Addressing the Challenges of Climate Change in Ethiopia
The Ethiopian minister of agriculture, Mr. Tefera Derebew says, his country has put in place measures to address the occurrence of El Nino which recently affected their country as a result of climate change.
In an interview during the 29th Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Africa held at Abidjan, he stated that Ethiopia has been experiencing severe drought in particular in the drought-prone areas of North-East and the Eastern parts of the country where millions of people were in need of food support.
Mr. Tefera Derebew reiterated that, the resilience capacity they have built in Ethiopia for the last decade were able to mobilize all the necessary resources and capacities needed to manage the situation. “In this regard, the National Strategic Reserve (NSR) capacity that we have built played a crucial role in, actually, managing our grain liquidity problem and timely delivery of food to our people, equally distributed,” he explained.
He further stated that the National Strategic Reserve mainly works through basic interests where storages in different parts of the country are well positioned to serve the whole country. So far, Ethiopia has been able to build 450 thousand metric tons capacity and working at taking it to the level of 1.5 million metric ton.

Rod Waddington