Visiting East Africa: Baerbock’s Difficult Mission in Ethiopia

Foreign Minister Baerbock and her French counterpart Colonna traveled to Ethiopia together. The aim is to advance the peace process in the East African country – and to fight hunger.

Germany and France have offered Ethiopia increased cooperation after the peace agreement for the troubled region of Tigray. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who arrived in Ethiopia in the morning for a two-day visit, said it was important for Europe to “show its face quickly”.

The Green politician will be accompanied in the country on the Horn of Africa by her French colleague Catherine Colonna. The Ethiopian government signed a peace agreement with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in November. A cruel war that is estimated to have killed more than half a million people. Many starved to death because northern Ethiopia was completely sealed off for a long time and no food deliveries got through.

“Slowly easing”

Now the situation is improving for the population, says William Davison of the International Crisis Group. However, reports of attacks by soldiers from Eritrea continued. “They are still present in central and northwestern Tigray. We hear they continue to use violence.” But the situation is easing overall. “Food and other essential supplies come into the region through the airports and also overland,” reports Davison. However, hospitals in particular continue to suffer from massive bottlenecks. Many important facilities have been destroyed by the clashes. It will take years to repair this damage.

The conflict in the Tigray region turned Ethiopia from a much sought-after partner country in East Africa into an international problem. The German government once saw Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year before the war began, as a beacon of hope for the entire region. In 2019, a reform partnership in development cooperation was launched. After the outbreak of the Tigray conflict, the payments were effectively stopped.

Russia’s war is exacerbating the effects of drought in Ethiopia

The background to the visit is the food crisis, which is aggravated by the Russian war in Ukraine, and increased Chinese efforts to gain more influence in the country. With around 120 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa after Nigeria and one of the poorest countries in the world.

After the failure of the fifth rainy season in a row, there is a dramatic drought in Ethiopia. The country is heavily dependent on wheat and fertilizers from Ukraine and Russia. In the afternoon, Baerbock and Colonna wanted to visit a UN World Food Program (WFP) complex in the city of Adama, which stores grain delivered from Ukraine. It is the largest WFP storage facility in Ethiopia with a capacity of 218,000 tons. 25,000 tons of wheat were delivered from the Ukraine via Djibouti at the end of December and are waiting there for distribution. According to the WFP system, grain is distributed monthly.

Welthungerhilfe warned that around 22 million people in Ethiopia had too little to eat. The humanitarian crisis has several causes, said Abaynah Demeke from the organization’s country office in Ethiopia of the German Press Agency: natural disasters such as locust plagues, droughts and floods. But the corona pandemic and cholera outbreaks have also weakened the country. Added to this are the many ethnic conflicts.

With information from Antje Diekhans, ARD Studio Nairobi