The expectation that Ethiopia will enjoy a bumper food harvest this year has led the government and its humanitarian partners to adopt a new policy towards emergency needs and allocating resources.

The new approach is a shift from the old strategy of sending food aid monthly to those in need, said Sisay Tadesse, spokesman for the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA). We are adopting it because the number of those in need of emergency assistance has dropped to 1.36 million  a reduction we have not seen in decades.

An estimated 2.6 million needed emergency assistance in 2006. This number excluded another 7.7 million Ethiopians who are being assisted under the Productive Safety Nets Programme.

Initiated by the government in 2005, the safety nets programme is a relief-to-development strategy that the authorities hope can end food-aid dependency for millions within three to five years. It is an agro-based food-for-work scheme where local people build wells or small irrigation systems and work on projects to help prevent soil erosion in exchange for food or cash transfers.

The improvement has been due to effective food security strategies and favourable weather, Sisay added. Both the belg [short] and meher [long] rains have been very good. Infrastructure has also improved so we can reach the needy more easily.

According to the DPPA, 71 percent of those who will need assistance this year are from Somali region and 17 percent from Oromiya. The rest of the country will fare well, with some of the eight regions not needing any emergency help at all.

Aid workers say the numbers of those in need of emergency food aid could have been lower, were it not for widespread flooding in the south, where an estimated 700 people died and nearly 700,000 were affected; dry spells in pastoral areas, especially in the Somali region; localised agricultural production failure and other shocks.

According to Simon Mechale, director of DPPA, 507,600 tonnes of food aid and US$111 million worth of non-food emergency assistance were needed because of flooding and drought in 2006  of which a substantial amount was raised jointly by the government and the humanitarian community.

The challenges facing Somali region remain huge. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), crop production is expected to be lower than normal because of repeated flooding in the main riverine areas  including areas that lie along the Shebelle, Genale and Dawa rivers. The situation has also been exacerbated by insecurity.

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