In Ethiopia, rainfall is the main driver of national economy in different sectors, including agriculture and energy (Conway and Shipper, 2010). The LEAP service aims at anticipating the occurrence of persistent droughts affecting water availability throughout the crop season. The LEAP framework has been designed to assess the impact of the shortfalls of rainfall on agricultural droughts. The crop model adopted in LEAP, is based on the Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI). It aims at monitoring the effect of lacking water during the critical stages of the growth cycle (e.g.
Risks assessed
Ethiopia's economy is largely based on agriculture: the sector contributes 50 percent of the total GDP (2010 data), with 82.5 percent of the population living in rural areas (2013 data) and involving 76 percent of the total labor force (FAO data). Due to high dependence on rain fed systems, decreasing farm size, low soil fertility, severe land degradation, fragile ecosystems and recurrent weather-related shocks, Ethiopia is prone to food production deficits and high livelihood vulnerability.
About
LEAP is the Government of Ethiopia’s national food security early warning system. It provides estimates of the number of people who will be in need of food assistance due to drought, increasing the speed with which a humanitarian response can be triggered.
Main sections
EUPORIAS has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under Grant Agreement 308291 - running from November 2012 to January 2017. Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License