[John H K]

There's a book that argues that literally every single famine in human history has had as it's primary cause war (Somalia), deliberate starvation by the government (Soviet Union in the 1930s, Ethopia in the 1980s), or inadvertent starvation caused by stupid government policies (many socialist countries, the English in the Irish potato famine), rather than drought or environmental conditions.

[marron]

Obviously, not a lot of news comes out of Ethiopia these days, so I am simply not as aware of the day-to-day there as I am from other parts of the world. As you say, famine usually has causes or agravating factors that go beyond environmental, although a good hard drought in a region that depends on subsistence farming could be catastrophic. But people have lived in this region for millenia, and usually have developed ways of dealing with drought, they migrate, or whatever. The famine during the eighties was caused by a government that prohibited people from going where they had to go to survive.

I am wondering what stands in the way of developing an economy there that can withstand bad weather cycles. Are there no minerals there worth exploiting, are there no resources, is there nothing at all there to support something beyond subsistence?