A Massive Drought in Ethiopia Again?

Ethiopia is experiencing its worst drought since the 1960s. Photo credit: AddisAbabaOnline

It sounds so familiar—drought in Ethiopia puts millions of people at risk of starvation. How could this be when in recent years Ethiopia was lauded as a country on the rise–one of the bright spots in Sub Saharan Africa? After all, Ethiopia has experienced economic growth of 10 percent in recent years. How can millions be at risk of starvation again and what can be done?

Those who are old enough to remember the Live Aid concert in 1985, which raised millions of dollars to provide food to starving Ethiopians, might be thinking we had solved the problem of famine, particularly in Ethiopia.
But this drought is different–experts say it is the worst Ethiopian drought since the 1960s. Its severity stems from this year’s El Niño, which is shifting rain patterns, causing massive drought in some areas and unusually heavy rains elsewhere.


Despite Ethiopia’s  strong economic growth, 80 percent of its population subsists on rain-fed agriculture. French media report that crop production in regions such as Afar and Tigray has dropped by 50 to 90 percent in some parts and failed completely in others. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of livestock have already been lost.

In the 1980s, one million Ethiopians died of starvation from a drought that was exacerbated by political upheaval in the county’s northern region. Today, circumstances are different, but the outcome may not be.  At the end of 2015, 8.2 million Ethiopians were in need of food assistance. Aid agencies predict that the number could almost double to 15 million in 2016.

Ethiopia’s current government amassed food stocks and created early warning systems to deal with drought. But the magnitude of this drought was unforeseen. Experts estimate that Ethiopia will need up to $1.4 billion to cope. Although the Ethiopian government has committed almost $200 million and the international community another $170 million, much more is needed.

With world attention focused on Syria, the Middle East and the Zika virus in the Americas, the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia has been largely overlooked.
The Ethiopian government as well as international aid organizations and local nonprofits on the ground in Ethiopia are scrambling to save lives. One organization, A Glimmer of Hope Foundation, an Aid for Africa member, is supporting a feeding program for children in need.

A Glimmer of Hope is targeting the 400,000 children who are malnourished as the result of the drought. Along with their Ethiopian partner organizations, they are funding emergency food efforts to provide life-sustaining grain through schools. The first $250,000 has already been spent. It is now working to double these efforts. Details about how you can help can be found here.

Finally, word is beginning to spread about the crisis in Ethiopia and what is needed. The mechanisms are in place to deal with it. Now all that is needed is the financial commitment

African Moms Escape Poverty with their Children in Tow

Daate Inyakh is now running her own shop thanks to a business grant from BOMA Project.

As the sole provider for her family, Daate Inyakh of northern Kenya once struggled to feed her six daughters. She was one of the ultra-poor women living in drought-threatened arid areas who believed she would never leave her life of poverty. But since September 2014, when she received a business grant and training from The BOMA Project, an Aid for Africa member, Inyakh’s children have never slept hungry again.
Inyakh and her business partners now run a small duka, or shop, in Logologo, Kenya. In her free time she attends adult education classes to learn how to read and write. Her dream is for all six of her daughters to complete school and get good jobs.

“One thing I like about BOMA,” said Inyakh, “is that it has empowered us with knowledge. This has been an eye-opening experience for me – I never knew I was capable of running a business and now I am excelling.”
The women with whom BOMA works live at or below the poverty line, which is $2.50 a day. Most of them–88 percent–earn less than $1.25 a day and live in extreme poverty.

The BOMA Project’s approach to ending extreme poverty is transformative: Upon exiting BOMA’s two-year program, BOMA participants report a 90 percent increase in household spending on food, a 132 percent increase on education, and a 195 percent increase on medical care.

BOMA is one of four nonprofits worldwide to pass a rigorous “impact audit” conducted by ImpactMatters, a new organization led by Yale economist Dean Karlan, founded with the goal of helping donors identify nonprofits that offer the best return on charitable dollars. ImpactMatters assesses nonprofits in four key areas: cost-effectiveness, transparency, knowledge sharing, and “theory of change,” or how well the organization accomplishes its mission.

Since 2009, BOMA has lifted more than 56,000 women and children out of extreme poverty, launched almost 3,000 small businesses, and established more than 500 savings group. BOMA’s goal is to double the number of women and children lifted out of extreme poverty to 100,000 by 2018.
No doubt Daate Inyakh will be cheering BOMA on

Maasai Woman Beats Odds to Attend Medical School

Gloria Kotente Mumeita, a medical student at the University of Nairobi, traveled to the U.S. for an 8-week internship thanks to the Maasai Girls Education Fund.

Aid for Africa has identified the education of girls and women as a key objective of our mission.  Educate a woman and you educate a nation, so the African saying goes.  We agree.  Over the years, we have supported girls and young women, who otherwise would have been unable to attend school, enroll in school, stay in school and thrive. Aid for Africa’s members have supported thousands of girls in elementary and high school and hundreds in college, technical school and beyond.

When girls in Africa receive an education and earn income, they spend 90 percent of their earnings on their families. When an African girl goes to school for seven or more years, she marries four years later on average than she otherwise would, and she has fewer children than she otherwise would. The children she does have are more likely to be healthy and survive past the age of five.
Members of the Aid for Africa family were fortunate recently to meet  one of the exceptional women who has benefited from support through an Aid for Africa member.

Gloria Kotente Mumeita, now in her final year of medical school at the University of Nairobi, traveled to the United States for an 8-week internship at Suburban Hospital and the National Institutes of Health, both in Bethesda, Maryland. Mumeita’s medical school support has been provided by the Maasai Girls Education Fund, an Aid for Africa member.
Not only was Mumeita’s journey to the U.S. extraordinary, so are her accomplishments.  A member of the Maasai tribe, she is only the second Maasai woman from her district to go to medical school and the third Maasai woman in Kenya to become a doctor.

In Kenya, fewer than half of all Maasai girls complete primary school and fewer than 10 percent go on to high school, according to the Maasai Girls Education Fund. Tradition would have had Mumeita share the fate of most Maasai girls under the age of 15. She would have been married to an older man in exchange for a few cows worth about what the family earns in a year–less than $500.

But Mumeita was fortunate. Her family wanted a better life for her. With their support and support for medical school tuition from the Maasai Girls Education Fund, her future will be better, indeed.  Her path to medical school wasn’t easy. In her class of 320, she is one of three Maasai, and the only Maasai woman. “When I look back I can’t believe I got to medical school,” she says.

Mumeita’s success will ripple through the Maasai community. When she completes her training, she will return to her community as a medical doctor says Tracey Pyles, president of Maasai Girls Education Fund. “She will serve her community and be a role model to other Maasai girls and their families.

Charity: Water Ratchets Up Technology for Water Project Results and Transparency

Salem, who is featured in charity: water’s VR documentary, watches her father use VR goggles in Ethiopia. Photo credit: Scott Harrison

Since its inception, charity: water, an Aid for Africa member, has made transparency to its donors of paramount importance. Donors receive photos and GPS coordinates of water projects they help fund along with stories from the field.

But charity: water’s founder Scott Harrison wanted to do more.  He wanted to ensure that the wells the organization drills continue to produce clean water long after the drilling equipment is removed, and he wanted to provide donors with a higher level of transparency.

In 2012 charity: water won a $5 million technology grant from Google.org to develop a sensor that would do just that. Sensors would monitor and transmit data on water flow from charity: water’s pumps, allowing for quick repair or replacement when the flow changed. The sensors would provide a solution to an ongoing problem associated with many development projects—ensuring sustainability over the long run.


The sensor data would also be shared with donors, who would receive information about the performance of the wells they funded. Ultimately, charity: water hoped that donors would be able to access the data themselves, according to the organization’s chief global water officer Christoph Gorder.

charity: water worked with PCH, a custom-design manufacturing company, to create the sensor, which transmits data through SIM cards and cell phone networks to the cloud. By the end of 2015, about one-third of the 3,500 sensors planned for pumps in rural Ethiopia had been installed. According to charity: water, sensors “learn” what is normal well and pump function and immediately report when water flow changes.
As charity: water worked to develop the sensor technology, Harrison began to explore virtual-reality technology as a tool for donors to experience life in the communities the organization serves.  At the charity: water’s annual gala in December, the organization released The Source—an eight-minute virtual-reality documentary about bringing clean water to a community in northern Ethiopia and how it changed the life of a teenage girl.
Films using virtual technology will help donors experience—almost first-hand—the impact of projects they support. With this experience, donors may better understand—and perhaps feel—the power of providing clean water.

The words tech savvy and charity are not often used in the same sentence. charity: water is changing that through innovative technologies that provide millions of people with sustainable access to clean water, monitor the results of water projects, and capture the reality of life before and after clean water

Empowering Women Artisans In Africa: It’s Not Just a Basket

A sisal plateau basket made by a Rwandan artisan who received training through Aid for Africa member Indego Africa.

It looks like a basket—a beautiful blue basket.  But don’t be fooled–it’s food, electricity and school fees for a family in Rwanda.  It’s a mother’s hope for her children’s future.

What started with a simple idea—empower women who had survived Rwanda’s genocide to use their artisan skills to make a living and support their families—has become an empowerment program that puts women in charge of their own lives. Oh, yes, and enables them to provide for their families.

Following the Rwandan genocide, the country’s population was 70 percent female and its economy was in shambles. Women were left to rebuild the country, yet most lacked formal education and although they produced unique handicrafts, they struggled to gain access to international export markets. They were producing beautiful items, including sisal peace baskets and animal horn jewelry, but their products were sold primarily to the tourist trade in Rwanda.

In 2007 Aid for Africa member Indego Africa began working with 22 women from Rwandan cooperatives. The women were talented artisans, but they didn’t know how to build and expand their businesses or how to reach and compete in international markets. They needed to understand business cycles, their customers and quality control.


Indego Africa focused on providing artisans with access to markets, vocational training and education. The organization worked with the artisans to improve their technical skills and to teach them basic business skills.
Today some 800 women working in 25 artisan groups throughout Rwanda provide international boutiques and designers with a steady stream of quality products thanks to Indego Africa.

Mavis of Ghana sells her bolga baskets through Indego Africa and now is able to send her children to school.

Rwandan women artisans have taken their traditional skills and new knowledge to create “unique, beautiful items that appeal to the modern design-driven consumer,” according to Haley Donor, Indego Africa’s development and communications manager.

“We started out as a handicraft company, we are now providing products for Nordstrom, ABC Home, and Shopbop.com,” Donor said.

These items are also sold through Indego Africa’s online catalog.  All profits from sales are used to fund the organization’s ongoing artisan education and training programs.

This year the organization expanded their economic empowerment and education program to Ghana, West Africa, where in the poorest areas women earn less than 50 cents a day, according to Donor.  As in Rwanda, artisans produce a range of unique items that include kente cloth, rustic bolga straw baskets and handmade ceramic beads.

Indego Africa’s expansion into Ghana currently focuses on about 35 women artisans who are turning their passion for creating traditional products into futures for their children.  Mavis, who lives in the Kusami area, is one of them.

“. . . I want both my children to have a good education. With education, they can get good jobs, become leaders in society, and prosper in the world,” she said.
Mavis’s bolga baskets are not just baskets, they are her children’s future

Board of Directors

Dianna Bartone

Dianna Bartone is a graduate student at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition and a candidate for Master Degrees in Human Nutrition and Public Health in Global Health. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Notre Dame. She has worked as a researcher and teaching assistant at both universities. She is the fourth Aid for Africa Scholar for Food and Sustainable Agriculture.

 The Aid for Africa Endowment for Food and Sustainable Agriculture supports graduate students undertaking research in Sub Saharan Africa on how agriculture and nutrition can improve food security and reduce poverty. As an Aid for Africa Scholar, Dianna worked in Gicumbi, Rwanda, where she studied the activities and nutrition of children under the age of two at village-based child nutrition centers run by local women. She also studied community health advocacy organizations in Nairobi, Kenya, to determine their efficacy of disseminating public health information about sexual and reproductive health.

Geralynn Batista

Geralynn Batista, an international economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Department of Treasury, has been a champion of social and economic development throughout her career. Prior to joining the Treasury, Ms. Batista was a strategist with the global finance firm Lehman Brothers. She also served as a development associate at Leake and Watts Services Inc., one of the largest full service childcare agencies in the United States, where she helped create a pioneering program for children and families with AIDS in the foster care system.

These programs are currently being replicated in a number of African countries. Ms. Batista worked in Europe with the world’s leading non-profit organization focused on agricultural issues and plant biodiversity, researching species eradication and biodiversity loss in Africa and Latin America. As an associate with Future Harvest, she created programs focused on food, nutrition, and agricultural development in Africa and other parts of the developing world and their links to peace, health, environmental renewal, economic growth, and population growth. Ms. Batista holds a Doctorate degree in Economics from Fordham University and Masters and undergraduate degrees in International Relations from American University.

Barbara Alison Rose

Executive Director and Board Member, ex officio
Barbara Alison Rose has been involved with the issues facing Africa for her entire professional life. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Ms. Rose worked in rural Ethiopia and traveled extensively throughout the continent. Ms. Rose was the founding executive director of Future Harvest—a nonprofit organization dedicated to building awareness of the importance of science for food production, the environment, and the world’s poor.

During her tenure at Future Harvest, Ms. Rose developed an outreach strategy that used the voices of world leaders, the messages of respected scholarly institutions, and the power of the internet to raise awareness around the world of the importance of food production and the role of agricultural science in meeting the needs of Africa and the rest of the developing world. Ms. Rose directed the communications department of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)—an organization focused on improving food and nutrition through better policies for food production and distribution, with a focus on Africa.

Ms. Rose has worked as an independent consultant for nonprofits, with a primary emphasis on assisting her clients in communicating their programs to the general public. Ms. Rose serves on the Board of Trustees of EcoAgricultural Partners, an environmental nonprofit organization. She received an MBA from Columbia University, a MA in Journalism with a focus on African studies from the University of Maryland, and a BA from Hood College.

Edward W. Sulzberger

Ed Sulzberger is an international fund raising and public awareness expert specializing in research and development issues for developing countries. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Mr. Sulzberger has spent nearly three decades working with public sector agencies and non-profit organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Mr. Sulzberger has worked with students, researchers, farmers, and development officials throughout the developing world. He lived and worked in Nigeria in the 1970s, serving as an adviser to Nigeria’s Federal Department of Agriculture.
Mr. Sulzberger has written widely on issues such as AIDS, agricultural biodiversity, and food production. He has worked extensively with the Consultative Group on International Research. He works and travels throughout Africa and is currently engaged in climate change projects involving smallholder farmers and projects for African AIDS orphans. Mr. Sulzberger earned a bachelors degree from Emerson College and holds a Masters in Corporate and Political Communications from Fairfield University. He is based in Galveston, Texas.

Jean-Claude Tchatchouang

Jean-Claude Tchatchouang, an economist, has served as senior advisor at the World Bank for more than ten years. This work has included a focus on more than twenty countries in Sub Saharan Africa. Trained as an economist in his native Cameroon and the United States, Mr. Tchatchouang also worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and served for ten years as the division chief at the Central Bank of the Central African States (BEAC). Mr. Tchatchouang also served for a dozen years with the Mitchell Group, a Washington D.C.-based firm providing development assistance support to governments and other organizations working in Africa and around the world. He is the author of a number books and articles on economics and finance. Mr. Tchatchouang received a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon, and a Masters degree in International Economic and Finance from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

Emeritus
Chinwe M. Diké

The late Chinwe Diké, a founding member of the Aid for Africa board, played a leading role in guiding the organization’s development during its early years of operation. A lawyer by training, Ms. Diké served most recently as the United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative in The Gambia.

 An expert in international banking, corporate and municipal financing and economic development, she spent more than two decades working to improve the lives of the world’s poor and worked tirelessly to develop programs focused on HIV/AIDS, poverty reduction, governance, and environmental sustainability. Her commitment to African development contributed greatly to her many professional commitments and to her work on the Aid for Africa board. Prior to joining the United Nations she served as was Deputy Counsel for the City of New York, Office of Management and Budget, and served as staff counsel to Barclays and Chase Manhattan banks. She held law degrees from Harvard and Cambridge Universities and an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College

Who We Are

Aid for Africa is a charity alliance of U.S.-based nonprofits and their African partners working to help children, families, and communities throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Aid for Africa members are all dedicated to solving the complex, inter-related challenges facing Africa. Our members realize that, as effective as they each are on their own, they can be even more powerful when they approach Africa’s issues as a group.

Together our members, with their partners on the ground in Africa, touch almost every aspect of the African community. Whether they are collecting and distributing books to school children, introducing medical strategies to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, or identifying and supporting women’s micro-enterprise projects, Aid for Africa’s members have one thing in common—a passionate desire to help the people of Africa solve critical problems and build a better future for their children and communities.

Organizations wishing to become part of the Aid for Africa partnership must meet stringent tests of fiscal accountability, governance and programmatic impact. For more information on our eligibility requirements, please visit our Member Services/Eligibility page.
If you would like to support the work of Aid for Africa, please make an online donation or visit our Other Ways to Give page.