Annual Report

Dear colleagues and partners,

2020 has been an exceptional year for the entire world with the corona virus/COVID-19, started towards the end of 2019 and took the world by storm and declared a pandemic on March 11th, 2020. As this annual report goes to print, the world is still reeling from the unprecedented and devastating impact of the virus and its variants on human lives and the economies of every nation around the globe.

For Ethiopia, this means yet another crisis on top of many crises that the country faced in 2020, including devastating floods, the largest desert locust infestation in decades, continued massive displacements in many regions of the country, and a burgeoning serious conflict between the Federal Government and the TPLF-led regional state in Tigray in early November, a grave presage and an indication of how the year 2021 will unfold.

During the pandemic, LWF as the rest of the world, adapted its work to the pandemic, implementing different public health and infection prevention and control measures to fulfill its duty of care to its staff the community it works with, as well as by adopting different working models to ensure business continuation.

In 2020, LWF Ethiopia received a total of EUR 3,731,960 in 2020. Various humanitarian, development projects were implemented in Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Gambella, Oromia, and Somali regional states. At the close of the year, most of the planned activities were implemented as planned with very few having been carried forward to 2021. We were of course able to achieve this with your generous support and flexibility to redirect and reallocate some of the approved program funding to the -19 response.

We would like to thank the communities who invited us in their midst and partnered with us, our donors and partners, national and international non-governmental organizations, UN agencies, ACT Alliance, HINGO and CANGO and committed staff who make this all possible, as well as the Government for fostering an enabling environment to facilitate our work. We look forward to partnering with you once again in 2021.

As we consign 2020 to history, we do so with the hope that vaccination that is starting to be rolled out will be just, fair and equitable for both the global North and South and bridge the immunization divide as nobody is safe until everyone is safe. On the cusp of 2021, we also hope that the conflict in Tigray is resolved soon.