Insuring Against Famine
We track a UN team as they work with Ethiopians to manage aid relief & drought.
Director: Caroline Pare
Hamou Waticha lives in the Ethiopian village of Waja Washboula with his 15 children.
He, like so many other Ethiopians, has been a victim of terrible cyclical drought, the most recent of which struck in 2002.
Hamou’s crops failed completely, forcing him to sell all his livestock in order to survive.
Left with no provision for the future he was forced to rely on international aid and charitable donations.
It is a story that seems as cyclical as the droughts themselves and one that does nothing for Africa in the eyes of the international community.
Yet Richard Wilcox and his team at the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) are out to shake-up the way aid is financed.
The WFP invited Richard to blow a fresh wind of commercialism and financial discipline to the multi-billion dollar humanitarian aid business.
Caroline Pare tracks Richard and his team as they work with 70 million Ethiopians, including Hamou, to pioneer a radical new weather insurance project designed to plug the gap between crisis and aid relief, allowing Ethiopians to manage the risk of drought themselves.