Addis Abeba — In June 2026, farmers around Tigray's capital Mekelle were still ploughing, spreading manure and searching for seed and fertiliser. Farmers purchased fertiliser at 13,000 birr per quintal, almost five times Ethiopia's 2020 national average. Cash was scarce as banks restricted withdrawals, and fuel and farm inputs were difficult to obtain as rumours of renewed war spread. Yet farmers continued preparing their fields because they had little choice. A growing season cannot be postponed until political leaders decide whether to preserve peace.
By mid-August, those efforts were in jeopardy. After visiting Tigray, UN Resident and humanitarian coordinator Ozonnia Ojielo reported that 148 tabias, local admin areas, had still received no rain. FEWS NET, an international system that monitors and forecasts food insecurity, had already found that less than half the land normally planted with long-cycle crops had been sown by the end of June.
Discover moreTracking Election PollsAfricanStreaming War Documentaries Rainfall improved in late July, but in the worst-affected areas it came too late to reverse delayed planting, crop stress and a shortened growing period. Across much of Tigray, rain-fed farming depends on the June-to-September season, so communities still waiting for effective rain by the end of August have already lost much of their planting window for many crops and locations.
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Local assessments showed what those rainfall deficits meant. In hot, low-lying Abergelle, officials reported that drought had killed thousands of livestock and left more than 4,000 hectares of farmland without satisfactory yields. In rugged Irob, a delegation led by Tigray's Bureau of Agriculture warned that the continuing rainfall shortage threatened livestock and crop production.
Exploring African Heritage The deterioration did not come without warning. In May, ICPAC had forecast below-normal June-to-September rainfall, delayed onset and unusually warm conditions across much of Ethiopia. The warning was therefore not that drought was certain, but that the conditions for a failed agricultural season were already visible before the rains were due to begin.
Tigray's emergency plan estimates that more than 3.7 million people may require assistance and calls for $626.8 million. By early August, only $3.38 million had been secured. The evidence cited here does not establish that famine has arrived or that it is inevitable. But the scale of the need, combined with that funding gap, shows how little capacity remains to prevent a poor agricultural season from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe. The rains explain the immediate shock. They do not explain why so many people have so little protection against it.
Drought is the trigger, not the whole cause
Drought can reduce harvests, kill livestock, and dry up water sources. But it becomes far deadlier when families also lose the other means by which they obtain food: land, wages, cash, markets, transport, banking, public services and humanitarian assistance.
Exploring Travel Maps Discover moreReading Local NewsExploring Travel MapsFollowing Political NewsPoliticsnewsBrowsing Digital MagazinespoliticsSubscribing To NewsExploring African HeritageAnalyzing Demographic Data In Tigray, many of those lifelines were not eroded by weather but deliberately stripped away by Ethiopia's wartime policy. The collapse of these economic lifelines was even visible from space. A 2026 study in Nature Communications used satellite imagery to track activity in rural markets across Ethiopia, finding sharp declines in Tigray during the 2020-22 war. Ethiopian federal forces and their Eritrean and Amhara allies destroyed or looted food stocks, livestock, farm equipment, health facilities, and civilian infrastructure. The federal government cut or severely restricted banking, electricity, telecommunications, trade, fuel and movement, while humanitarian relief was repeatedly obstructed.
In September 2022, the UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said it had reasonable grounds to believe that the federal government was using starvation as a method of warfare. The Ethiopian government rejected that finding. But rejecting the conclusion does not erase the documented pattern of destruction, economic blockade and deprivation. The pattern is not new. The Economist estimated up to one million people died in the 1983-85 famine, worsened by Mengistu Haile Mariam's similar counterinsurgency policies in Tigray.
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The rain cannot be negotiated, but nearly everything that determines whether drought becomes famine is political."
The human cost of the recent war is still not fully known, partly because the communication blackout that obstructed relief also made credible assessment exceptionally difficult. But widely cited estimates place the number of deaths from violence, hunger and the collapse of medical care in the hundreds of thousands.
The lesson for the present is clear. The previous wars showed what happens when farms, roads, banks, hospitals, markets and humanitarian lifelines fail simultaneously. That experience makes the consequences of another major agricultural shock in Tigray foreseeable.
Pretoria stopped the fighting, not the deprivation
The November 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) signed in Pretoria saved lives. It stopped large-scale fighting in Tigray and promised humanitarian access, restored services, and a return to prewar constitutional order. Abroad, the visible calm became shorthand for recovery. Inside Tigray, hundreds of thousands remained displaced, farmland remained inaccessible, and damaged institutions survived through improvisation for far too long.
Exploring African Heritage Nowhere is that failure clearer than in Western Tigray. The area was an integral part of Tigray under Ethiopia's pre-war federal order. An extensive study of administrative and ethno-linguistic boundaries since 1683 also found that claims of longstanding Amhara dominance are not supported by any historical and linguistic record.
Nevertheless, Amhara forces and newly installed authorities took control in 2020 with federal military support. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans through killings, sexual violence, detention, pillage, and denial of aid and services. The assault on the population's identity continued through the removal of Tigrinya from schools and public life and the imposition of Amharic.
Calling Western Tigray merely "contested" turns ethnic cleansing into a neutral territorial dispute. People were driven from productive land, authorities implicated in their expulsion remain in control, and more than 740,000 displaced people from the area still cannot return safely. A family confined to a displacement camp cannot feed itself from fields it is prevented from reaching.
In March, regional officials reported that more than 1,300 displaced people had died from hunger and lack of medicine in camps across Tigray over the previous three years. Although the number is not a comprehensive mortality estimate, it shows that deprivation continued to kill even after the frontlines quietened. Limited bank liquidity has disrupted aid delivery, while FEWS NET reported that food assistance was interrupted in June, resumed in July, and faced a possible pipeline break from September.
The political framework has also come apart. The federal government still invokes Pretoria while its core commitments on the withdrawal of non-federal forces, restored services and the safe return of displaced people remain unmet. In May, the TPLF restored Tigray's pre-war legislature and presidency, discarding the interim arrangement created under the agreement. Hence, the Pretoria deal no longer works as a shared peace process capable of protecting civilians.
In the meantime, Tigrayans have kept farming, trading and supporting displaced relatives. But resilience is not recovery. Every workaround consumes cash, labour, livestock and other assets families will need if rains fail and peace breaks further down.
These are not separate inconveniences. Land, markets, cash, transport, services and aid are the buffers that normally prevent a failed harvest from becoming mass hunger. Tigray entered the 2026 season with each one impaired and now being weakened further.
Political choices are eroding the remaining buffers
Any account of the present danger must begin with the imbalance of power. The Ethiopian federal government controls the national army, armed drones, airspace, fiscal system, and major transport corridors. Its decisions can interrupt commerce, services and humanitarian access across Tigray on a scale no regional authority can match.
Following Political News Clashes between Ethiopian and Tigrayan forces resumed on 1 August, and since then there have been almost daily unilateral drone strikes across Tigray. On 20 August, a drone struck a residential area in Mekelle, sending 13 people to Ayder Referral Hospital, including five children and seven women.
Military escalation amid failed rains is also threatening to become a food crisis. Fear keeps farmers from fields and traders from roads. Strikes and troop movements disrupt markets, fuel, communications, and aid. Another war would bring direct violence while closing the routes through which people produce, purchase and receive food.
The return of Biafra to official Ethiopian rhetoric makes the danger even more disturbing. A 2022 analysis of official and state-aligned statements documented calls to make Tigray "like Biafra" by isolating the region and cutting off what sustained it. In July 2026, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's office presented Obasanjo's experience of the "Biafra Peace Process" as a great lesson for unity and lasting peace.
It is an open secret that Biafra was not a model of inclusive dialogue. Nigeria's blockade starved civilians until the secession collapsed, causing mass death from hunger and disease. In Tigray, the reference names methods already familiar: food, medicine, fuel, banking, electricity and communications were cut while civilians died in extraordinary numbers.
Exploring African Heritage Nevertheless, Tigray's authorities are compounding the danger. Human Rights Watch has documented civilians, including children as young as 15, being seized from streets, homes, farms and workplaces. In Mekelle, residents described young people being loaded onto buses as mothers cried and pleaded. This is no longer a population volunteering for a shared struggle but a war-weary society trying not to be used again. A proclamation adopted in June made military service compulsory, with prison terms of up to 25 years for encouraging resistance, and threatens the death penalty for broadly worded offences.
The threats facing Tigray are real, but they do not justify coercive mobilisation at a time when there is a widening distance between the political leadership and a public preoccupied with daily survival and safety. Recruitment removes labour from farms and income from households, as fear of recruiters drives young people into hiding or out of the region.
These are not equal sources of danger. The federal government and its wartime allies created much of Tigray's vulnerability and retain the greatest capacity to turn it into catastrophe. Tigray's authorities are deepening that vulnerability from within.
Prevention must follow the hierarchy of power
International diplomacy has reinforced the confusion between an end to large-scale fighting and recovery, justice, and accountability mechanisms. Pressure faded once the peace deal ended large-scale fighting and pushed Tigray out of the headlines. In October 2023, no country sponsored renewal of the UN commission that had documented starvation and other grave crimes. The same week, the European Union announced a €650 million cooperation package with Ethiopia, and in April 2026, it resumed more than €140 million in direct budget support.
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Recruitment removes labour from farms and income from households, as fear of recruiters drives young people into hiding or out of the region."
The failure was not engagement itself, but normalisation without measurable progress on accountability, safe return, or any hopes of meaningful redress whatsoever. Starvation is too often treated as a food-delivery problem, while the political decisions that produce dependence are handled elsewhere as diplomacy. After the previous war, that separation is no longer credible.
The federal government must end military escalation, guarantee humanitarian and commercial access, restore financial and public services, and enable displaced Tigrayans to return safely. In Western Tigray, that requires removing officials and forces implicated in ethnic cleansing from power, restoring the pre-war constitutional administration and protecting returnees through independent monitoring. Prevention cannot mean another cycle of emergency appeals while the structures that create dependence remain intact.
Tigray's authorities also have choices. They must withdraw the mobilisation proclamation, end forced recruitment and release those unlawfully taken. Their responsibility is not equal to that of the federal state, but it is direct and preventable.
The regional and international partners that backed the previous peace deal still possess leverage through budget support, security relationships, diplomatic access and independent monitoring. Reengaging Ethiopia without verifiable progress on civilian protection, restoration of prewar constitutional order, and accountability for war crimes risks empowering continued impunity. Blocked access and missing data should trigger greater scrutiny, not diplomatic silence.
Farmers in Tigray prepared their fields because the season could not wait for peace. Governments and donors should not wait for a famine declaration. The rain cannot be negotiated, but nearly everything that determines whether drought becomes famine is political: whether the federal government opens roads or sends drones, whether displaced families return to occupied land, whether young people remain in their communities, and whether grain and medicine cross a checkpoint.
Exploring African Heritage If mass starvation follows, it will not simply be because nature overwhelmed a functioning society. It will reflect the failure to restore the conditions that allow people to produce, purchase, and receive food and political choices that left the structures of deprivation in place.
The warnings are already sufficient. What is needed now is action before farmers' lost harvests, displaced families and depleted households become the statistics of another humanitarian disaster. AS
Editor's Note: Emnet Negash is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University studying conflict and food insecurity in East Africa. He has worked in Ethiopia's agriculture sector since 2012. The author can be reached at emnet.negash@ugent.be
