When Ethiopia suffered its second year of drought in 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other international aid donors were quick to step in with food aid for the millions of people who faced catastrophic food shortages. But donors were starting to pay attention to a disturbing trend. As per capita food aid to Ethiopia has risen over time, per capita food production by Ethiopia’s farmers has fallen. "The more food aid donors have given in recent years, the greater the need for food aid seems to have grown," says Peter Hazell, director of IFPRI’s Development Strategy and Governance Division.

In 2003 USAID gave some US$450 million of food aid but only US$4 million or agricultural development. Other donors also found they were giving neary all their aid to keep people alive rather than to help the country grow out of its vulnerability to famine.

USAID is now dramatically changing its strategy for assistance to Ethiopia and working with other donors to do the same.The Ethiopian government, says Hazell, agrees on the need for change. Donors’ new priorities will include targeting aid resources away from food aid, except in true emergencies, and toward promotion of small-scale commercial farming and value-adding activities around the country.

Drawing on its extensive research in Ethiopia, IFPRI is helping decisionmakers within USAID, other large donors, and the government to set priorities for invest-ments and reforms that will encourage pro-poor agricultural growth, to design appropriate development strategies for different agricultural regions in the country, and to create effective safety net programs for people who continue to need assistance. By helping develop food self-sufficiency in Ethiopia, donors hope that massive airlifts of food to avert famine there will become a thing of the past.