Prescriptions for rural development abound, but ‘what is frequently lacking is not so much ideas or techniques as the will and the commitment’ to improve conditions. The author describes how, in the complex case of Ethiopia, man can be held responsible for famine –and suggests how he can act to prevent it. This book sets out to demonstrate that the subsistence production system, with the disincentives of oppression and exploitation which keeps peasants and their families permanently at barely subsistence level without any means of averting or coping with the consequences of crop failure, is the system that creates famine in time of peace. A subsistence production system impoverishes peasants and pastoralists as well as the physical environment. It is this fact that occasionally disturbs the delicate balance between the activities and expectations of the peasants and the pastoralists, on one hand, and the process of the physical environment, on the other. When this delicate balance is disturbed famine does not occur automatically, but instead takes several months to mature into a mass killer.
The author urges positive and rational action – for example, the accumulation of data, programmes of research and development, and reform, especially of taxation, can create the conditions necessary for improvement. ‘The world of under development is a world of faith as opposed to critical reason... The pain of thinking can replace the pain of famine.’

Mesfin Wolde Mariam
In 1990, Mesfin Wolde Mariam founded the Ethiopian Human Rights Council and is now one of Ethiopia's best known human rights activists.

Prosecution of Politicide in Ethiopia

Historical Survey of the Derg Regime and the Infamous Red Terror

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2018

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Pottier, Johan

Fairhead, James

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Recent Research Trends in Disaster Studies: Human Geographical Perspective

SODA, Ryoji

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Caviedes, César

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Gender Differentials in Migration Impacts in Southern Ethiopia

Regassa, Nigatu

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SHIMADA, Shuhei

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Foreign Capital Flows and Economic Development in Africa

The Concept of Land in Ethiopian Tradition: Land, Power, and Famine

Wolde-Mariam, Mesfin

2017

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53496-5_9 [Citations: 0]

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Devereux, Stephen

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https://doi.org/10.1080/13600810120088859 [Citations: 133]

Famine in Africa: A Select and Annotated Bibliography

Yakubu, A. O.

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https://doi.org/10.1177/001132559202300201 [Citations: 0]

The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002

Neumayer, Eric

Plümper, Thomas

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 97 (2007), Iss. 3 P.551

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2007.00563.x [Citations: 499]

Isolation as a Development Strategy: Perspectives from an Ethiopian Village

Tarekegn, Tefera

Overton, John

African Geographical Review, Vol. 30 (2011), Iss. 2 P.35

https://doi.org/10.1080/19376812.2011.10539142 [Citations: 1]