Counter Point: The forgotten promise to Ethiopia

Think about this — 70 million people, nearly half of whom live below the poverty line, 116 children in every 1,000 die at childbirth, 47 per cent of those who survive to the age of five live a malnutritioned life and their average life expectancy is 42 years.

Add to this a per capita income of $89 per year compared with over $30,000 in the US, a debt burden that is exhausting and a drop in the export price of its main commodity by 73 per cent over 20 years and you have one of the world's poorest countries — Ethiopia.

In 1984, the world got together and organised the Band Aid concert led by the singer Bob Geldof and his statement that not doing anything about the dying children in Ethiopia would be taking part in murder spoke so truly to our hearts and wallets.

Debt forgiveness

Ten years on and Ethiopia is forgotten. Even the promise made in June 1999 by world leaders at the economic summit in Cologne to offer Ethiopia debt forgiveness has been forgotten. Indeed, what is even more surprising is that both the US and Germany, who made the promise in the face of 35,000 protestors in the German city, are instrumental in shooting down the debt forgiveness package for Ethiopia early this year.

Ethiopia is not a man-made crisis like Iraq. It faced the worst drought in history last year, its coffee exports have fallen not only in price but have also been affected by the fall in the value of the dollar. Interestingly, the price of coffee that you sip as you read these lines has remained the same while the coffee bean prices have fallen 73 per cent over the past 20 years!

The United States and some of its allies push for debt forgiveness for Iraq, which has expected oil revenues next year of $21 billion and a debt of around $200 billion. Iraq's export of oil is 35 times the value of the exports of Ethiopia, which has a debt of around $1 billion. It is shocking that the world does not understand that although Ethiopia has no strategic importance and no oil (like Iraq), it still deserves the attention of the rich.

Ethiopia has to pay $35 million a year for servicing this debt, which might seem a paltry sum of money to the OECD countries but it's essentially the difference between life and death in this African country.

Is there an alternative? Can the Arab countries consider their own debt relief programme for Ethiopia? How much will this effort take? Consider this as food for thought this summer, but perhaps not for long as a human disaster awaits us.

- The writer is a UAE-based president of Sher Consulting