Few global disasters in history have had an international profile equal to the famine that ravished the Horn of Africa exactly 30 years ago. Besides claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, the road to recovery for Ethiopia and its immediate neighbors also seemed endless. But the demand to “feed the world” has been heard by governments, donors and nongovernmental organizations in the region and around the world, who have since worked to build policies and systems to ensure the bleak images of 1984 remain in the past.

How far has this region developed, in the intervening 30 years since this crisis first hit the headlines? Read more