Gabriella Jóźwiak - Freelance Journalist

Bethlehem Tsegey, 14, smiles brightly as she describes her relief to be back at school. Since Beati Akor Primary School reopened in the Eastern Zone of the North Ethiopian region of Tigray, not all the girls have returned. Two years of war and the region’s worst drought for 40 years killed around 600,000 people and plunged the rest into hunger and poverty. ‘A lot of 16-year-olds are engaged to be married nowadays,’ she says. ‘Some of them were students here at this school...' Read the full story in the Sep/Oct 2024 issue of the New Internationalist. 

Abraha Bahlbi lays an enormous paper ledger over bags of ready-to-eat Famix blended food in the storeroom at Ara Primary School in southeastern Tigray, Ethiopia. The Mary’s Meals International , or MMI, school feeding coordinator points to the columns and rows, and explains how cooks measure exactly 100 grams a day of the nutrition-fortified porridge for each student. The daily total distributed is deducted from the amount in stock, and the new balance used to calculate next month’s food delivery. But what Bahlbi points to most furtively is the column showing school attendance. MMI began a school feeding program at Ara in March this year. By May, enrollment jumped from 380 to 453 children. “The daily attendance rate is about 98%,” he said. “It is a sign of the high need and importance the meal is playing that the children are coming every single day...” Read the full story on Devex.com . Also this related article:  Sister-in-arms: Medhin Tesfay fights against hunger in Tigray

If he had finished his education, Aregawy Tekle Birham, 23, believes he never would have left Tigray. Sitting on a stone step outside his old primary school in the mountainside village of Gendefru, Northern Ethiopia, Aregawy regretfully recounts his decision to migrate. “I couldn’t get a job here because I only studied to grade 4,” he says, tugging dry stalks of grass from the ground and snapping them. “This school didn’t teach any further, and it was too expensive to travel to another. I thought I would find work in Saudi Arabia. But when I reached the border, they imprisoned me for three years.” The only unusual part of Aregawy’s story is that he came home... Read the full story on The Telegraph .