ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday it was giving Ethiopia 20 million pounds to buy food after the country asked for emergency help to feed 6.2 million hungry people.
Ethiopia's government made its 2010 appeal for food aid last month and said it was short of $188 million. Drought has hit East Africa and the Horn for five years in a row.
"We cannot solve this problem alone and so I urge other donors to come forward and respond to the current situation," Gareth Thomas, Britain's state minister for development, said in a statement.
Another 7 million Ethiopians are part of a food-for-work scheme, which means more than 13 million of the country's 80 million people rely on aid to survive.Opposition parties have accused the government of stopping their members getting on the food-for-work scheme ahead of national elections in May.
The government denies that and foreign aid groups are investigating the claim.
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