Ethiopia needs US1.4 billion this year to alleviate the crisis caused by the worst drought in half a century.

The funds will support more than 10 million Ethiopians suffering from the drought, triggered by the El Nino phenomenon, which follows successive poor rainy seasons and now curbs many people’s ability to cope. It will provide fundamental humanitarian aid, including relief food assistance, safe drinking water, malnutrition treatment, mobile health teams, and seeds, according to Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Affairs acting assistant administrator Thomas Staal.

“While Ethiopia’s great development has helped to mitigate the impact of the drought, the scale and severity now exceeds many people’s ability to cope. Even a developed and middle income country would have trouble dealing with this scale of drought,” he said while announcing the funding to journalists in Addis Ababa on Friday.

The needs on the ground far exceeded the resources currently available and “we have a narrow window of time to get the resources on the ground now to meet the needs of the most affected”, he said.

With this announcement, the US remains the largest donor to Ethiopia providing nearly $705 million in humanitarian assistance since October of 2014.

This contribution bridges the food need for the next three critical months, as there is no grain in storage facilities at this stage. Because crops are still in the field it is critical and timely, according to Mitiku Kassa, the State Minister of Agriculture and Head of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission.

“Ethiopia appealed in December 2015 for $1.4 billion and so far we are able to secure 54% of the resource but there is a gap to bridge the food and non-food need of the 10.2 million people until the end of December 2016,” he said.

Since July 2015 the Ethiopian government had contributed $381 million to bridge the food and non-food gap of the drought-affected people across the country. Especially the first 1.7 million Ethiopian Birr ($78 492) was used for soil and water conservation and to procure grain to be allocated to people in critical areas.

“According to the hot-spot classification we had around 189 districts across the country in all drought affected regions and all districts. So the government tends to pay due attention to these factors to distribute and to supply the food and non-food component across the country that we are able to save the lives of all drought affected people,” he told ANA.

“There is no mortality so far, even though most parts of the areas, especially Afar and Somali regional state, Southern Tigray, and the Eastern part of Amhara are highly affected by the drought,” he said.

ANA