USAID to Resume Food Aid Deliveries in Ethiopia Following Reforms

New measures aimed at preventing corruption will be tested for a year, with the World Food Program and Catholic Relief Services taking over handling of aid distribution.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will resume food aid deliveries across Ethiopia in December, five months after halting the program due to a massive corruption scheme by local officials.
The resumption comes after the implementation of new reforms to improve the registration of beneficiaries and the tracking of donated grain.
The suspension of aid affected 20 million Ethiopians, with reports of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people starving to death in the Tigray region since the suspension.
The new measures will be tested for one year and are expected to fundamentally shift Ethiopia’s food aid system.
The World Food Program and the Catholic Relief Services humanitarian organization will take over handling of warehouses, commodities and distributions in programs and regions formerly handled by the Ethiopian government.