U.S. says it has suspended all food aid to Ethiopia after investigation finds supplies were diverted

A worker walks next to a pile of sacks of food earmarked for the Tigray and Afar regions in a warehouse of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Semera, the regional capital for the Afar region, in Ethiopia on Feb. 21, 2022. (AP)

NAIROBI -

The United States Agency for International Development says it has suspended all food aid to Ethiopia, Africa's second most-populous country, after an internal investigation found supplies intended for needy people were being diverted on a “widespread” scale. It did not say by whom.

“After a country-wide review, USAID determined, in coordination with the government of Ethiopia, that a widespread and coordinated campaign is diverting food assistance from the people of Ethiopia,” the agency said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Thursday.

“As a result, we made the difficult but necessary decision that we cannot move forward with distribution of food assistance until reforms are in place.”

The U.S. is the biggest single donor to Ethiopia, providing US$1.8 billion in humanitarian assistance, including food aid, in the 2022 fiscal year. In total, 20 million people across Ethiopia rely on aid because of conflict and drought, out of a total population of about 120 million.

An internal memo prepared by a group of humanitarian donors and seen by the AP pointed to the involvement of Ethiopia’s federal government in the diversion of food aid.

“The scheme appears to be orchestrated by federal and regional government of Ethiopia entities, with military units across the country benefitting from humanitarian assistance,” said the document from the Humanitarian and Resilience Donor Group, which includes bilateral and multilateral partners.

Spokespeople for Ethiopia's federal government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The document said USAID staff members had visited 63 flour mills in seven of Ethiopia’s nine regions since March and witnessed a “significant diversion of USAID-funded humanitarian food commodities” alongside food donated by France, Japan and Ukraine.

The USAID announcement comes after both USAID and the United Nations World Food Program last month said they had suspended aid to Ethiopia's northern Tigray region while they investigated allegations of food aid theft, which were first reported by the AP in April.

The Tigray region was the center of a devastating two-year conflict that ended in November and left 5.4 million of the population of 6 million relying on humanitarian help.

A USAID document from May 3 said its investigators discovered 2,000 metric tons of USAID-branded wheat -- enough to feed 134,000 people for a month -- for sale in a market in the Tigray town of Shire in March. The investigators also found USAID grain for sale elsewhere in the region, the document said.

With food aid suspended in the region, doctors in Tigray have reported an alarming rise in hunger. Child malnutrition cases rose by 28 per cent from March to April at the region’s flagship Ayder Hospital in Mekelle, the provincial capital, while at Axum Hospital they rose by 96 per cent over the same period, according to admissions data reviewed by the AP.

Simret Niguse, a pediatrician at Ayder, said seven children died from acute malnutrition at the hospital last month. They included a 6-month-old whose mother could not produce milk “due to hunger,” she said.

The acting U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, Tracey Ann Jacobson, and Mike Hammer, the U.S. special envoy to the Horn of Africa, visited Tigray this week. The region’s interim president, Getachew Reda, said he discussed allegations of aid diversion with them.