The Self-Help Project | Africans saving Africa

Ethiopia is a poor country, with most of its population living in what is termed 'extreme poverty' (accepted definition: less than $1 per day). But Ethiopia should not be a poor country; large areas are lush green with plenty of opportunity for cultivation. The key is to direct aid in such a way that it avoids sporadic development and, instead, achieves long-term success through integrating all of the requirements a community needs to thrive. In other words, what's the point of building a school when the kids are too hungry, or sick with malaria, to attend? You need to provide them with food, health care and education at the same time. This is only part of it, but you get the idea.The fancy phrase is 'holistic development' and it's not pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking; I saw it with my own eyes during my visit: large swathes of land being irrigated to produce cash crops which, in turn, could be sold at market (the tradition had been to grow maize, more maize and more still); schools being built, new health centres, savings and lending schemes allowing investment in rudimentary tools which revolutionise production and, crucially, food storage to ensure that if the rains do not arrive one year there's enough food to feed their families. In short, a major success story run entirely by Ethiopians themselves.A group called Self Help Africa runs the project in the Sodo region I visited, along with others in various parts of the country. To see such immense pride on the faces of the farmers planting their new crops, on the children walking to their new schools and, particularly, on the women who run the savings and lending schemes is a memory which simply doesn't fade. Whole communities coming together, hundreds of men, women and children digging ditches, building dams: millions of gallons of rainwater which had previously crashed off the mountainside, dragging topsoil from the land below until eventually pouring uselessly into the river and being lost forever, now being stopped in its tracks. That rainwater now seeps into the ground, raising the water table.