Ethiopia faces drought every year. In a country where 80% of people depend on rain-fed agriculture, this means that more than 11 million people need support every year to meet basic food needs. Of these, 8 million benefit from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) and up to 3 million people will receive humanitarian support in a ‘typical’ year. The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has gradually increased its capacity to respond to predictable humanitarian need but significant shocks such as the 2015/16 drought do overwhelm government response systems.
In 2015, the strongest El Nino weather event on record resulted in failed rains and the worst drought in Ethiopia since 1984. As the scale of the crisis became apparent in autumn 2015, an assessment conducted by the government and humanitarian partners showed that 8.2 million people were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, in addition to 8 million people receiving support under PSNP. Overall, the drought response, combined with prior investment in preparedness and resilience building, has been successful in mitigating the worst impacts of the drought and avoiding the high death rates seen in previous droughts (400,000-500,000 are believed to have died in 1984-1985).