Looming Drought In Somali Region of Ethiopia.

Entire households and communities are migrating from one woreda/district to the neighboring zones or across the border to Somalia as the pastoral communities are facing critically low water and food supplies, due in large part to the long running recurrent droughts caused by the erratic and poor performance of the last two years seasonal rainfalls, the situation is further compounded by the cost of food which is still high from last years spike in prices, poor investment in livestock improvement and insufficient preparation for such crises.

Water availability is much below normal through out the region and water trucking activities have already started in kebele’s and villages of most zones of Somali region were the Birkas are empty and dry. Western part of the region bordering Oromia is reported to have below normal amount of water that will last the community for less than one and half months, there after the whole area will require an urgent water trucking operations.

The lack of water was caused by the poor and early cessation of the last Deyr rainfall which contrary to the expectation of the early warning experts who predicted that; the Deyr rains of October, November and December will be heavy with El-Nino rains thus alleviating the severing of the farmers and pastoral communities in Eastern and Horn of Africa region who have endured three long years of poor or no rainfall which triggered long dry spells.

Failure of the last Deyr rainfall has contributed to the lack of pasture regeneration as animal feed and water availability is below normal given that the traditional water harvesting systems have not fully been replenished by the last rainfall season. Birkas were half filled with rain water and as a result the water reserved for the long dry season of Jilal were depleted and consumed during what other-wise would have been a rainy season months of November and December. As a result many areas have already started to experience critically early water shortages during the current first months of the dry Jilal season (from January to mid April).