Woyanne junta chief Meles Zenawi told the opposition parties, if you want a change of government, do it like we did it, i.e., through armed struggle. The Ethiopian People’s Patriotic Front (EPPF) is doing just that. So why is Woyanne crying now?
By Jason McLure
ADDIS ABABA (Bloomberg) — Electricity output at Ethiopia’s largest hydropower generator, Gilgel Gibe II, has been halted after part of a tunnel that supplies water to the facility collapsed, the builder of the project said.
Production at the 420-megawatt plant may resume in two months, Salini Costruttori SpA, a Rome-based company, said in a statement on its Web site.
Gilgel Gibe II is powered by a reservoir at the Gilgel Gibe I dam in southwestern Ethiopia. Water is channeled through a 26-kilometer (16-mile) tunnel under a mountain before dropping 500 meters (1,640 feet) into the Omo River, according to a description posted on the Web site of Ethiopia’s Foreign
Ministry.
A geological event led to a “huge” rockfall involving about 15 meters of the tunnel, the company said. “Highly qualified personnel are already at work to ensure the earliest resumption of energy production.”
Ethiopia suffered frequent nationwide blackouts from January through September last year due to power shortages.
Meles Zenawi and officials from the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. inaugurated the Gilgel Gibe II plant on Jan. 13. The project, which cost more than 5.2 billion birr ($388 million), increased the utility’s generating capacity by as much as 40 percent.
Misiker Negash, a spokesman for EEPCO, declined to comment on the collapse when contacted today by Bloomberg News. Andrea Scanzani, branch manager for Salini, said he couldn’t provide further details when reached on his mobile phone in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, today.
Environmentalist Opposition
Salini is also building the $2 billion Gilgel Gibe III power plant on the Gibe River, which has been opposed by environmental groups that say the project will harm indigenous people in the region and deplete Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.
Completion of the Gilgel Gibe II project had been delayed by two years after tunnel-boring equipment became repeatedly stuck and engineers had to redesign the tunnel’s path, according to International Rivers, a U.S.-based environmental group that has opposed hydropower programs in Ethiopia.
The project was funded in part by a 220 million-euro ($302 million) loan from the Italian government and 50 million euros from the European Investment Bank.
Advocacy for Ethiopia hosts Conference on Good Governance, Peace, Security, and Sustainable Development in the Horn of Africa in Washington DC, from April 9 – 11, 2010.
Announcement and call for papers:
The Horn of Africa continues to be extremely fragile. The sub-region’s volatility has increased significantly in the post 9/11 period. The total collapse of Somalia and the irresponsible and imprudent intervention of outsiders in the affairs of Somalia have created fertile ground for the rise of radical Islam in the region. Hence, the complex ethnic, religious and inter-state tensions make the Horn of Africa one of the most volatile places in the world. The Ethio-Eritrea boundary conflict remains unresolved. The absence of democratic institutions in the Horn of Africa and the new tension in the Sudan further makes the sub-region one of the most conflict-ridden and with a potential for more explosive scenarios ahead.
The purpose of this conference is, therefore, to bring together scholars, civil society leaders, activists, diplomats, journalists of the free press and representatives of the international community to one forum to highlight potential tragic conflicts that have escaped the minds of many in the past. The focus of the discussion will be on how to democratize Ethiopia, the biggest entity, in the Horn of Africa. The democratization of Ethiopia will certainly pave the way for peace, security, democracy, good governance, and sustainable development in the region at large.
The conference is sponsored by a number of civil society networks and advocacy organizations. In many respects this conference will be a unique and historical forum. At the end of the conference, a public meeting will be held where distinguished personalities will address the participants and the community at large. The viability of bringing change through the ballot box will be examined and how to clip the wings of the dictatorship will be outlined. Participants will make commitment to a roadmap for democratizing Ethiopia. Focus will be given to the state of the free press in Ethiopia and the plight of journalists who faced extreme difficulties, persecution and exile for doing their jobs. The conference will also hold a special program to honor those who have made notable sacrifices in the struggle for freedom and democracy. Civil society leaders and academics from the US and rest of Africa will share their experiences.
The three-day long conference will be in Washington DC. It is scheduled to be held from April 9 to 11, 2010. We are expecting it to be the biggest conference that has ever been organized to exclusively focus on Ethiopia within the context of the Horn of Africa.
The State of Governance in Ethiopia:
Past and present elections, post election scenarios; the state of governance, the state of human rights, freedom of the press, ethnic relations in today’s Ethiopia; the quest for a lasting democracy and good governance, etc.;
The role of civil societies, independent judiciary, independent security, freedom of the press in democratizing Ethiopia, etc.;
The State of the Ethiopian Economy:
Poverty, dependence, debt and foreign investment; the role of the TPLF as a Business Empire and a political party; economic inequality and the lack of equitable and sustainable development ; opaque land grab deals with foreign companies and implications for food self –sufficiency , national security and the environment; etc;
Peace and Security Challenges and Prospects in the Horn Africa:
Mr. Meles Zenawi’s policies in the region, the policies of foreign powers in the Horn of Africa, border issues; Prospects and Solutions for the Future of Ethio-Eritrea relations;
The threat of terrorism in the region; absence of good governance, ethnic politics, environmental degradation, climate change, consequences of being landlocked, etc. as causes for interstate and intrastate conflicts, instability, and insecurity in the Horn of Africa sub-region; Conflict prevention and resolution.
The papers must be short and presentable in 20 minutes or less. They must also be in either Amharic or English. Other Horn of Africa indigenous languages are acceptable provided there is translation and an interpreter is available at the cost of the presenter. Tables and annexes must be kept to the minimum.
This is an independent forum that does not advocate the political view of any single party or organization. Papers should be sent to the e-mail address below by March 26, 2010. The organizing committee calls upon all concerned to support and attend this historic conference.
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
Concerns and queries could be addressed to Horn of Africa Conference Organizing Committee secretariat Telephone number @ 202-386-3037
Horn of Africa Conference Organizing Joint Committee
Advocacy for Ethiopia (AFE)
Ethiopian National Priorities Consultative Process (ENPCP)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Any investigation conducted by the regimes in Lebanon and Ethiopia cannot be taken seriously. Both of them seem to have some thing to hide. The Lebanese, in particular, are acting in a highly suspicious manner.
BEIRUT (Reuters) — Pilot error caused the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane off the coast of Lebanon last month which killed all 90 people on board, a source familiar with the investigation into the accident said on Tuesday.
“The investigation team has reached an early conclusion that it was pilot error, based on the information from the black box,” the source told Reuters.
An investigation team involving Lebanese, French and Ethiopian officials had headed to France on Monday with the flight recorders, commonly known as “black boxes”, for analysis.
The Boeing 737-800 plane crashed minutes after taking off from Beirut in stormy weather on January 25, plunging in a ball of fire into the sea.
The pilot had failed to respond to the control tower’s request to change direction even though he acknowledged their demands. The plane made a sharp turn before disappearing off the radar, the Lebanese transport minister said at the time.
The eight-year-old plane, carrying mostly Lebanese and Ethiopian passengers, last had a maintenance check on December 25 and no technical problems had been found. It was bound for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
Since retrieving the flight recorders from the Mediterranean on Sunday, Lebanese and international search teams have also located parts of the plane’s fuselage, where most of the victims’ bodies are believed trapped.
The bodies of at least 23 victims have been recovered so far.
The star of NBC TV show “Lipstick Judge,” Andrew McCarthy, had a harrowing experience while on assignment for the travel magazine AFAR recently, as he was escorted at gunpoint out of an historic underground church for intruding without documentation.
On the second day of his visit, having already witnessed an exorcism at the famed Lalibela church, McCarthy, 47, was accosted by a guard. The star of NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle” had bought a ticket to visit Lalibela, but had left it in his hotel.
ADDIS ABABA (PANA) — Lebanon will hand over the recovered Flight Data Recorder (Black Box) of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet, ET 409, to the French authorities for investigations, Ethiopian Airlines Chief Executive Girma Wake said on Sunday.
‘The flight data recorder has been recovered. The search crews are in the process of retrieving the cockpit voice recorder. Once they are retrieved, they will be sealed and taken to France for decoding,’ the Ethiopian Airlines CEO told PANA by phone.
The Ethiopian Airlines plane with 90 people on board crashed off the coast of Lebanon on 25 January, shortly after take-off. The search crews located the main parts of the aircraft’s rear wings on Sunday.
Mr Wake said the Lebanese authorities had decided the flight data recorder would be handed over to the French authorities for â~decoding.’
‘It will be read in the presence of the Ethiopian authorities, the Lebanese and the representatives of the Boeing Corporation of US,’ Mr Wake said.
The flight data recorder will tell the investigators the possible causes of the crash.
It will indicate the exact speed at which the jet went down and could also tell if any instruments malfunctioned after take-off.
The cockpit voice recorder, which has not been retrieved, will tell the investigators the exact details of the conversations between the pilot and the airport control tower.
The aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, was last checked in December, 2009 and proved to be fit to fly.
France and Canada have been best known for the decoding of flight data and cockpit data recorders. The French are known to have pioneered the introduction of the flight data recorders in air accident investigations.