Conflict-displaced beneficiaries with goats provided through a Durable Solutions approach as part of FAO's community support for income generation in Eastern Ethiopia

- Addis Ababa: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has received financial support from the Republic of Croatia to conduct a livestock feed availability assessment in eastern, and southern Ethiopia with a special focus on the impact of drought on women.

The study will be conducted in Eastern Oromia, Southern Ethiopia, Central Ethiopia, Sidama and Somali regions and the aim is to understand the quantity and types of available feed in order to recommend community level rangeland and environmental rehabilitation interventions.

Multiple challenges to livestock sector

Livestock production is a crucial source of food and income for pastoralists located in eastern and southern Ethiopia. Unfortunately, drought in 2020-2023 and floods in second half of 2023 to first half of 2024 impacted these locations.

The drought and floods caused loss of many livestock thereby hurting their incomes. In addition, they were affected by serious desert locust damage in 2019-2021. Despite the floods, the rangelands have not fully recovered from the damage to pasture caused during the five consecutive rainfall seasons.

For many pastoralists, the huge loss in livestock assets continues to affect their food security and they are unable to access enough livestock to sell for the much-needed household incomes. The October to December 2024 rainfall performed below normal and currently, communities do not yet understand the full impact of all these on pasture.

Gender considerations

Assessments conducted during the prolonged drought of 2020 to 2023 showed that community members located in pastoral communities and dependent on semi-nomadism tend to be affected differently along sex and age differences. 

Men and boys tend to move with the animals while women, girls and young children tend to stay back within the drought ravaged communities taking care of the home and weaker or small stocks like sheep, goats and chickens or some milking animals.

Access to water and fuel wood is very difficult during these periods and female community members spend long hours to access during drought. In some regions, female-headed households were more likely to lose all their small stocks compared to male-headed households who had capacity to move longer distances with their animals.

Need for a scientific study to inform programming

It is therefore important that the feed availability study is conducted to reflect on these gender perspectives by deliberately capturing the contributions of both older and younger males and females and ensuring targeted focus group and key informant discussions listen to both male and female pastoralists across all age groups. 

The results from this study will, therefore, help to inform proper programme designing. The findings will facilitate the integration of gender appropriate aspects into both emergency and development interventions, not only in the selected areas, but across the country.  

Linkage to EU funding 

FAO is implementing an EU -funded project, ‘Support to effective food security, nutrition and resilience programming in Ethiopia’, which is implementing early warning interventions focusing on assessment of livestock body condition and forage availability. Therefore, this study will complement the ongoing EU funded interventions by FAO in Ethiopia.

For further information, please contact:

Emmanuel Kihaule
International Communications Specialist
FAO Ethiopia
Email: [email protected]