Market day in Bati region, Ethiopia. The involvement of more women is building self-esteem and helping with food security. (CHF)

To the outside world, impoverished Ethiopia always has so much working against it — from immense poverty to serial droughts — that it often seems nothing can ever work out for the better.

An overly negative view of this country, however, is frankly wrong, defeatist and dangerous.

Certainly, as I noted in my previous column, there is a growing weariness with Ethiopia's seemingly permanent dependence on the world's help to even feed itself.

It's an image of helplessness that deeply bothers Ethiopians as well.

But the danger at this stage is that any pulling back would undercut the new anti-poverty efforts that are finally showing real promise.

Some, in fact, can be seen as the very models of rural development, in some of the very poorest communities, that Ethiopia needs if it is to break free of its crippling yoke of extreme poverty.

Bati model

One experiment that is proving extremely interesting is a combined Canadian-Ethiopian effort called the Bati model, after the area in northeastern Ethiopia where family incomes have tripled and farm production has risen sevenfold over the past six years.

Small-scale irrigation in Bati is allowing farmers to diversify and add more marketable fruits and vegetables. (CHF)

It's an interesting story.

In 2003, following another damaging food crisis, the Ethiopian government appealed to the outside world to help it break the pattern of chronic food insecurity by attacking the underlying causes.

An early supporter was one of Canada's oldest non-profit groups for rural development, CHF, originally known as the Canadian Hunger Foundation.

It in turn was given an essential kick-start by Eric Sprott, the near-legendary Canadian commodities investor with a passion for trying to alleviate global food shortages.

His family-run Sprott Foundation gave $1 million to the scheme, which was enough to encourage the Canadian International Development Agency to add more funding and so launch a pilot project.

Safety net

The target area contained 61,000 people and the first objective was to stop the downward spiral.

The key for this, it turned out, was to offer people something they'd never had — a safety net.

Ethiopia launched the Productive Safety Net Program, which guaranteed that those who signed on would be helped though any crisis with food or cash for a minimum of five years.

This meant that in the event of a calamity these people would have enough to eat and would not have to yet again sell off everything they owned, from livestock to farm tools, to survive.

In return, all able-bodied adults helped with public works projects in their areas in an attempt to revive the land by creating more wells, conserving water, planting trees and terracing hills.

Local roads were also built or repaired so produce could be brought to market.

Thinking long-term

Once this core concern, personal security, was guaranteed, farmers were encouraged to start thinking long-term about how to build on their few assets.

That was a real stretch for those used to a horizon measured in months at best.

In the Bati area, for example, farmers had grown only one staple for generations, the cereal sorghum, which is a hardy crop in a very low-rainfall environment, but left communities utterly vulnerable when that harvest failed.

Farmers were now encouraged to plant a variety of crops, including mangoes, papaya, cassava and ground nuts. Fruit trees were also planted as an investment in the future.

These new crops not only allowed families to vary their own unhealthy diets, but also to sell the surplus, which added to family income.

A village is born

With the new crops came new efforts aimed at marketing and processing, which quickly spread to include such needs as tailoring, carpentry, pottery and embroidery.

Many of these helped women enter the local economy and, as a result, savings and credit groups were organized specifically for women, along with classes in how to sell and trade in local markets.

The actual arrival of extra income — in an area where as little as $1 a day can double a family's "budget" — gave families the chance not only to hold onto assets such as tools and livestock but to increase their number and net worth.

Classes were started to introduce new feed practices to improve the quality of farm stock. And at the same time, new ponds, dams and small irrigation schemes allowed families to produce much more then they'd been used to.

Land once abandoned as hopeless was brought into production through small-scale irrigation.

Other gains

As all this was going on, It soon became apparent that local health was improving as well. Women's rights became better recognized as women developed their own sources of income and ability to invest. Grade schools and adult farm-improvement classes expanded, giving communities a new sense of what the term future means.

When independent examiners looked at the effects of the Bati model last year, they were surprised at what they called dramatic improvements. The entire project cost about $12 million over six years.

What they noted in particular was that the advances, while not easily gained, were the result of a broad-based attack on the root causes of poverty.

Just concentrating on, say, irrigation in one place, or livestock improvement in another, didn't deliver the required punch to affect an entire community.

It was equally clear the program could not have worked without the Ethiopian government's essential safety net.

Guaranteed security is often the missing ingredient in development plans because locals are understandably dubious when urged to make huge changes to their lives without any assurance they will be helped if things go wrong, as they often do.

At the same time, Bati showed that providing the very poor with some sense that they might have a future ignites the critical will to try new methods.

Lessons learned

The close co-operation between Canadian and Ethiopian officials, from top to grassroots at every stage, was also essential.

So was the well-noted Ethiopian work ethic, which proved to be a powerful force when unleashed by an entire community.

The big question, of course, is whether the Bati model will be seen solely as an excellent boutique model of concentrated reform, or whether it can be scaled up to regional and national levels.

Its Canadian proponents hope the lessons learned will encourage scores of similar projects once Bati has run its initial course by next March.

A truly countrywide effort, however, would require a measure of cooperation and sustained effort not seen before, not to mention a large investment of international money to help support the basic safety net.

It would also depend on the sometimes shaky relations between foreign development groups and the always touchy Ethiopian government.

But in Ethiopia, the world should count and nourish successes where it can because the full price of more failure is almost beyond imagining.