local market and production, local consumption pattern, and creating dependency syndrome and moral hazards mainly due to poor management, mode of delivery, political-favoritism and targeting mechanisms. This paper recommends that for food aid to be effective in helping the needy and assist local development efforts there has to be efficient targeting mechanism that hardly allows targeting errors of inclusion and exclusion and nepotism. Food aid programs should also be re-engineered in a manner that helps recipients’ in long-term asset creation and welfare of the people. Keywords: Food aid, Food aid architecture, Aid dependence, Labor disincentive, political favoritism, Ethiopi