The World Bank has recently released an “updated” report (read here) on its activities in Ethiopia. The 2010 report, which seems to be a poorly edited rehash of the 2007 report, states that since 1991, the Bank has committed $7.6 billion in Ethiopia mainly for the “protection of basic services, health services, the fight against HIV/AIDS, productive safety nets, food security, and roads. Such massive assistance is allowing the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne) to use the money it collects from the people of Ethiopia in the form of taxes and tariffs to buy weapons of repression.
At the conclusion of its 2010 report, the Bank states that its project has helped improve the lives of 70 million rural Ethiopians, not least among them are children who now have access to services denied to them before. If that is true, why do over 80,000 Ethiopians, including children, in the capital city Addis Ababa alone eat trash to survive as the video below shows? Why do over 46% of Ethiopians (according to a recent survey) want to migrate to another country?
The $7.6 billion the Bank spent in Ethiopia has not contributed to improving lives. The only thing the Bank developed is the pockets of the ruling class and the bellies of its staff in Ethiopia who live a life of luxury and excess while tens of thousands of children sleep in the streets of Addis Ababa right outside their 20,000-birr-per-month rented villas. If the $7 billion has been properly used, there would be no child in Ethiopia who eats trash to survive. If there is a government that is elected by the people, Ethiopia does NOT need the World Bank’s money.
24 thoughts on “World Bank’s blatant lies about Ethiopia”
poor always crying. Let the lord help you to have peace before you die.
Elias, for individuals you and like you, no need of weapon. Weapon is too much because bringing you to the strong people is more than enough, the ever naturally armed strong people. Why weapon? Whom to fight for? Do not joke please!
Over 46% people are leaving Ethiopia and migrating to … over 80,000 in Addis are Ething trash …. millions killed, millions are member of EPRDF or TPLF, … etc… So, how many people are in Ethiopia left? If we clearly see your numbers there is no one whom you have to care for if not merely for the bare land and care of TPLF. Why weapon? To fight with whom? i’m sure you very well know that even you cannot stand infront of the GREAT people leve alone to fight with them. No need of weapon to fight as the people are nuturally armed for their enemy. It is not the weapon one may have from some where that can help to sustain or defeat enemy but the courage ‘hamot’. Simpley take Derg and TPLF!
Elias like we have said it again and again ,the world bank is owned by the
same groups who has been responding to the human rights report after they make
their desk investigation with woyanne officials,but Elias for the peoples of Ethiopia it is a lesson that our freedom lies only on our own hands as the so called donors are enjoying to get a slave for their long time hidden agenda
that they were looking for the last 100 years.having said that no matter the sacrifies we have to get back our beloved country free from all these evils and breath free air across the nation after removing the toxic .
We are poor from the time of immemorial because we are lazy.
It´s all true what U said but one thing I wonder is who´s the world bank trying to fool? It can´t be ethiopians because they´re living all the misery U described. It can´t be the donors because they know better. So if their statement can´t fool either the donors or the recievers of the money, I´m honestly at a loss who´re the ones to be fooled by this?
For most part the world bank is getting the statistics from the Woyanes. Plus the world bank itself is a corrupt org.
Elias – Once again you got it all wrong. And by doing so, you are indeed provide a loop to Woyanne cadres to hate and ridicule the whole diaspora as well as opposition parties.
You are claiming that the $7.6 billion the Bank spent in Ethiopia has not contributed to improving lives and that is absolutely wrong. If you read the article properly the $7.6 billion was spent in protection of basic services, health services, the fight against HIV/AIDS, productive safety nets, food security, and roads.
I am not a Woyanne supporter, but I know how our health workers are delivering a sound and commended work to assist HIV/AIDS victims and significantly reduced the number of deaths. Everyone who visited Ethiopia recently may confirm about improvements made in roads and basic services. Water and electricity services are now available for more Ethiopians than ever.
The point is while opposing the tragic human rights violetion taken place in Ethiopia, we should not have to find ourselves blaming Woyanne in everything. If we do so, first no one trust our words and then no one would have respect for the opposition.
Especially your claim that “If the $7 billion has been properly used, there would be no child in Ethiopia who eats trash to survive” is not expected of an Ethiopian. It is also disrespect to your readers. Because they know, even if the government distributes the $7.6 billion dollar to nearly 40 million kids – each child would receive only $2.
Let God bless Ethiopia
Kewle
“Since the end of a devastating civil war in 1991, IDA has supported
the Government of Ethiopia through 60 operations and
more than US$7.6 billion. Important results include a near two-fold
increase in the number of children in primary school between 2001
and 2008, a reduction in child mortality to 109 in 2010 from 204 in
1990, increased rural access to safe water to almost 62 percent
in 2009 from only 19 percent in 1990”
…….
the country obviously has a long way to go but these are good achievments.
It might be a surprise for some but it was already an open secret for Eritrea & Eritreans how the World Bank & IMF are complicit in the plundering of the country’s resources & the subsequent sytematic & gross human right abuse of the people and the destruction of their environment while, ironically or rather unashemedly, singing the sweet tune of “democracy”, “human right” & “freedom of expression”, when infact their record in those area were even more horendous than what is shown in John Pilger’s film titled “WAR ON DEMOCRACY”. The world bank had always been serving the interest of the empires that finances it. Can you believe that Ghana alone used to produce surplus to feed Britain for 10 years after the the WW2 while the post war people of britain were surviving on rations. Now look at Ghana & Britain changed role. The nationalist & pan-African leader of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah has put it so eloquentlyin his book he wrote 45 hrs ago, in 1965, titled “Neo-Colonialism- The Last Stage of Imperialism”. It’s amust read book that clearly prophesised then & seeing it now with clear cut proof.
How did Ghana & other African nation turned belly up, corrupted & bankrupt….. to find the answer …. Look no further than the role of the WB played, which is also articulated in Dambisa Moyo’s latest book (Dead Aid) that is still the talking point today. They’ve always done that to Feed their insatiable but unsustainable “way of life”. Latin America, which was arrogantly referred by US as its backyard had been the playing ground of US corporations until recently. Now these backyards have been swept by people’s revolution…… Galvanized by their slogan …… ” THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED” sacrificed their lives to free their country from their puppet tyranny & ceased to become cash cows for the US economy. Now the US has turned to Africa to fuel its economy, by scrambling with the other addict empires(mainly France & UK).
If one reads Jphn Perkins book, …. “Confession of the Economic Hit Man.”, all the tricks of the GDP growth, economic forecast, elite’s economy-Vs-real economy & all the rest of the statistics scribbled has an ulterior motives. It’s about time Ethiopians first unite, no matter their ethnic background, economic status, acadamic status, religion or political views for the common good where those who work reap the fruit of their labour in peace and freedom- nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise the Weyane cancer will continue to thrive & syphone the living cell out of every last person. The dependence on others while disfranchising & underestimating own potential will ultimately lead you to the same road as that taken by Weyane.
The choice is yours.
God bless your struggle for justice.
“Why do over 46% of Ethiopians (according to a recent survey) want to migrate to another country?”
This is not accurate info, the people that want leave Ethiopia for another country are more like 96% NOT 46% as the above quote suggests.
Why do we get surprised about WB, IMF or any other institutions, for that matter, which are pumping billions of dollars to the tyrant in Addis? They are in the business of handing out cash, the only differnce is that they have to justify if their investment is efficient, if their manadated goals have been implemented or if the so called targets have been met..etc. blah blah blah
Otherwise all those highly paid employees who travel around the globe and stay at fancy hotels may have to look for employment in their own countries of origin and live in a less comfortable style!
The bottom line, if aid and begging for money can bring economic development to a country the TPLF ruled Ethiopia would have been a show case of the last decade. Instead, our citizens are in most desperate situations lacking food, shelter and basic health care. Where the aid money is used to build some of these saftey nets they are usually in ethnically selected regions with less or no citizens to benefit from them. The reportedly brand new hospitals with no staff or medical equipment; the highways leading to nowhere; the number of unfinished “buildings”….etc are all indicators of the mismanagement of the natural and the human resources of our poor country.
On the top of that, the TPLF rulers of the day are so much in to staying in power (as much as possible!), they care less if the next generation is prepared with adequate skills and knowledge to maintain the harmony and the unity of our citizens let alone the country’s development to join the advanced nations. Instead of for proper education……. most of the aid money is used to buy weapons and security items in the hope of keeping the population under the TPLF military control.
All these facts are known to the leaders of the Western nations and to their WB, IMF donors……and they care less too as long as the tyrant is willing to send “his troops” to invade another country in search of terrorists who are considered a threat to western capital cities.
What are the solutions? How can we bring the country in to Democracy and the Rule of Law where everyone in the land can participate in its economic or any other development?
Can our problem be due to, in the words of a wise man, the fact that (who said) ..”we may have nine things in hand that we may agree upon, we fail to work on all those nine because there is ONE issue that we can’t agree upon”?
It is sad that our citizens are labeled as “patients”, “safety-oriented”, “afraid to challenge” by western sources under mining our folks who are living under the rule of the over-armed tyrant Meles Zenawi.
In short, let us get united and bring liberty, freedom and democracy….and economic development will be an easy task.
God/Allah Bless Ethiopia & protect her citizens
We shouldn’t be surprised by this lies and deceptions by the World Bank, because it was one of the tools established by the Western Powers to help protect and keep in power those dictators who serve their interest but not the people.
To Balcha Gebeyehu.
Well articulated.
Icouldn’t have put it better. Not only Ethiopia but Africa need a few more of your type.
Why is itthat it took this long to unite as a people and redouble your efforts?
God bless the just struggle of the oppressed.
On the world bank report said ,since 1991, has contributed 7.6 billion.The distrubition of money allocation appears.
1-Road projects 20,000 K.M in length $1.Billion.
2-Rural Electric $400
Million.
3-Gilgel gibe project $200 million.
4-Eduction(primary school)$125 million.
If we add up the expenses we get 1.75 billion.On the basis of what we have 5.85.So what can we say for the where about of the remaining money?Can we attribute this to the incompletness of the report?It is plausible the report might not all the finincial dat at hand.
Yet it is unresonable to report just a fraction of donation and make us believe large chunk (5.85 billion unaccounted) has not been misapproprated.
Not to mention the fact the report says nothing about audite of the various projects that the institutin is sponsering.
The fact is the government of Emperial Melese must habe diverted the large sums of money coming its way for its owen use.
Not only are we suspect thelikly hood of the miss allocation of the hard cahsh but according to HWR repoert,
“Development without Freedom: How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia,” documents the ways in which the Ethiopian government uses donor-supported resources and aid as a tool to consolidate the power of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
“The Ethiopian government is routinely using access to aid as a weapon to control people and crush dissent,” said Rona Peligal, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “If you don’t play the ruling party’s game, you get shut out. Yet foreign donors are rewarding this behavior with ever-larger sums of development aid.”
Another report by Kenda Swartz Pepper,on Hunger on Africa states the land lease project in Ethiopia as contributing factor to starvation.
Land Leasing:
This is a recent phenomenon as of the last five years or so. Basically some call it ‘land grab’ some call it ‘neo-colonialism’. But this time it’s not the British, it’s not the Dutch, it’s not the traditional colonial powers; it’s companies from the Middle East and Asia who are buying huge plots of land to produce very few crops that they then ship back to their countries. Imagine Africans who are hungry seeing food produced on their land being shipped out of their country. They get nothing. The claim is that the host nation benefits from this because their farming is upgraded from subsistence farming to commercial farming. The governments that are leasing the lands promise to pay the host government good money and promise to improve the infrastructure.
Ethiopia is one of the leading recipant of foreign aid,in Africa and the paradox is that May of the Ethiopian citizens live in dire circumstances.Weyane leader need to be hold for his mass crime.
Haben – Just read the book by John Perkins confession of an economic hit man.
#11 You just think everyone is like you; the one who feel proud being willing slave. Try to wake up and start to feel such shameful being then you could finally get liberty. “want …. 96%…” shameful. Please try to take the basics of mathematical operations then you may able to get very hint what numbers are.
#10 U could be shaebia but never be Eritrean because I know Eritreans are not Shaebia. Do not mix go and try yours to fix! “Tsimbilalitsya maakora teykedenet midiry kedenet” elom woledi!
After reading the Human Rights Watch report, I must say that thanks to the World Bank, Ethiopia in the 21st Century has become a veritable Marxist State, where individuals are even afraid to speak their mind as it might offend the ruthless Ethiopian government get punished for speaking out. This state of affairs owes its legacy to the duplicity of a certain Mr. Ishak Diwan, Meles’ drinking buddy and former Head of the World Bank office in Addis during the 2005 elections. I am sure everyone remembers Mr. Diwan, who played a pivotal role to save his buddy Meles from the disastrous aftermath of the elections, when Meles imprisoned members of the opposition Parties, ordered the Federal Police and his secret militia to slaughter over 200 innocent victims and incarcerated 40,000 people in concentration camps all over Ethiopia in retribution for losing the 2005 election. The international donor community, alias the DAG, had previously provided funds as direct budget support to Meles’ murderous regime. Some members of the DAG were indignant at Meles’ reaction and were about to cut off all aid, except humanitarian aid, until Ishak Diwan devised an elaborate plan, by which they would provide aid to the regional governments through a program called Protection of Basic Services (PBS). Ishak Diwan and the DAG knew that the regional governments are not elected officials and are appointed by the TPLF/EPRDF as extensions of the ruling junta. At the time many Ethiopians and other scholars wrote to the World Bank and to DAG objecting to the PBS funds being given to the regional governments, which in essence are under the control of the TPLF, but to no avail. The DAG and World Bank’s Ishak Diwan had decided to prop up Meles’ authoritarian rule for their own reasons. We knew then that the DAG, including the World Bank, wanted to give Meles their full support and were just deceiving the Ethiopian people by concocting the PBS yarn. The HRW in its report says, “In Ethiopia, most monitoring of donor programs is a joint effort alongside Ethiopian government officials.” This means that the donors are taken by their government counterparts to areas only inhabited by government supporters. It is apparent that the DAG monitors are not even concerned about the non-delivery of the programs to those who oppose the government, even if they qualify for the food-for-work program under the Safety Net Program!
In a country where for some reason or another hunger still persists, the DAG does not consider it necessary to provide food for those who are eligible for the Safety Net Program but are not supporters of the government. What message is the DAG sending to the Ethiopian people? Are they telling us that they can only help those that support the repressive government? Do they intend to coerce a large segment of the 80 million people to support the repressive ruler? We hope the tax-payers of DAG member countries will realize how their money is being spent.
As Elias says, the World Bank and members of the DAG are blatantly lying to the world. Thanks to Human Rights Watch and media sources we are informed that the World Bank and the DAG have gone back to award Meles with budget support, as well as the provision of PBS for sometime now. Perhaps, the World Bank and DAG’s intention is to enrich the ruling ethnic families and their entourage, as well as Meles’ million cadres who are paid by donor funds to train them to vote for his Party. We understand Meles intends to increase the 5 million cadres by 25 million more (each cadre has to recruit 5 persons) for the next elections, and so the DAG will also need to increase their aid budget to pay for them as well. All such extra-curricular activities are common within the donor community, as was seen in the case of the British provision of funds for the education of Meles and TPLF officials. Special permission were granted to the Professors from the UK Open University to travel to Ethiopia to teach courses – for which apparently the Open University had to get special permission from the UK Government to travel outside Britain, since the statute of that University does not permit them to teach outside the UK. It would not be news to us if other donor countries provide similar dispensations. The name “donor darling” given to Meles by the media was not coined in vain.
What is unfathomable to us Ethiopians is that the DAG has been giving billions of dollars, pounds, euros etc. as aid to Ethiopia for several years now, but poverty is still rampant. 7.6 billion is no small amount. One wonders whether the DAG has required any accounting and/or auditing from the Ethiopian government. While visiting Ethiopia, one can see that people do not have clean drinking water in large parts of the country, however Meles’ accomplices have built a few poorly constructed high-rise buildings which proliferate the capital. Furthermore, poverty and hunger in much of the country are still to be dealt with. There are 7 million people who are still being fed by the Safety Net Program. God knows the number of those who oppose Meles and are therefore not receiving any aid. We see videos of young people, who are so poor that they are eating trash.
YET THE DAG IS VERY PROUD OF WHAT IT HAS ACCOMPLISHED – THE PROPPING UP OF A REPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT WITH FUNDS FROM THE TAX-PAYERS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE COUNTRIES.
GOD help and protect Ethiopia from these vultures!
The World Bank is used as one (extremely effective) tool of imperialism to continue running!
Hi Elias! As we know the W.B staff and Woyanne tugs are filling their belly and pocket with this 7b. USD. Our problem is not the socalled infrastructre or road building etc,but the problems are there is no constitution to serve equally,no institutins, no respect the ruleoflaw,no respection as humanbeing, one trib is better than others.no good governance. Leave us alone to work with our resources freely and we will show u better. Then we wil be able to exersise DEMOCRACY. #8 Tariku, I disagree on your points, check ur calculation,have u done Maths…..,.
#8 @Tariku….how did u come up with that calculation? My 7 year old neice Worked it out easily. This is rediculous. I sympethise with the Ethiopians who have to put up with such idiocy.
#8, Tariku
I also think you’ve got your facts wrong.
For me it is an honor to be hated by Weyane cadres. I don’t think there’s any shame in sticking to one’s principles. I don’t understand why some Ethiopians want to be liked by those who want to harm them. The list of what Weyane is doing to our country and people is too long to list here. Just to mention a few: dismember our country, sell millions of hectares of our land to foreigners, kill and jail innocent Ethiopians for speaking out, etc.? Did you also want to be liked by the Derg? One does not have the luxury when you are slapped in the face to give the other cheek where your country is concerned. Ethiopia at this moment is in grave danger. There are many who wish to see her demise and those who have been handed the power to protect her have sold her to the highest bidder.
As for the infrastructure, yes a few roads have been built. Clean drinking water is not available to many people, we hear bits of news about electricity being made available in some villages, but this could be just government propaganda. One thing is for sure – Weyane fabricates a lot of lies and propaganda and they are extremely good at cooking the books. The list you mentioned – “protection of basic services, health services, the fight against HIV/AIDS, productive safety nets, food security” – these are not Weyane accomplishments. These are the projects for which the DAG are spending 7.6 billion. The question is who is doing the accounting and auditing of the projects. You must know that it is the donors who are giving the food-for-work under the Safety Net Program to feed the 7 million Ethiopians – Weyane’s responsibility is just to do the distribution of the funds and the food. I hope you will reconsider your stand.
@Tizibt…….What a fantastic piece of factual thesis articulated in context. Information is vital and pivotal…..
Why don’t we all think about what we can do pesonally for our society? Blaming this and that for the things happening in the country is useless. The western media usually portrays Ethiopia in a negative way. Although we had bad things we can also show the good things in us to the world and work hardly to improve our negative side.
I am realy sick and tired of what this world think a society should look like. We should base our development from the inside otherwise looking how the west is doing and imitating it will continue to frustrate us because we can’t reach them anaways. We should define what we need for ourselves to be happy and successful. If we don’t discover ourseleves with in us we won’t change the way we think about this world. Just migrating to the other world doesn’t solve our problem or help escape the problems everyone of us face in our day to day activities.
May God bless Ethiopia and its people. Watch the moview sankofa to understand how it is important to discover who you are!
Slumdog Millionaire,
I chose this name because I was angered by the video and it is still possible to change our country by starting from the scrach.