By Tsegaye Tadesse and Astrid Zweynert

ADDIS ABABA/LONDON (AlertNet) - Ethiopia on Thursday appealed for emergency aid to feed 6.2 million people, 25 years after more than a million perished in the country's notorious famine.

Aid workers say a five-year drought is afflicting more than 23 million people in seven east African nations.

Mitiku Kassa, Ethiopia's State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, said this year's rains were especially poor.

"As a result, the number of people needing emergency assistance during the period Oct.-Dec. 2009 has increased to 6.2 million from 4.9 million at beginning of the year," he said.

Ethiopia has a population of 83 million.

Kass appealed for 159,410 tonnes of food worth $121 million, 11 tonnes of fortified blended food for malnourished children and women worth $8.9 million, and $45 million in non-food needs.

U.N. humanitarian coordinator Fidelle Sarassaro urged the Ethiopian government to ensure free access to aid workers to the war-torn eastern Somali region.

"Access has been a challenge for the non-food sector and needs to be addressed. The subject has been under consultation with the government at all levels," he said.

REFORM NEEDED

Separately, aid agency Oxfam said on Thursday called for a new approach to tackling food crises.

The "knee-jerk reaction" of sending food aid to areas affected by food crises fails to offer long-term solutions to break the cycle of hunger in Ehtiopia and beyond, Oxfam said.

In its report "Band Aids and Beyond", published to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Ethiopia famine, Oxfam said donors needed to adopt an approach that focuses on preparing communities to prevent and deal with disasters such as drought before they strike, rather than relying mainly on short-term emergency relief, such as imported food aid.

"We cannot make the rains come, but there is much more that we can do to break the cycle of drought driven disaster in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa," Penny Lawrence, international director for Oxfam, who has just returned from Ethiopia, said in a statement.

Food aid has kept people alive in countless situations, but it does not tackle the underlying causes that continue to make people vulnerable to disaster year after year.

Many aid professionals think food aid should be a last resort, arguing in favour of giving cash or vouchers to hungry people instead. They say food aid can disrupt local markets and make it harder for people to recover from a crisis.

HUNGER STILL A PROBLEM

Twenty-five years ago Ethiopia was struck by one of the worst famines in its history. An estimated one million people died and millions more suffered from extreme hunger and malnutrition.

Today, millions in Ethiopia and across East Africa are facing severe food and water shortages after years of poor rains. It is estimated that drought costs Ethiopia $1.1 billion a year - almost eclipsing the total annual overseas assistance to the country, Oxfam said.

Currently, 70 per cent of humanitarian aid to Ethiopia comes from the United States. Out of the $3.2 billion of U.S. humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia since 1991, 94 percent has been in the form of food aid - almost all of it sourced from within the U.S. rather than purchased locally or regionally.

Most U.S. food aid has conditions applied to transport and packaging, which can cost up to $2 of U.S. taxpayers' money to deliver $1 of food aid.

The Obama administration wants to move to help impoverished nations expand agriculture at home and ease dependence on food handouts. It has announced a three-year, $3.5 billion food security plan - plan of a pledge by the world's richest countries to spend more than $22 billion addressing the root causes of hunger.

TAKING THE LONG-TERM VIEW

"Donors need to shift their approach, and help to give communities the tools to tackle disasters before they strike," said Lawrence. "Drought does not need to mean hunger and destitution. If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores, and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them."

But it is also essential that donors rise to the challenge and provide adequate funding for emergency assistance for this year's food crisis, Oxfam said.

The current response by international donors is far below requirements estimated by governments and United Nations agencies, aid agencies have said.

Oxfam argued in its report that donors need to do more to back programmes that manage the risk of the disaster before it strikes, such as early warning systems, creating stragetically positioned stockpiles of food, medicine and other items, and irrigation programmes.

Oxfam cited an example in the Somali region where it is building birkhads, or protected wells, to enable communities to "harvest" rain during the rainy season to make sure there is more water available nearby when the rains stop. These types of programmes receive just 0.14 per cent of overseas aid.

This is a more sustainable approach, as the emergency response is designed to contribute to development and keep communities safer in the years to come, Oxfam said. It is also cost effective: for every $1 invested, $2-4 are returned in terms of avoided or reduced disaster impacts.

The call for donors to shift their approach comes as Ethiopia faces ever-greater threats from natural disasters.

Climate scientists predict that by 2034, the 50th anniversary of the 1984 Ethiopia famine, what are now droughts will become the norm, hitting the region three years out of every four.

"Climate change makes the urgency of this approach greater than ever before," said Lawrence. "Ethiopians on the frontline of climate change cannot wait another 25 years for common sense to become common practice."

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