The United States of America has announced about 55 million USD additional food-security assistance to Ethiopia today.
According to the US Embassy in Ethiopia, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) will utilize this new funding to help Ethiopians overcome the current food crisis and to build further resilience to prevent and respond to food-related shocks in the future.
The 55 million USD is part of President Joe Biden’s pledge-made in late June during the G7 Leaders Summit in Germany-to provide 2.76 billion USD in additional U.S government resources to protect the world’s most vulnerable populations from the escalating global food security crisis, it was learned.
USAID will use this new funding to reach over two million Ethiopians, including farmers whose water and supply systems were destroyed by the conflict in northern Ethiopia.
The agency will further help them boost Ethiopia’s current food production supply by rebuilding water supply systems, granting agribusiness loans, training farmers unions, bolstering seed and fertilizer distribution networks, and helping farmers purchase vital farming equipment, the press release of the embassy stated.
Moreover, it said that USAID will help build the resiliency of Ethiopia’s food production with over 3,500 agribusiness and the hardest hit populations such as pastoralists and communities suffering from the drought in the Horn of Africa.
While some funding will support beneficiaries of Ethiopia’s own Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) which directly bolsters the food security of over eight million people per year.
And other funding will help pastoralists identify and attain alternate livelihoods through grants, expand a credit guarantee fund for loans in rural areas, and improve cross-border agricultural trade through new activities like livestock health screening.
