Antsokia Valley
The Antsokia Valley is a wide, north-south running valley in Ethiopia , about 320 kilometers north of the capital Addis Ababa in the southeast of the Amhara region . It used to form the Antsokia district of Shewa Province , since the 1990s the western part has belonged to the North Shewa (R3) zone as Woreda Antsokiyana Gemza , while the eastern part belongs to the Oromia zone of the Oromo minority in Amhara.
In 1984 and 1985 it was hit by a severe drought and famine . The number of deaths in the disaster is unclear, the numbers vary between 500,000 and a million people. In 1984 there was also a conflict in Ethiopia between the central government, at that time the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam , and rebels in the northern provinces and Eritrea . A total of 600,000 farmers from the northern provinces were forcibly relocated to the southwest of Ethiopia. 100,000 people are said to have died in this resettlement. It is unclear to what extent the resettlement contributed to the worsening of the famine.
The situation in Ethiopia at that time gave rise to a series of Live Aid concerts, which the Irish musician Bob Geldof initiated . According to Dorit Kowitz, "the pictures from Ethiopia from 1984 [...] shaped the image of Africa for millions of adolescents in the industrialized countries". The valley is now inhabited by 85,000 people.
Due to the famine, aid organizations came to the valley and are still organizing infrastructure projects there today .
Web links
- Dorit Kowitz: Help. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . October 1, 2011, accessed April 15, 2014 .