Famines in Ethiopia
The famines in Ethiopia occurred periodically through the history of Ethiopia due to a number of reasons. The economy of Ethiopia was based on subsistence agriculture, with an aristocracy that consumed the surplus. Due to a number of causes, the peasants lacked incentives to either improve production or to store their excess harvest; as a result, they lived from harvest to harvest.
Despite the extensive modernization of Ethiopia in the last 120 years, as of 2016, about 80% of the population are poor farmers who still live from harvest to harvest, and are vulnerable to crop failures.
| Year | Description |
| First half of 9th century | Followed by epidemic |
| 1535 | Famine and epidemic in Tigray. As described in the Futuh al-Habasha, this took a heavy toll on Imam Ahmad Gragn's army: "When they entered Tigray each Muslim had fifty mules; some of them even one-hundred. When they left, each one of them had only one or two mules." Amongst the dead was the Imam's young son Ahmad al-Nagasi. |
| 1540 | Contemporary accounts describe this famine as "worse than that which occurred at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple". |
| 1543 | Pankhurst provides no details |
| 1567–1570 | Famine in Harar, combined with plague and Oromo expansion. Nur ibn Mujahid, Emir of Harrar died. As J. Spencer Trimingham describes, "The Amir Nur exerted every effort to help his people to recover, but after every respite the Oromo would again descend like locusts and scourge the country, and Nur himself died of the pestilence which spread during the famine." |
| 1611 | The heavy rains that fell this year and extreme cold caused extensive crop failures in the northern provinces. This same year a plague called mentita also afflicted Ethiopia. |
| 1623 | Jesuit sources |
| 1634–1635 | Reports of locusts in Tigray 1633–1635. An epidemic of kantara or fangul also afflicted Dembiya, spreading into Tigray. |
| 1650 | Pankhurst supplies no details |
| 1653 | Epidemic of kabab |
| 1678 | Cost of grain inflated; this led to the death of many mules, horses, and donkeys. |
| 1700 | This may have been the famine that struck Shewa between the reigns of Negasi Krestos and Sebestyanos mentioned by Donald Levine. |
| 1702 | Starving peasants appealed to Emperor Iyasu I, crying that if he did not feed them they would die. In response the Emperor and his nobles fed an uncountable number of the destitute for two months. |
| 1747–1748 | Famine attributed to locusts in Royal Chronicle. There was also an epidemic of fever, possibly influenza, in 1747. |
| 1752 | According to Pankhurst. A European visitor to Gondar, Remedius Prutky, is silent about this disaster. |
| 1783 | Famine called "my sickness" in Royal Chronicle. |
| 1789 | According to Royal Chronicle, "there was a famine over all the provinces" Dejazmach Hailu Eshte, who was then living in Este, settled many "needy people" in his villages as guards. "And hearing of this report... many commanders who acted as he did adopted his example for themselves." |
| 1796 | This famine was particularly serious at Gondar, and blamed on an infestation of locusts. |
| 1797 | From the Royal Chronicle |
| 1800 | Soldiers died on campaign due to famine. |
| 1829 | Famine in Shewa, followed by a cholera outbreak 1830–1. |
| 1880–1881 | Cattle plague spreads from Adal region, causing famine as far west as Begemder. |
| 1835 | Rains failed, leading to famine and "great mortality" throughout Shewa. |
| 1888–1892 | Rinderpest introduced from India kill approximately 90% of cattle. Lack of rainfall as early as 16 November 1888 led to famine in all but southernmost provinces; locusts and caterpillar infestations destroy crops in Akele Guzay, Begemder, Shewa and around Harrar. Conditions worsen with cholera outbreaks, a typhus epidemic, and a major smallpox epidemic. Conditions forced the coronation of Menelik II to be a subdued event. |
| 1913–1914 | Famine in northern provinces Amhara tigray |
| 1929 | Famine amongst Amhara, which led to local revolt when tax collectors refused to reduce taxes accordingly. |
| 1958 | Famine in Tigray claimed over 100,000 lives:- Haile Selassie, who was the emperor of Ethiopia at the time, refused to send any significant basic emergency food aid to Tigray province even though he had the money; so in consequence over 100,000 people died of the famine. |
| 1966 | Famine in Amhara affects a number of districts. |
| 1973 | Famine returns to Amhara, spreads through northern provinces; failure to adequately handle this crisis contributed to the fall of the Imperial government and led to Derg rule. |
| 1984–1985 | See 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. It had a death toll of "1.2 million dead, 400,000 refugees outside the country, 2.5 million people internally displaced, and almost 200,000 orphans", where majority of the dead were from Tigray province and other parts of northern Ethiopia. |
| 2003 | A severe drought from 2002/2003 lead to a famine affected 13.2 million people. Despite the drought being the most extensive in the country's modern history there was a higher child mortality in drought-affected areas but no measurable increase in child mortality amongst the general population. Household-level demographic factors, household-level food and livelihood security, community-level economic production, access to potable water, and household receipt of food aid were predictive of child survival. The latter had a small but significant positive association with child survival. |