Economist strives to end hunger in Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia | Eleni Z. Gabre-Madhin recalls 1984, when nearly 1 million died of starvation in Ethiopia. “There was a surplus in the fertile regions of the south but in the north people could not access it.”

They were captives of a market system whose failures could — and did — lead to famine.

The plight of her native Ethiopia took Ms. Gabre-Madhin, an American-trained economist, on a quest that would result in the founding of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), which celebrated its first year in business this April.

In that short time, the new exchange has begun a revolution in trade across one of Africa’s most populous nations.

The creation of the exchange was years in the making. After 15 years working in Washington think tanks and academe, Ms. Gabre-Madhin knew she didn’t have all the answers but was sure that she was “asking the right questions.”

Foremost was how market changes could work at the level of smallholder farmers; 80 percent of Ethiopia’s population fits the agrarian profile, and almost all of those live on small, subsistence-level family farms.

For 10 years she studied markets in Africa, coming to see that it would be possible to better people’s lives “even to the smallest actor” by transforming the structure of the marketplace for Ethiopia’s agricultural commodities.

She was convinced the problem was that the whole system of agriculture in Ethiopia, from the markets to the fields, was still rooted in outdated traditions and practices.

She knew it would be a huge task to make the necessary changes, but she saw an opportunity to remake the whole thing from top to bottom.

The country had been isolated for decades from the rest of the world, both geographically and politically.

Massive famines and political upheaval wiped away, by some estimates, over a million people. Generations had been lost, and with them a great deal of Ethiopia’s pride, culture and knowledge.

More recently though, the country had become more stable and was opening up to the outside world.

In 2004, Ms. Gabre-Madhin accepted an assignment from the International Food Policy Research Institute, and moving back to Ethiopia, led a study of policy and markets. As part of this process, she began to lay the groundwork for the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange.

To get a better look at the agricultural system, she had the inspiration to tag along with a few bags of grain as they traveled from the farmer’s field to the table.

She traveled across the country by truck, rail and ship, spending hours bouncing down dusty, rutted roads — often in the company of men not used having a woman in their midst.

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