Logistics hub rehabilitation in Ethiopia: shared success for the Government and the Logistics Cluster
The Logistics Cluster has been supporting the National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) with the rehabilitation of the three key government logistics hubs in Adama, Kombolcha and Dire Dawa. On 2 February 2017, the last of these hubs, Adama, 250 m2 of space rehabilitated, was officially inaugurated.
The hub is one of the most important in the government’s humanitarian supply chain: as of July 2016, the logistics hub provided 168,000 mt of relief food for beneficiaries in the Afar, Amhara, Oromia and SNNP regions in Ethiopia. As part of the rehabilitation, major improvements were made on commodity handling and stacking procedures, including re-bagging of 17,500 bags of food, as well as shifting Non Food Items (NFIs) to dedicated storage space.
In addition, the Logistics Cluster officers have been working alongside NDRMC staff to support their efforts to improve operations and logistics supply chain management in key logistics hubs in the country. Finally, the Logistics Cluster provided essential equipment to the NDRMC to support their operations, including warehouse operations equipment (scales, stitching machines, tarpaulins, hand trolleys, fumigation material, pallets etc.) and office furniture.
As a result, the space utilisation of the existing warehouses improved by 50 percent increasing operational performance and effectiveness to the benefit of the drought-affected populations. Dispatch time from Adama NDRMC hub went from 5 days in June 2016 to less than 48 hours in November 2016.
The Ethiopian Government led the drought response with the NDRMC playing a critical managing role. Following the dramatic increase in humanitarian needs as a result of the 2015/16 El Niño-induced drought, which left over 10.2 million people in need of emergency assistance in 2016 in Ethiopia, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) called upon WFP, as lead agency of the Logistics Cluster to augment logistics coordination and effectiveness and support the delivery of humanitarian assistance. The Logistics Cluster was activated in March 2016 as last resort to support the response and identify logistics gaps and bottlenecks; propose mitigating measures and through WFP, augment the logistics capacity of GoE and other humanitarian actors.