"Artemesia, which is widely recognised as the best cure for malaria, grows wild in Ethiopia but the government insists on buying in Swiss anti-malarial drugs," complained Theopholus Tesfaye, a scientist in the southern town of Chencha."We have tried for months to persuade the ministry of health to help our farmers grow artemesia, dry it out and sell it, instead of buying in chloroquine or quinine. "Ethiopia is my country and I know it is right, but this fight with our brothers will kill us more than hunger."The government says it wants to be able to feed its entire population without outside help within five years, but agriculturalists say that the country will depend on foreign food for at least another decade unless radical reforms are implemented fast.All over the country, no one, however, seems to have a clear idea of whether to welcome or be suspicious of foreign aid. If it does, Ethiopia's already fragile economy will collapse and the north will again be starved of food and development."If we go to war again, we are finished, Siltan said. The leaders of both countries fought together to overthrow the Derg regime, but began squabbling over the border town of Badme in 1998.In 2000 the two states went to war and the economies of both became paralysed.

Northern Ethiopia also got cut off from its most important trading town, the Eritrean capital of Asmara, which was six hours away by bus.Now, traders must rely on Addis Ababa, which can take two days to reach. Akul Siltan, who lives near the Eritrean border recalls: "I used to go to Asmara for my summer holidays; the weather was so nice, and we could go to the cinema or play football. I think Ethiopia lost some of its soul when it lost Asmara."After years of stalemate, both sides have begun gathering troops on the border again amid fears that war is about to break out again. Aid agencies say that unpopular resettlement policies, under which farmers are moved from less fertile areas to more fertile but unfamiliar ones, still continue. Under the Derg regime these moves took place forcibly.The government now offers incentives and warnings, but many people still feel they are being coerced into moving away from their ancestral homes in the highlands.To make things worse, the famine hit the north, which has been worst affected by the vicious, prolonged and expensive border war with neighbour ing Eritrea.

The Ethiopian government has tried to implement the necessary changes, but the country still bears traces of its socialist farms. Most state-owned land has now been given to private investors, but the poorest subsistence farmers still know little about property rights and even less about fertilisers and crop diversification.More than 55 per cent of Ethiopia's farmland is used to grow tef, the delicate grass-like plant that makes injera, the soured pancakes that are the staple diet. It is one of the few crops that will grow in Ethiopia's erratic climate, but it is also one of the lowest-yielding food crops in the world and makes the country's soil erosion problems even worse.Economically, the country is still one of the poorest in the world and in the past 20 years the price of coffee, Ethiopia's major export, has fallen by 73 per cent. I don't think it can feed us much more," she says.The agricultural sector, which accounts for half of the country's GDP, desperately needs far-reaching reform. Darote Wantella, who was 20 when Live Aid powered her country into the consciousness of the Western world, has only a vague recollection.