ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA–After an incredibly uplifting morning observing a meeting of young African social entrepreneurs, I caught up with the Danish Minister for Development Ulla Tomaes who was touring a number of innovative economic development projects here. We stopped at Muya Ethiopia, a compound of four buildings that produces high-end crafts like pottery and decorative scarves.
Potters and weavers are drawn from lower castes here in Ethiopia. They barely get by, typically earning less than $6 dollars month. But Muya Ethiopia strives to be something different. For one, the products manufactured here are high quality and sold abroad. But more importantly, Muya Ethiopia takes care of its some 150 workers, paying them a decent wage, providing meals, and offering a clean, safe work environment that celebrates the culture of a socially marginalized caste. They even have a on-site volleyball court to encourage exercise during their mandatory one hour lunch break.
Muya Ethiopia does all this while turning a nice profit. They are operating at capacity and export their products all over the world. This is the epitome of doing good by doing well. Muya wants to expand, hire more craftsmen and women but needs the capital to do so. In today’s volatile market, investors could do much worse than putting their money behind projects like this.
TORONTO, CANADA – Kemer Yousef, who escaped Ethiopia on foot with nothing 24 years ago, has scored an unprecedented video hit with Nabek, a seven-track DVD showing him singing from a yacht in Toronto Harbour and dancing on the steps of Casa Loma. Clamour for his return has become so great that the central government [a political ploy by the hated dictatorial regime] is helping to arrange a six-concert homecoming tour that opens Dec. 7 at Ethiopia’s largest indoor venue – Addis Ababa’s 20,000-seat Millennium Hall.
For Kemer Yousef the tour in Ethiopia means seeing his family for the first time since he escaped across the desert to Somalia at the age of 20. His mother is in her 70s. His father is 103.
The tour also means singing to former enemies.
Kemer belongs to the Oromo ethnic majority, long oppressed by successive ruling minorities, who are now as swept up by the pop phenomenon as anybody else. [What a crock!]
VIDEO: One of Kemer Yousuf’s latest songs that have made him popular. Nice music, but poor video and terrible choreography
“Ethiopia has more than 70 ethnic groups and languages,” tour co-producer Bumiden Abdul Wahab explains by phone from the city of Adama [Nazareth]. “Normally people only listen to their own music, follow their own traditions. [Not necessarily true.]
“Kemer shook up the country,” he says. “He broke the barrier. Every time you turn on the radio – in whatever language – you hear his music.
“If you ask 10 people, at least nine have his CD.”
Kemer is a broad-shouldered man with a magnetic grin and a warm, tender way of expressing himself.
He grew up in an oral and singing culture in the village of Golu, near the town of Deder, in east-central Ethiopia. Villagers had enough to eat, he says. The famine regions lay elsewhere.
But throughout his childhood, the successive governments of Emperor HaileSelassie and Mengistu Haile Mariam relentlessly persecuted the Oromo. [The current dictator, Meles Zenawi, is the worst of all. He has turned Ethiopia a large prison camp for Oromos, according to his own former defense minister. Kemer owes his fans to point out this tragic fact.]
“You cannot even call yourself Oromo,” Kemer says of the HaileSelassie period. “If you dress as Oromo, if you write Oromo language, you will be killed.” [This is a lie. HaileSelassie was not like that.]
Of the Mengistu period, he says: “I remember one night when they came and took my uncle and for no reason they shot him in front of the door. [The Meles dictatorship is committing genocide in some parts of the country. Why do you leave that out?]
“You cannot even grieve and not even scream,” Kemer says.
“If you scream, if you cry, they will kill you. Then they ask (your family) to pay for the bullet you get killed with.”
In 1984, Golu’s elders pooled their resources to help their young people escape. Thousands of people mobilized and with dozens of classmates Kemer caught a ride east to the rallying point of Jijiga.
He joined a camel caravan of about 200 people on a three-day march to the border. Most died on the way. Snakes killed some. Bandits killed many others, stole their animals, and raped and abducted many of the women, leaving 37 survivors.
In 1987, after much suffering, Kemer made it to Toronto. He now lives in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.
“I have a song in my language,” he recalled several years ago on CBC Radio’s Global Village.
“I say, ‘Thank you, Canada, for wiping my tears, for listening to my cry, for reaching for me with a long hand, far away in Africa, and giving me this opportunity to be a human being, to be somebody, to sing again for others.'”
Throughout the hard times, music remained important to Kemer. In refugee camps, he made up songs about refugee life. At a transient center in Rome, he sang as he mopped floors.
In Toronto, after learning English and taking an electronics course, he assembled a band from musicians he met mostly in subway stations.
In 1993, he found a role model. Ali Birra, the only Ethiopian Oromo star of the 1960s and 1970s, moved to Toronto.
“Ali Birra is a reference singer for all Oromo people,” says French musicologist Francis Falceto, the brains behind Ethiopiques, a hit world-music CD series mining the best of that golden era.
“I didn’t give Kemer much help, really,” Birra says at home in Pickering, where he now lives.
“He’s a very good learner. He watches. He picks things up and improves them.”
Kemer developed a niche, playing Oromo political and social events in Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Minneapolis, Dallas and Washington, D.C. He played in Australia and travelled to Amsterdam, Oslo, Frankfurt and Rome. He married an Oromo woman he met in Munich.
He constantly innovated. Instead of standing still like most Ethiopian singers, he danced and ran. To enhance melodies, he mixed pentatonic and diatonic scales – “like Kenny G,” he says.
For the homecoming tour, he trained three Caucasian Toronto female dancers – Jennifer Dallas, Elisha MacMillan and Yaelle Wittes – to dance Oromo-style and sing backup lines.
“People are so excited,” he says. “They want to see how Canadian girls can dance Shaggoyyee, Ragada, Gattumi and Skista.”
In 1997, Kemer’s brother Redwan escaped to Kenya. Kemer got him to Canada. Within weeks Redwan landed a job in a variety store at Weston Rd. and Lawrence Ave., and on his first day at the cash register two thieves walked in and shot him in the back. He survived but remains traumatized.
“The bullet followed me from Africa,” Kemer says fatalistically.
About five years ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi opened a dialogue with expatriate Oromo communities in Europe and North America. [This is a lie. Within the past 3 weeks alone, over 94 politicians and journalists from the Oromo ethnic group were rounded up and thrown in jail by the Meles regime.]
“The system changed, the people changed, I changed,” Kemer says of his broader themes in recent years of love between men and women, love for humankind, and love for Ethiopian village life. [The system changed?]
The changes brought a new infectiousness and universality to his songs, and opened him to the new, mass audience.
John Goddard is accompanying Kemer Yousef on his homecoming tour to Ethiopia. Follow their journey in the Star’s Entertainment section.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a good propaganda piece for the Woyanne dictatorship by the Toronto Star reporter John Goddard. It is Shame on Kemer for allowing himself to play into that. He didn’t have to praise the blood thirsty Woyanne junta in order for him to go to Ethiopia and sing. The things he said about Atse HaileSelassie is far from the truth. HaileSelassie had many weaknesses, but being racist was not one of them. The fact that Kemer fails to point out any of the injustices that are being committed by the current tribal junta in Ethiopia tells a lot about him — that he has sold his soul to the Woyanne murderous thugs.
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO – Tobyn Pulice, a 9-year-old third-grader, never expected to get a visit from someone half way around the world.
But Wednesday, an Ethiopian man with a special mission made an appearance at Georgia O’Keeffe Elementary School.
Yohannes Gebregeorgis is the co-founder of Ethiopia Reads, a program that builds libraries and supplies books to the children of Ethiopia.
Gebregeorgis was named one of CNN’s top ten heroes of the year for his work, and is nominated for the network’s Hero Of The Year designation.
Pulice first learned about Gebregeorgis’ project after reading an article about it last year.
“When I read that article that they didn’t have any books and 99 percent of schools don’t have libraries, I was really touched by that and I wanted to make a difference,” Pulice said.
Pulice started rallying his classmates to raise money for the program.
Students at the Pulice’s school raised $6,000 to pay for the construction of one of the libraries in Ethiopia.
“This is an outpouring of love and care and dedication, and really, this is going to be something that will change the world,” Gebregeorgis said.
Gebregeorgis said he’s overwhelmed by what Pulice and the school have done for him and the children of Ethiopia.
He gave Pulice a photo of the finished library as a token of his appreciation.
“I didn’t even need anything for doing it,” Pulice said. “Just knowing that I did something good for the world.”
Pulice said he wants to go to Ethiopia to see the library someday.
Chief Executive Officer, Ethiopian Airlines, Mr Girma Wake, has said increase in air accidents in Africa and the dangerous situation experienced by pilots due to poor navigational facilities have made the continent the graveyard of aviation in the world, thus discouraging financiers from investing in the industry.
Wake said this yesterday at the on-going 17th Annual African Aviation Finance Conference in Addis Ababa, organised by African Aviation Services.
He said, “one of the reasons Africa is considered the graveyard of aviation is due to lack of infrastructure at the airports. The number of air misses in Africa is much. When I read the report of our pilots, I get scared. Airport and navigational infrastructure are just not there and that is the reason why banks and other financiers are reluctant to finance the industry in the continent.”The conference, which has the theme, “Air Finance in Africa,” attracted discussions from aviation professionals and financiers from all over the world, to deliberate on how to improve funding of airlines and airport infrastructure in the continent, to mark a significant change from the past.
In an earlier address. Wake said there would be no proper trade, economic growth or unity without effective aviation industry in Africa, adding, “economic unity leads to political unity and this can only be achieved through aviation development in the continent.
“Secretary-General, Africa Airlines Association (AFR-AA), Mr Christian Folly-Kossi, in a speech, expressed the fear that many African airlines may be driven out of business by mega carriers like British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France, Emirates and others, unless African governments take drastic action by adopting single airspace, which will give airlines on the continent the opportunity to fly to any African country from another, adding that the airlines should begin to have cross-border investment in the industry, to ensure their sustenance.
This, he said, will encourage mergers of small airlines from different countries on the continent to create mega airlines that will have the financial strength to compete with foreign airlines.
NIGERIA – The productive capacity of the sector is so low to the extent that about 90 per cent of textiles fabric needs of the country is being fed through importation.
As year 2005, the contribution of the industry to GDP dropped to less than one per cent. The market share of the industry equally dropped from 27 per cent in 2003 to 15 per cent in 2005.
The implication of this is that Nigeria now depends almost wholly on the outside world for her clothing needs. Studies carried out on small scale traders in Nigeria by analysts show that the country spends a minimum of about $158.4 (N19 billion) annually on importation of fabrics and textiles from Dubai alone.
This figure can be up-scaled six times if we consider imports from such countries as China , India , Turkey, Hong Kong, Malaysia and other textile producing countries, analysts say.
Perhaps we will better understand the dilemma Nigeria is in and start seeing the textile industry as a huge foreign exchange earner if we understand the fact that China’s textile industry, the largest in the world, contributed about $420 billion (N49 trillion) to the country’s GDP. Exports of China industry were valued at $178 billion (N21 trillion) in 2007. We must therefore, as a matter of urgency, wake up from our slumber.
The problem with Nigeria is lack of political will. For us, political will is zero in every facet of the economy. It is lack of political will that is keeping Power Holding Company of Nigeria crippled. It is lack of political will that has made government to turn deaf ears to calls by experts for the replacement of dilapidated oil pipelines. It is this same culture that has made Ajaokuta unrealisable.
Only last year, the Nigerian textile sector sacked 10,000 staffers. According to Oladele Hunsu, first national vice president of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUT-GTWN), some of the factories cut down their workforce from 500 to 250, and some from 800 to 400.
By 1996, the workforce (direct employment) in the industry was close to 140, 000. The figure has sharply dropped to 25,000. In all, over 500,000 allied jobs have been lost to the redundancies and plant closures in the industry within the last two decades.
Inconsistency in government policies, lack of protection of home industry due to globalisation and liberalisation policies, high interest rate, power crisis and high cost of fuel which have led to sharp rise in cost of production, are said to be responsible for the problem in the industry. The situation is such that the high cost of production in Nigeria has made the textile products less competitive.
It is the same picture across the entire manufacturing sector. For instance, Business Day investigation has revealed that some local plants engaged in the manufacture of foundry products have shut down and some are on the verge of being shut down as Chinese and Taiwanese manufactured foundry products flood Nigerian market unchecked.
The cases of Michelin and Dunlop, both tyre manufacturers are still fresh. Nigeria ’s harsh operating environment forced Michelin to close shop while it made Dunlop to scale down its operations.
The main death knell hit the manufacturing sector of which textile is a key unit during the period between 1999 and 2007 when the nation wholly diverted attention to partisan politics, oil and gas as well as bank capitalisation. The period between 2004 and 2007 witnessed the much vibrated politics of succession and bank recapitalisation. This shift negatively affected the power and manufacturing sectors.
According to Felix Adeduro, managing director/CEO of Banquaires Facilities Int’l Limited, who spoke exclusively with Business Day in Lagos , the bank recapitalisation drive had altered the consumption patterns and capacity of Nigerians. “Huge funds that ordinarily should be channelled to stimulate effective demand for manufactured products were diverted into acquisition of shares of the banks.” The manufacturing sector has therefore, by extension, been starved of funds.
Adeduro, whose company is currently on a strategic robust drive to revive Nigeria ’s ailing textile industry, said the textile industry received the worst blow within the stated period when the importation of trendy and cheap textile products and wears assumed notorious dimension.
He said the fortunes of local plants, many of whose systems, equipment, and management have lost touch with modern trend in terms of efficiency, patterns and textures nosedived.
A key element of Banquaires Facilities International Limited’s campaign is the immediate launching of textile industry Roll-back Initiative to associate with and complement government’s huge efforts to revamp the industry.
The major focus of this initiative will be to galvanise wide private sector-driven efforts to bring back the fortunes and lost glory of this vital sub-sector in line with government policy and plans. This is welcome.
There is a dear need to breathe life into our ailing textile sector. One is not oblivious of efforts that were made in the past to revive this comatose sector.
It can be recalled, for instance, that the administration of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo inaugurated a committee to source for N50 billion to disburse to textile firms as soft loans.
This amount was written off then by industry analysts as one that fell short of what the textile industry needed to get back in business. But the same analysts agreed that it was a departure from government’s traditional commitment to the Bretton Woods Institutions thinking, that is, an imposed neo-liberal dogma which thrives on the blanket disapproval of any form of government interference in business.
The Umaru Yar’Adua administration promised N70 billion bailout for the bedeviled textile industry falls into the same class. The Obasanjo government was not wholly committed to the economic reform content of the so-called Washington Consensus of the Bretton Wood Institutions, which stresses, among other recommendations, that government should get out of the way of business and allow market forces to drive the economy and promote competition and innovation.
For the consensus, the role of government should be the provision of a pro-business environment and an investment-supporting infrastructure.
Recent events have proved that bailouts are the order of the day. The United States doled out $700 billion, the UK, 37 billion pounds, the Chinese came out with a $586 billion stimulus plan, Germany $135 billion, and Norway $56 billion.
Analysts have written off Bretton Woods. One of them holds the view that a system that was designed 64 years ago has, not surprisingly, proved ill equipped to deal with the fiendishly complex practices of 21st-century banking that led to the current worldwide crisis. It is believed that neither the IMF, the World Bank nor any other institution has the power to police the global financial system in a way that might have prevented the excessive risk-taking which led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and, in turn, the credit crunch.
Another argument is that a more recent creation, the G7 Group of industrialised nations, looks hopelessly out of date without the emerging economic giants of Brazil , India and China among its ranks. And the “beggar-thy-neighbour” policies of guaranteeing savings that have sprung up in Germany, Greece and Ireland in recent days have shown that even in Europe, co-coordinated economic policy is a myth.
Gordon Brown, British prime minister, argued as long ago as January 2007 that global regulation was “urgently in need of modernisation and reform”.
Nigeria will therefore be acting right if it ignores Bretton Woods which has glaringly lost steam. The Indians and the Malaysians have scorned some of the damaging prescriptions of the Bretton Woods Institutions while implementing aspects of their reform package that are politically and economically safe, and suited to their peculiar economic challenges. Nigeria should do the same. We can do same; nothing stops us from doing so.
Let the government robustly support the textile sector. It should vigorously enforce the ban on contraband textile importation, and grant more concessions and waivers to the Nigerian textile industry. It is time to retaliate against harmful Western tariffs and subsidies by imposing tariffs against government-subsidized cheap textiles from the West and Asian countries.
Gondar or Gonder is a city in northern Ethiopia, which was once the old imperial capital and capital of the historic Begemder province. As a result, the old province of Begemder is sometimes referred to as Gondar.
Located in the Semien Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, Gondar is north of Lake Tana on the Lesser Angereb River and southwest of the Simien Mountains. The city has a latitude and longitude of 12°36′N37°28′E / 12.6, 37.467 with an elevation of 2133 meters above sea level.
Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Gondar has an estimated total population of 194,773 of whom 97,625 were males and 97,148 were females. The woreda has an estimated area of 40.27 square kilometers, which gives Gondar a density of 4,836.70 people per square kilometer.[1] The 1994 census reported this city had a total population of 112,249 of whom 51,366 were males and 60,883 were females. – Wikipedia.org
Potters and weavers are drawn from lower castes here in Ethiopia. They barely get by, typically earning less than $6 dollars month. But Muya Ethiopia strives to be something different. For one, the products manufactured here are high quality and sold abroad. But more importantly, Muya Ethiopia takes care of its some 150 workers, paying them a decent wage, providing meals, and offering a clean, safe work environment that celebrates the culture of a socially marginalized caste. They even have a on-site volleyball court to encourage exercise during their mandatory one hour lunch break.
