The United States will resume its food aid program to refugees in Ethiopia after aid was halted earlier this year because donations were being channelled elsewhere, according to a senior U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official.
Ethiopia’s food crisis has worsened in recent years as a result of the conflict in the Tigray region and the Horn of Africa’s deadliest drought seen in decades.
The decision to recommence the aid was made after the application of tighter reforms that the Ethiopian government and partners made to the refugee food assistance structure. Some of the reforms include: strengthened program monitoring, reinforced commodity tracking and enhanced registration processes.
Aid for other food-insecure people in Ethiopia is still at a standstill until Washington receives assurances that it will reach its proposed beneficiaries, the senior official had remarked.
Recall that the USAID had in June said that it was halting food aid to Ethiopia because its donations were being pilfered.
In the 2022 fiscal year, USAID expended almost $1.5 billion in humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia, majority of it being food aid.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) had in August announced that it had begun distributing food aid in parts of the Tigray region after a three-month hiatus.
WFP had halted food aid to the northern region in May after reports surfaced of widespread theft of the donations. It subsequently paused aid to the whole of Ethiopia in June.
