Project area Ginde Beret

West Shoa is one of the neediest regions in Ethiopia. The Ginde Beret project region covers an area of 1,200 square kilometres around 180 km north of Addis Ababa and is home to around 104,595 inhabitants.

Project start: 2011
Area: 1,200 km²
Population: approx. 104,595
Main town in the region: Kachisi
Location: approx. 180 km north of the capital Addis Ababa

The population in Ginde Beret lives primarily from agriculture and livestock farming, which is characterised by unimaginable hardship in this region. Agricultural production in the region is very low and harvests are often meagre. Drought, loss of soil fertility, erosion, pests and plant diseases reduce the farmers’ yields even further. Traditional farming methods and crops are barely able to feed the population. Another decisive factor is that the farmers have no knowledge of water or soil conservation.

As the area is hardly forested and all available land is used for agriculture, there is a high demand for firewood and timber on the one hand, while on the other hand the deforestation of the remaining timber stands leads to an ever-increasing erosion problem, which in turn threatens usable arable land. Cattle dung is also used to make fires and is therefore lacking as a natural fertiliser in the soil.

The population’s water supply is also very poor. Only 23 per cent of all residents have access to drinking water. People fetch their drinking water from holes that are full of dirt and pathogens and are often far away from the villages and huts. Women and girls have to walk for hours every day to fetch water. The contaminated water frequently causes infectious diarrhoea, which is often life-threatening. Medical care for the population is at a very low level.

The few medical facilities that exist are overburdened and poorly equipped. There is a lack of materials and medicines. 42 per cent of the population have no access to obstetrics or curative treatment. Malaria, parasite infestation, diarrhoea, upper respiratory tract infections, infectious eye diseases, gastritis, pneumonia and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV are widespread.

The opportunities for schooling in Ginde Beret are not available to all children. The schools are often too far away from their homes. The existing schools are huts made of wood and mud with thatched roofs, without windows or furniture. The children sit close together on the floor. As a result, the majority of children only learn the bare minimum, such as how to write their own name. In addition, these schools barely have room for all school-age children. As a result, the children later live from hand to mouth, just like their parents do now. Always depending on whether the next harvest will be productive enough to feed the family.