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Ethiopia

Acting early when the world isn’t watching: Lessons from anticipatory action in Ethiopia in 2021

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Highlights

  • For Ethiopia, living with climate volatility requires anticipating droughts and floods and mitigating their impact on the most vulnerable people.

  • In 2020, OCHA facilitated an anticipatory action framework in Ethiopia to get ahead of droughts and reduce their impact on vulnerable communities.

  • OCHA activated the pilot framework in December 2020, while political and humanitarian focus was on the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia.

  • The Central Emergency Response Fund released US$20 million to reduce the drought’s impact on more than 900,000 people. The allocation was one of the earliest responses to the 2020-2022 drought.

  • Three out of five recipients of assistance reported an improved ability to afford food, livelihood inputs and household bills.

  • In a world where humanitarian crises compete for political attention and resources, Ethiopia proves that anticipatory action frameworks make acting early the default.

  • The pilot taught valuable lessons in how to improve anticipatory action’s impact in the context of protracted and overlapping crises.

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