Eritrea's Bumper Harvest Undermined With Lies

Center pivot irrigation system in Eritrea

Eritrea's Bumper Harvest Undermined With Lies


When the International Food Policy Research Institute released its Global Hunger Index in mid-October, Eritreans were surprised to find their country ranked second among countries with alarming levels of food insecurity. Even more troubling, the institute claims 34.8 percent of Eritrean children are underweight.

Curious to see their data source for child malnutrition in Eritrea, an Eritrean Ph.D student contacted IFPRI. He was informed by Yisehac Yohannes, an Ethiopian researcher for the organization, that the prevalence is an estimate that he, along with a few of his colleagues, predicted from a regression model and not obtained from survey data.

Yohannes added, "our estimate suggests there has been very little - if any - change in child underweight prevalence in Eritrea since 2002. The latest available survey data from 2002 indicated that 34.5 percent of children under five were underweight in Eritrea."

In other words, Yohannes believes between 2002 and 2012/2014, Eritrea's prevalence underweight didn't stay the same, or even decrease, but increased. All the while, the World Health Organization data in Eritrea shows child mortality decreased by 67%.

It's also hard to believe Yohannes' claim of "little - if any - change" in Eritrea's prevalence underweight since 2002 (which was taken during the worst drought since independence), when Eritrea has - since then - spent hundreds of millions of dollars to be food self-sufficient by building hundreds of micro and medium sized dams; purchasing modern farming equipments and implementing modern farming techniques to increase output. Therefore, it's almost without question Eritrea is in a better position than it was in 2002, which would ultimately translate to some reduction in the prevalence of underweight children in the country.

Even if we simply focus on satellite imagery showing seasonal weather patterns for this year [see image below], one can see Eritrea is experiencing "favorable" agriculture production prospects due to good rains, which again, contradicts IFPRI's guesstimation that Eritrea is facing alarming levels of food insecurity.

Harvesting of the 2014 main season crops is expected to start at the beginning of November and, according to satellite-based monitoring, production prospects in main agricultural areas of Debub, Maekel, Gash Barka and Anseba zobas are favourable.

The 2014 “kiremti” rainy season had a timely onset at the end of June and, especially by August onwards, has been characterized by abundant and well-distributed precipitation amounts in most cropping areas, in some cases continuing until the second dekad of October.

This isn't to say Eritrea is 100% food secure. It still has a long way to go. But to deny, or simply gloss-over the accomplishments it has made since 2002, and give the impression that things are actually worse is outright preposterous, if not sinister.

Eritrea has experienced good rains in its agriculture producing areas of the country. 

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