“Fuck you, the famine was in 1984. We have not had one since”,
user meleszenawi1111 commented 4 years ago on a YouTube video titled BBC on
Ethiopian famine 1984. True, 30 years have passed since the great famine, but
its recollection is still present today and the label it casted on the
Ethiopians is each day more frustrating and infuriating.
2014. The Addis Abeba light metro construction site sets the
“frontier” of the Sebategna slum, on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital. On
a long stretch, people are playing football. Even though Ethiopians are well
known for their achievements in athletics, the king of sports rules here as
well. Several meters away from the improvised fields, you see rows of cars.
Toyotas. 90% of the registered cars are made in Japan, 20 to 30 years ago. Next
to them, adolescent boys or grown-up men earn a buck from cleaning the
omnipresent rainy season mud off the cars.
Beyond the light metro and the cars lie the slushy streets
of the neighborhood covered in dirty rainwater and human dejections. The smell
is what gets hit first entering the slum. The sight then discovers tiny houses,
makeshift shacks used for housing or small businesses and lots and lots of
people. Yellow spots garnish the scenery. It’s the countless water cans.
Despair is a common feeling around the Ethiopian slums. And
the slums are quite common in Ethiopia. 72% of the country’s urban population
lives in extremely poor neighborhoods where water supply is a luxury and access
to sanitation a dream. Only 40% of Addis Abeba’s 3 million can use a toilet,
and this definition ranges from the latrine to the modern water closet. Seen at
the continental level, the situation raises a problem of huge proportions.
According to UN estimates, in 2009 there were around one billion people living
in slums in sub-Saharan Africa. Their number is expected to double by 2030 due
to the feverish urbanization in Africa. The evolution is not abnormal. On the
contrary, it’s only natural that the development gap between Europe and Africa
diminishes. The problem is state authorities are not equipped to manage this
process.
Slum inhabitants earn about 50 US dollars a month. That
explains for example the numerous plastic basins that lay on the streets
collecting rain water. Free of charge water represents huge savings in a
family’s budget which, in order to have access to a safe water supply, has to
pay up to 6 times more that an American citizen for a liter of water.
The lack of access to sanitation leads to the contamination
of natural water sources, such as the few wells Sebategna inhabitans were
allowed to dig. People’s health is in jeopardy here. The majority of the
diseases affecting the slums are caused by unsanitary water: cholera, malaria,
dengue, yellow fever or dysentery. In addition, the huge population congestion
in these neighborhoods is a dream land for infectious diseases.
Nevertheless, the rural population continues to migrate to
the capital’s slums in hope of a better life and bigger opportunities, only to
contribute to the depreciation of living conditions where they arrive.
Most affected are the children living in the slums. 40% are
malnourished, a direct consequence of poverty and most disease cases appear
with the little ones.
It is true, in the 30 years that passed since the great
famine in 1984, Ethiopia has not been hit by such a disaster again.
Nevertheless, with millions of people still living in extreme poverty, food
insecure, without access to improved water or sanitation, this should not set
anyone’s mind or soul at ease.
2015. The referee whistle will blow. It’s time to draw the
line and see which of the 8 Millennium Development Goals were achieved and
which not. Reality on the ground looks far from reassuring. Is poverty going
into overtime?
