* Drought in some areas eclipses that of 1984
* Donors struggle to keep pace with relief needs
* Government's rural projects help contain crisis
* Ethiopia's ambitions challenged, at least in short term
By Aaron Maasho and Edmund Blair
FEDETO/ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jan 31 (Reuters) - On a
treeless plain in eastern Ethiopia, thousands of destitute
pastoralists have set up camp outside the tiny village of
Fedeto. Over the past six months the camp has swelled as one of
the worst droughts in decades has decimated herds, dried up
pasture and made even drinking water scarce.
"We wandered for three months, losing every single animal
apart from two donkeys," said Saido Ahmed Keyat, a 29-year-old
mother of five, whose family had boasted 200 sheep and goats, 15
cattle, eight camels and seven donkeys. "All my children are
malnourished. They need milk, they need many things."
Ethiopia's failed rains, which meteorologists blame on the
El Nino weather phenomenon, have created a drought in some areas
of the country worse than the 1984 crisis. Back then, water
shortages and conflict combined to cause a famine that killed an
estimated one million people.
In the years since, Ethiopia has transformed under a
government that promotes rapid economic development, although it
is criticised for limiting many political freedoms. One of its
signature schemes is a rural support programme designed to keep
Ethiopians from starvation.
The new drought is putting that model to the test.
More than 10 million people are now critically short of
food, according to figures compiled by the government with its
humanitarian partners. That is putting a strain on the
government as well as the budgets of international aid groups
and donors.
"The scale of the need is really huge and has outstripped
the Ethiopian government's ability to do this on their own,"
Carolyn Wilson, chief executive of charity Save the Children
told Reuters after touring some of the afflicted regions in the
country's north and east.
In all, an estimated $1.4 billion is needed for food and
other resources in 2016, according to the government and aid
partners. The government said about 30 percent of that had been
raised from donors so far. The WFP said last week about $500
million was needed by the end of February to extend the aid
effort beyond April.
In a world facing the demands of the migrant crisis and
conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, that won't be easy.
"It's not that donors have not responded," said WFP Country
Director John Aylieff. "But they have not managed to keep pace."
NEW VISION
Today's needs would be far greater were it not for the
massive changes in Ethiopia over the past three decades.
In 1984, the then-communist government known as the Derg
tried to hide the famine, while conflict and social engineering
projects like farm collectivisation exacerbated the scale of
hunger.
Rebels toppled the Derg in 1991 and the government that
followed has delivered stellar economic growth rates, hitting
double digits in some years, visible from endless construction
in the capital and new highways crossing the nation.
In 2005, Ethiopia started the Productive Safety Net
Programme, which was helping 7.9 million people facing chronic
food insecurity even before the latest drought. Those people
receive food or cash transfers in return for community work.
To deal with the drought, the government allocated $272
million extra spending in 2015 and a further $109 million this
year, Mikitu Kassa, head of the National Disaster Risk
Management Commission, told Reuters. To put that extra spending
in perspective, it is roughly equivalent to Ethiopia's entire
state budget two decades ago, he said.
The government says no one has so far died from starvation.
Some of those in the worst affected area contradict this. One
woman in Fedeto said 20 had died in the past two months, though
it was not possible to verify this.
Mikitu said the government would spend what it takes if aid
did not flow, although he said it could mean cutbacks on other
projects. But he said the government's "mega projects" - new
national railways, roads and dams - would go ahead.
Those projects are part of plans to industrialise Ethiopia.
Eighty percent of the nation still relies on agriculture, mostly
rain-fed pastures or subsistence smallholdings. The better
transport links have already proved vital, allowing easier
access for relief workers.
"The nature of the government that we had in 1984 is quite
different from the current government," Mikitu said in Addis
Ababa, where Sub-Saharan Africa's first metro system opened last
year and now snakes its way above traffic-clogged streets.
SAFETY NETS
The architect of modern Ethiopia, rebel leader-turned-prime
minister Meles Zenawi, told a 1991 news conference in Addis
Ababa that his gauge of success would be "if Ethiopians were
able to eat three meals a day."
Ethiopia has not yet achieved that goal. Critics of the
government - Meles died in 2012 but many of his policies
continue under successor Hailemariam Desalegn - say it is
authoritarian and stifles opponents. No opposition party won a
seat in last year's parliamentary election.
The U.S. State Department said then that it remained "deeply
concerned by continued restrictions on civil society, media,
opposition parties, and independent voices and views." Ethiopian
officials deny restricting freedoms.
But in their determination not to let fresh images of hunger
overshadow the government's development credentials, some
ministers sent conflicting signals early in the crisis about how
bad it was and how much help was needed, aid workers say.
"We have to walk on egg shells in terms of what we can say,"
said one international aid worker, who has followed Ethiopia's
progress since the 1980s.
Disaster management chief Mikitu blamed any confusion on the
speed at which numbers of those facing critical food shortages
grew. In January 2015 it was 2.9 million but swiftly rose -
often in increments of several million - to 10.2 million by
December.
But even the government's ability to gather such figures is
testament to the way Ethiopia has changed.
Fedeto, in a remote area of the hard-hit Sitti region, has
benefited from that change. A tiny clinic, one of thousands
built around the country over the past two decades, doles out
rations and treats the malnourished. The village also has a
water tower and a school.
That helps, though only up to a point. The administrator of
the village of 600 people said he was struggling to meet the
needs of 7,500 exhausted arrivals who are now camped nearby.
"There is a lot of pressure on us," Dahir Omar Hosh said.
"People are still coming."
(Aaron Maasho reported from Fedeto, Edmund Blair reported from
Addis Ababa; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Simon Robinson
and Janet McBride)