"Your attitude will determine your success," Abdi Muktar said, emphasizing that deserttification control, as a global issue, needs joint efforts.

"One hundred lemons are a burden for one person, but one hundred lemons are beautiful for one hundred people, as the proverb in my country goes," he said.

FISHING OVERWEIGHS FISH

The Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia is located, is witnessing the worst drought in 60 years, causing serious food production decline and more than 12.4 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti suffering from widespread famine, according to the United Nations.

Apart from drought, poor agricultural technologies are also blamed for low production in most of African countries, according to Huang Ribao, a senior agronomist with an agricultural sciences research institute in Liuzhou City, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

"Food donation is temporary. Giving them self-sufficient farming skills is far more important," said Huang. "Just like what ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tse had said: 'Teaching fishing skills is more important than merely giving fish to others.'"

Huang is among 100 Chinese agricultural experts sent to 32 African countries for agricultural planning and technical promotions, a project sponsored by ministries of commerce and agriculture. Huang was assigned to the Central African Republic, a small inland country in the middle of Africa, for one year from July 2009.

"All they had was a chopper, not even a plough," recalled Huang. "Every year they chop trees down and wait for plantation till rainy days."

Due to the food shortage, local people only have one meal per day, mainly on cassava rich of starch, which prevents them from feeling hungry.

The Chinese people built two farms in the country, helping cultivate fine breed and promote advanced technologies to local farmers.

"We brought seeds of peanuts, corns, beans, dry rice and vegetables. The dry rice is suitable to be planted because of the tropical climate there," he said.

The dry rice seed Huang mentioned was introduced to China in the late 1980s, when former premier Li Peng visited Brazil and returned with the seeds.

"Years after breeding, the seeds have turned much more productive than the local breed," Huang said.

Zhao Zhihai, dubbed "father of hybrid millet" in China, also found the hybrid millet he developed had yield bumper harvests on trial plantation in Ethiopia, Uganda and Ghana.

"For the local breed, farmers can only gain around 100 kg per mu (0.067 hectare), but with ours, they got 300 kg," said Zhao, director of the Millet Research Institute in the Zhangjiakou Academy of Agricultural Sciences in north China's Hebei Province.

Millet is the staple food in many African countries. Zhao said that if the Chinese variety of millet is popularized on the continent, it could provide a credible solution to food shortages that have long been haunting African countries.

Zhao, who just came back from Ethiopia early September, found the climate in Ethiopia is ideal for farming.

"Local people can get food out of soil almost any time throughout the year," he said.

Zhao said China should help spread agricultural technologies in Africa, share with local people readiness to fight natural disasters and make agricultural achievements together with them.

His institute rent 0.33 hectares of land in Mojo, 75 km away from the capital city Addis Ababa, for the trial plantation of the millet, and distributed seeds to farmers nearby.

"They just do what we do and get harvest. No need to train them at all," he said.