Mezemir Wagaw¹, Tommy L. Coleman², Teferi D. Tsegaye², and Wubishet Tadesse²

¹Geocon Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, P. O. Box 1626.

²Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing (HSCaRS)

Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL 35762

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN ECA)

Committee for Development Information (CODI) IV

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

April, 2005

Abstract

In Ethiopia, the primary challenge to the subsistence farmers—over 80% of its population—is the irregularity or the total absence of the rain in the expected rainy season on which the farmers have no control. Often, this takes place after each household has invested hundreds of working hours on the farming fields, sawing the expensive seed and fertilizer. If the rain completely fails, the other wing of their economy, the cattle breading, will soon come under a strong pressure. As a result, the financial resource of these farmers will be shattered and distorted. This scenario tends to be the core challenge for the country’s poverty reduction policy.

This research was conducted with the aim of studying the qualitative and quantitative aspects for the wide utilization of GIS technology in Ethiopia as the backbone information infrastructure for drought management and rural development. Ways of overcoming the absence of WAN networking in the country will be presented. The benefit of geographic based information infrastructure under the now existing political and administrative system of the country (together with the macro economic, legal, and administrative mechanism) is sketched. The merit and usefulness of introducing the GIS as an interdisciplinary collective tool, for addressing the diverse needs and problems is reviewed. Finally, different ways for introducing GIS are given and further studies are recommended.

Key words: Geographic Information System (GIS), poverty reduction, information infrastructure, water demand, environment management

1.0. Introduction

Drought in Ethiopia is cyclic in its nature and hence needs a systematic, continuous, and interdisciplinary effort to combat the problem. This includes: new policy outlines where necessary, institutionalization, distribution of authority and function among the different local governmental and other concerned institutions, creation of metadata, adoption of standardized project execution policies and norms. The frequently observed obstacles in the country are the lack of a clear scope definition and its latter verification; time management such as activity sequencing and duration estimation; forecasting and schedule development; resource planning and cost estimation; budgeting and control; information distribution and performance reporting; and risk monitoring.  These situations are mainly caused by the absence of a reliable information infrastructure, which dwarfed the effort for planning, and execution of a sustainable urban and rural social development in the country. Such a management scheme is best served if an accurate, on time, and consistent resource inventory is made available to the decision makers at suitably frequent intervals, which should also lend itself to a regular update.

In this study, a brief discussion about the drought and famine condition in the country, and the contribution of the subsistence farmers to the country’s economy are presented. The efforts done by the successive Ethiopian governments to address this famine problem and the transformation of the rural economy is discussed. This will be followed by a brief outlook of the currently ongoing Poverty Reduction Policy (PRP) program of the government in relation to the drought prevention and rural life transformation. The advantage of introducing Geographic Information System (GIS) to the Ethiopian reality is sketched. At the end, the merits of introducing the GIS for the PRP program will be discussed and the future research work in this regard recommended.

1.1 Distribution of labour and productivity in Ethiopia

The agriculture accounts for 45% of the gross domestic product of the country for the year 2000/2001. Approximately 25% of Ethiopians population depended directly or indirectly on coffee for their livelihood. Furthermore, the coffee export accounted around 60 % of the total since the early 1970-ies, see figure 1. The major part of the subsistence to farmers has little or no contribution to the exporting market, (Shantayanan, 2001).

1.2 Drought in the past 30 years and the proportion to famine

The first well documented drought and famine crisis in Ethiopia happened in the years 1973-1975, which since then appears to repeat in less than a decade cycle. By the year 1984-1985, drought caused the then biggest famine of an estimated 5.8 million people forcing them to be dependent on relief food, (Benson, 1998). As a result, a considerable segment of the society became vulnerable to famine and engulfed in a deep-seated destitution. Especially, the current drought in the years 2002-2003 with a total number of 14 million potentially affected populations, showed once more, the magnitude and the proportion of the problem which the country is facing. Massive intervention from the western countries and international organizations was necessary in order to overcome the hunger and avert worst famine. Nowadays, a fully functional “drought early warning network” is in place, which allows earlier assessment of changes on the ground and alert humanitarian agencies for better preparedness, as it was the case in the year 2002-2003.

The Derg government, especially in the 80ies tried to implement resettlement and villegization policies as the main approach for the long-term drought problem and for the rural economic development. By the year 1989, the government relocated about l3 million people in a program known as villagization, and over 600,000 peoples were resettled in three administrative regions. The objectives of the program were: “to promote rational land use; conserve resources; provide access to clean water and to health and education services; and strengthen security”, (Library of Congress Country Studies, 1991). But the unplanned nature of the activity, and the anti- free market policy did not lend itself to a significant improvement in relation to the poverty dimension of the rural dwellers. It did not cause any measurable significant dynamic in reversing the deepening destitution in the countryside.

No relevant increase of agricultural productivity as a result of the villagization and the resettlement program was observed (Figure 2). This figure further shows that land reform and the various government rural programs and marketing/distribution policies had a minimal impact on the increasing food supply crisis of the time.

1.3 The famine challenge and the Ethiopian government’s recent sustainable development program

In the recently revised Poverty Reduction Policy (PRP) document, the Ethiopian government has stated to follow a strategy which is built on four pillars (building blocks). These are: “agricultural development led industrialization, justice system and civil service reform, decentralization and empowerment, and capacity building in public and private sectors”, (PRP Ethiopia, 2002). Tackling of food insecurity at the house-hold level is considered as the most direct and effective way of poverty reduction. From the ongoing discussion on the PRP, the dimension and complexity of the chronic poverty problem in the rural part of the country is better understood.

The recurrent drought affects large parts of the country covering hundred thousands of square kilometers, and millions of households. The inherent location dependent nature of the drought across the wide area of the country, and the demand for a consistent, timely, and actual land use/ land cover map and ancillary information on a regular basis are part of the main obstacles preventing the effective tackling of the problem. The success of such a large magnitude work, on the other hand, needs transparent consistent and timely data on each executed activities and still ongoing plans. The introduction and successive implementation of the Geographic Information System at this point will help a great deal in tackling the Ethiopian rural problem.

GIS is best suiting for this work, because: 1) the information and data can be managed on a universal geographic coordinate base, 2) all social and environmental processes could be captured accordingly and the information content can go as low as the family household level. 3) The weather forecasting and other dynamic information could be managed in their best form. 4) The dynamic process of land use and land cover mapping can be easily and effectively handled. 5) The modern satellite and aircraft based digital data sources can be easily processed, interpreted and integrated into the available database system.

1.4 Measuring the value of GIS and its necessity for Ethiopia

The Geographic Information System (GIS) offers a unique opportunity to analyze and compare disparate types of information. Digital/analog cartography is inherently included in it. The ability to integrate traditional databases with geographic or spatially referenced information opens up new opportunities to deliver both information and services, (Wagaw, 2002). The utility of GIS can be seen in applications, which range from protecting our natural resources to identifying trends affecting economic activities, managing physical infrastructures. The important programmatic areas namely the economy, the environment; the community health, safety and security share many common information needs. While some information requirements are specific to one program area, there is an extraordinary amount of overlap among them. Much of the data needed for economic development are the same data needed for environmental conservation activities and for disaster preparedness and mitigation. In general terms:

• it allows more effective development and evaluation of policies to support economic growth and environmental protection,
• The technology will allow an increased ability to assess potential disasters such as drought, flood etc. - to mention some, which are frequent in Ethiopia - and create a mechanism to possibly avoid or at least alleviate their effects on the people and the livelihood of the rural community,
• it allows the integration of information from diverse sources in order to strategically develop a solid information infrastructure, and
• it can support new services that would not be feasible or even impossible under manual processes, due to its processing speed and better integrity.

The effective creation, maintenance, and sharing of spatial data across governmental and other agencies can serve a variety of vital private and public purposes. Such a collective approach may minimize the expense and allows more rational use of resources and professionals (Kohl, 1998).

In this regard experiences from different countries and organizations may provide a vital input. Such an example could be the “Working Committee of the Surveying Authorities of the States of the Federal Republic of Germany, (AdV)”. Its detailed activity could be taken from its homepage: http://www.adv-online.de.

1.5 Implementation of GIS for drought and famine management

For drought management, a reliable and robust GIS information infrastructure may play the most crucial role. For this purpose, the placement of a fully functional backbone geographic/geometric and/or attribute database server system as a Local intranet and/or Local Area Network (LAN) at properly selected federal, regional, and district offices is necessary. The selection and allocation of the computing resources should be based on an “optimized” Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). These discrete “operational units” have to be reliably standardized. The scalability, security, replication/ (proper data synchronization), data consistency/integrity, data warehousing, and the on-demand availability have to be guaranteed. The data entry points have to be clearly defined and maintained. Since the telecommunication infrastructure is not everywhere available and at some places not reliable, data transfer/actualization/replication among these servers and “operational units” may be securely done by implementing a policy of using such data carriers as CD-ROM from the clearly authorized source units “publishers” to the target units “subscribers” in a regular, timely, and routine manner, in a legally defined working steps at all interfaces. The possibility of encrypting the data and information from the publisher to the subscriber will guarantee data integrity and security.

This allows a better information management and coordination in all social- and environmental science disciplines. The digital information availability allows the end users better transparency and effective management of any environment/social related project. The developments in the area of the world wide web, internet, digital multi-medial data capturing, online services and publications are the other aspects of the merit of the digital world. The increased availability of electronic mass-storage devices with ever better performance and low price permits the further integration of multimedia information to the GIS database from which the country may benefit a lot.

2.0 Conclusions

The starting investment in the Local Networking and computer systems is no more a major financing concern, since the market values of these systems are becoming more and more reasonable. On the other hand the relatively heavy starting investment in GIS technologies, including their maintenance cost can be easily justified by its rational use and fast readiness within a short period of time. The main expense in the whole system may come from the hiring or training of appropriately qualified professionals in multi-disciplinary fields. The timely and location independent availability of information at virtually any point in time, together with its easy upward and lateral scalability puts the expense of such a system per consumer (or beneficent) as low as few Ethiopian Birr per year.

Therefore the introduction of GIS as a poverty reduction policy Information infrastructure is the best option and will have a far reaching effect on the transparency accountability and success of each activity.

The GIS technology allows a very high data integrity, actualization capability, and high-grade data management and analysis facility. This leads each task to a well coordinated, Target (Task) Oriented Project (TOP), from planning to project execution, and final documentation to a far later operational control and management of any realized and completed environmental/social project. The focus on geography to create a comprehensive database acts as the principal motivator and is a distinguishing characteristic of multi-participant GIS programs allowing the seamless integration and interdisciplinary problem solving. It may be of great interest to do a pilot project and check the viability of the above discussed implementation concept for the drought management.

3.0 Acknowledgment

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of the Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing (HSCaRS) faculty and staff for the preparation of this paper. Acknowledgement is also extended to the staff of Geocon Ethiopia for their support. Contribution by the HSCaRS Research Center, the Department of Plant and Soil Science, and the Agricultural Experiment Station, Alabama A&M University, Journal No. 575. Support provided by NASA Grant No. NAG5-10721. Any use of trade product or firm name is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U. S. Government.

4.0 Literature Cited

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Shantayanan, D., R. D. David, and H. Torgny. 2001. Aid and Reform in Africa Lessons from Ten Case Studies. The World Bank, Washington, D.C. 2001

Benson, Charlotte C. 1998. The impact of drought on sub-Saharan African economies - a preliminary examination, World Bank Technical Paper No. 401, Washington DC, 1998