Current conditions in the region

Weather and Food Security Outlooks

FEWS and USAID lounched their latest issue on Africa's Hazards Outlook. 

The analysis of the number of rain days between 22 April and 21 May indicates an increase across much of East Africa. According to the report 5-10 more days of rainfall occurred across Ethiopia than normal, with a surplus of 50-150 mm of total rainfall.    

Climate Prediction Center’s Africa Hazards Outlook

For USAID / FEWS-NET

May 24 – May 30, 2012

"Despite the improvement of the season since the middle of April, the overall performance of the February to May rains  will  likely be below-normal  providing ~60 to  ~85  percent of normal rainfall totals though  erratic and unevenly distributed" predicts FEWS and USAID for the second and third quarter of 2012.  

According to the report high needs for humanitarian assistance are likely to persist in the Southern and Southeastern pastoral and agropastoral areas and food prices may show unusual rises between May and September 2012.

Estimated food security conditions, 

3rd Quarter 2012 , USAID Medium-term Outlook

Location of the Projects

Map of the wells in Ethiopia

Here is a link to show where the two development projects are located in Ethiopia.

The Hungarian Intercurch Aid (HIA) works in the Southern part of the country. Their reconstruction project was implemented in Borena province, Gayo district, close to the Kenyan border.


The Hungarian Water Prospecting and Drilling Joint-stock Company (Vikuv Zrt.) drilled wells for the villages of Abuware and Hablomender, near Kobo, in Northern Ethiopia.

The For-Profit Approach

Investment in the Northern Ethiopian Highlands

Since the completion of Vikuv’s water prospecting project in 2009, around 6000 inhabitants of the Kobo Valley in Northern Ethiopia are provided with fresh water every day.

Weha heywat neaw – Water is life
Photo: Dudás György, Vikuv Zrt.

The Hungarian Water Prospecting and Drilling Joint-stock Company spent 101.000$ on drilling two wells in the villages of Abuware and Hablomender. They built two waterworks and one sub irrigation system in the fields nearby, which allow now the local community to harvest three times a year. 

The project started in September 2007 with a week-long training of 10 Ethiopian engineers, who attended lectures, visited farms, hydroelectric stations and got familiar with irrigation systems in Hungary. In late 2007 the equipment of Vikuv Zrt. were transported to the villages 600km north from Addis Ababa that were requisite to effectuate the wells and waterworks. Involving local labor in the drilling for $1/day remuneration, the wells had been installed by the end of September 2008 and the waterworks by June 2009.

Locals helping the drilling works at Kobo Girana Valley.
Photo: Dudás György, Vikuv Zrt Photo: Dudás György, Vikuv Zrt

At 100 meter depth a great quantity of fresh and clean groundwater was explored and was brought to the surface, close to the primary school of Abuware. “The ceremonial transmission was grandiose,” said György Dudás, project manager of Vikuv. “They were very happy about the wells, but I do not know in what condition the installations are by now.”

The manager explained his reservations about the sustainability of their project: “when we first arrived to explore the Amhara region we saw some wells in awful, practically unusable conditions. Who drilled them, which aid program it was, we didn’t even know. We don’t have much feedback from the locals in Kobo, thus our machineries might look the same by this time. But I do hope they take care of them.”

“We did bring loose parts and some tools for the community to drill the ditch for the irrigation system. I remember how they were laughing when they looked at our spades and hoes that were absolutely useless against the clayey surface. One of the kids run back home and brought a spear to our astonishment and literally started to carve a hole in the ground.”

The Kobo Girana valley is surrounded by 3000m high mountains and geologically is a basaltic area where the hard loam does not let the rainwater through the ground; hence the moisture simply oozes away. Due to the waterworks the inhabitants get continuous access to enough drinking water now and because of the sub irrigation system their crops get watered directly, ensuring them farm products through all the year.

“Water is a treasure there. It was a great success to work together with the local people intently for a common goal, to see the leaders of the villages discussing the matters in a very democratic way and to watch the children playing with the running water filled with delight. We would really like to return to Ethiopia in the near future. We acknowledge the importance of contribution and the good investment opportunities.”
Vikuv Zrt. is engaged in water prospecting and drilling for over 150 years and is present in many European countries and also in Mongolia, Kuwait, Libya. The company plans to have future business investments in Ethiopia in cooperation with the Ministry of Water and Energy of Ethiopia. 

Amhara kids playing with the water pipe installed by Vikuv
Photo: Dudás György, Vikuv Zrt

Definition of the problem

The NGO approach - What the hell is in the deep south?

This project is planned to support the livelihood of the pastoralist community in Gayo PA, Dhas District of Borana Zone. The activities going to be undertaken in this specific project includes rehabilitation of one traditional ella with cattle trough. In all aspect of the rehabilitation and other development work, the local government and other stakeholders will be contacted to bring about sustainability. The local community will make their share in form of free labour contribution during the rehabilitation process.

The failure of the March/April 2011 main rains has resulted in the deterioration of food security situation in the drought-affected pastoral and agro-pastoral areas as well as in some belg-cropping parts of Ethiopia. Following a complete failure of the 2010 September-November rains and related harvests, the 2011 March-May rains began late and performed erratically. These situations have led to substantial harvest failure, a decrease in water availability, deteriorating pasture conditions and livestock losses in the southern, south-eastern pastoral and agro-pastoral parts of the country. Current identified needs and gaps in the country include food assistance for 4.6 million people until December 2011, and additional people requiring access to food, livelihood protection, and the need for commencement of recovery plans.  Availing means to access food coupled with livelihood protection measures and initiating recovery activities is paramount to improve local food production and access to food in the pastoral and adjoining agro-pastoralist areas.  

In drought affected pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of south and south-eastern lowlands of Borana; mainly, Dhas district is largely dry and with no pasture and water. This has resulted in the death of considerable number of livestock. In this pastoral area, the situation has severely deteriorated as the primary source of livelihood which is food/income from livestock and milk production has worsened due to the emaciated physical conditions of livestock as well as the large number of livestock deaths. Similarly, consumption and income sources from non livestock production engagement are not expected this season due to the poor performance of 2011 belg/genna rains in the district..

Meeting was conducted at district’s local government structures and the community. The emphasis was given to the comparatively drought stricken PAs located in the districts depending on the following criteria as rectified by the respective districts taskforces.

  Poor water supply areas as the result of malfunctioning of water infrastructures and prolonging of drought.

    The scarcity of pasture and water in the PAs

    The area where livestock death rate was comparatively reported high

  Area over run by high coverage of bush encroachment

    The areas where massive migration detected

    Existence of school drop outs in the PA

How to develop this project?

On the last week we summarized some details about this project. The most important issues are to define our audience, our expectations and collect more questions.

Audience

The aim of our project is to address the problem to the civil sector related to Ethiopian issues and to address the solution to experts both from non-profit and for profit sectors. 

On one hand the non-profit needs to know the conception of the business sector, their form of investment and its long term effect, as the financial level and duration of the installation is almost the same. On the other hand companies from for profit sector need to be aware of such development cooperation to differentiate on the market.  

According to the concept our target group contains investors, entrepreneurs, NGO workers, MFA officers and other civil servants, decision makers, non-profit sector, and all of those people who interested in this comparison.

Questions

-Why does a for profit company invest in Ethiopian problems? Was it a PR/marketing catch only?
-Where did they get the money from?
-How many people can be served by these wells?
-Could they have substituted the shipped equipment with local one? How did the local community contribute?
-Is it sustainable? Does the company maintain the wells? Will the trained Ethiopian engineers teach the locals how to repair the assets?

- What are the short term and the long term expectations?

- Is this a temporary problem or natural disasters are the effects of climate change?

- If the main problem is the climate change is it the right way to help these people?

Desired story outcomes

Our goal is to find the answers to the above questions and to cover these two Hungarian-Ethiopian development cooperation projects toward our audience. We don’t find it necessary to decide which well reconstruction project is better, nor to judge the different prospective.

The alternative media of our project is a blog that we update biweekly with photos and reports of the reconstruction works and the status quo of the wells both in North and South Ethiopia. 

For conversation option feedbacks and comments are welcomed.

Who we are and why we start 

Introduction 

One amateur, ZsuZsi Nagy decided to apply for Poynter’s News University to have a better understanding on journalism, as she would like to report on development cooperation in the future. While travelling in Central America and East Africa she entertained her friends through her blog and massive amount of e-mails sharing the experiences she gained, saw, felt in these countries. Due to the positive feedbacks and encouragements she decided to get engaged in journalism. After returning from her volunteer work in Ethiopia she published her first article in the online National Geographic Hungary. Currently she is working for an NGO in Vienna and is working on fulfilling her dreams. 

One semi-professional, Dániel Belenyi, decided to apply for the e-learning course to refine his talent and knowledge he gained through reporting his travels around the world. Backpacking in Vietnam, Cambodia, guiding mountaineers to the highest peaks of Iran, motorcycling in the Guinean jungle, covering from the riot in Cairo, only some of his reports. These experiences combined with his graphomania earned him -and his blog ”danielfromhungary”- a GoldenBlog price in 2011. Daniel is working for the Hungarian Interchurch Aid and is responsible for the fact finding missions before the projects actually get realized and is trying to „control the uncontrollable” on the scene. 

What is Poynter 

Poynter’s "Reporting and Writing About Development in the World" is a 12-week class that uses an innovative, collaborative approach to introduce the fundamentals of international development to journalists covering this broad subject area. Biweekly there are invited speakers who reveal what international development is; they introduce the improved techniques of interviewing, how to produce reports for multimedia and mobile platforms, ethics of coverage and the importance of avoiding stereotypes, etc.

To Poynter’s course 7 participant from 4 countries were selected and each participant (OK, Dani and Zsuzsi work together, but it’s still fair) will produce a Capstone Project, which will be a report, blog or website on international development that gives citizens of their home country or region relevant information on the topic.

Yes, this is the aim of this blog. 

Why WaterProjectsInEthiopia? 

Zsuzsi used to work and Dani is currently working on Ethiopian projects and over a pint of beer, these two souls figured out they both want to write about water projects in this country. So why not working on the NewsU report together? 

Dani has a good overview on the NGO’s well reconstruction and Zsuzsi is more into the business factor. Two stakeholders from two sectors (business and civil) with two different conceptions (for profit investment and non-profit development project) for the same goal can be interesting enough for comparison.

why we start