Addis Ababa, Ethiopia- The list of honours Ethiopian runner Tirunesh Dibaba has earned in her short, but illustrious career already has many of her rivals running for minor positions when they line up against the double Olympic 5000m/10,000m champion: double World 5000m and 10000m champion; world indoor and outdoor 5000m record holder; and three-time World Cross Country long course champion.
The latest addition to Dibaba’s incredible CV came yesterday evening when her club, the Prisons Police, bestowed the rank of Chief Superintendent for her services to club and country.
Aged just 23, Dibaba, who will this year marry long-time fiancée and fellow club mate Sileshi Sihine, has not only amassed major titles and World records, but has also quickly risen up prisons police ranks.
She may be nicknamed the Baby Faced Destroyer, but there was nothing “baby faced” about the manner in which Dibaba received her latest honour.
Dibaba marched all the way from her seat to the podium at a ceremony held on Thursday evening saluted Maeregu Habtemariam, State Minister for Federal Affairs, who bestowed the new rank on her shoulders. She then saluted Habtemariam and marched back to her seat to the amusement of guests and the media.
She has now surpassed distance running ace Haile Gebrselassie, who is a Major with the Omedla Police club, and is equal in rank with Derartu Tulu, who is also a chief superintendent. Sihine, meanwhile, also moved up a rank going up to Major Officer. She has also achieved more in six years than both Tulu and Gebrselassie managed in careers spanning two decades.
Also included in the awards were other athletes who represented the Prisons Police club at the 29th Beijing Olympics. African 1500m champion Gelete Burka rose to Deputy Officer, African 3000m steeplechase silver medallist Mekdes Bekele and Yacob Jarso, fourth in the men’s 3000m Steeplechase final in Beijing, both move up to Warden. Their club coach Hussein Shebo, who is also the assistant coach of the national team, moved up to Superintendent.
A week earlier, Tsegaye Kebede, bronze medallist in the Olympic marathon and winner of this year’s Paris Marathon, earned the military rank Deputy Sergeant from his club, Defence forces.
In a busy week of awards and commemorations, Ethiopia’s Olympic double 5000m/10,000m champion Kenenisa Bekele had an avenue in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa named after him by the city’s administration. “The Kenenisa Avenue” will run in one of the city’s major sections and will bear his name for visitors.
On the other hand, Dibaba has a hospital on the outskirts of the city named after her. “The Tirunesh Dibaba Hospital” is currently under construction in a joint collaboration between the Ethiopian and Chinese governments and is located in the Akaki-Kaliti sub-city in the suburbs of Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia’s Beijing medallists have also been raking up cash prizes and gifts over the past week. Both Bekele and Dibaba received a Toyota Corolla 2000 (current market value USD 40,000) each from the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi two weeks ago. In addition, Bekele was awarded ETB 100,000 (USD 10,000) from his club Muger Cement for his outstanding services to the club.
The awards ceremonies are expected to continue with regions and regional administrations across the country also awarding the athletes.
HURUTA, ETHIOPIA – IT’S just not the same Ethiopia. Despite the recent predictions that famine in the south of the country will see five million people face starvation in the coming months, despite the impact of rocketing world food prices and inflation here soaring, despite the pleas on its behalf to foreign countries not to cut aid to Africa in light of the global recession, it is not the same old Ethiopia.
Slowly, but increasingly, the begging bowl is being seen as part of the problem.
Dr Awole Mela, who works for an Irish-based self-help agency in the country, says that more than 20 years after Bob Geldof brought the plight of starving Ethiopians to the world stage, it is time the handouts ended, to be replaced by hand ups.
“This country cannot survive by continually going to Europe and asking for grain,” the Africa director of Self Help Africa maintained. “That has created for us a dependency culture and it is not what is needed.
“Bringing in ‘relief food’ cannot keep you more than three or four months, but for how long are we going to continue getting it from Europe when there is a drought? In Ethiopia you have to expect drought every time and any time. The most important thing is to teach people to produce a variety of their own crops, teach them how to deal with the droughts when they come. Give them the right type of support to get started and they won’t need any support from anybody in the future.”
That may sound somewhat Utopian to an Irish audience. Whenever we think of Ethiopia, by and large, our stomachs rumble. We see little black babies with distended bellies from a lack of food and fly-covered faces from a lack of energy to swat them away. We hum the song about snow in Africa this Christmas, and our hands very probably move towards our pockets, re-tracing a journey made countless times before.
In Ethiopia itself, we imagine a scorched, dead countryside, akin to the surface of the moon, and with just as little water.
But the reality this week in the Huruta region, about 165km (100 miles) south east of Addis Ababa, could hardly provide a starker contrast.
Lush green fields, abundant with the local staple crop “teff” — as well as wheat and maize, onions, tomatoes and cabbage, banana and papaya, coffee trees and sunflowers, cattle and goats — surround the remote area for miles, despite a relatively dry rainy season, which has just ended. Self Help Africa has been running one of its nine Ethiopian programmes here for a number of years, taking in an area of 100,000 acres and about 110,000 people. To the naked eye, it is a success. More so, to the ear.
Ato Shita Woldesadik, a 55-year-old father of 10, had spent more than 20 years farming his six acres in Kakarssa village, with little success because of the notoriously erratic rainfall.
Dependent on the government for food to keep his family from starving for an average of three or four months each year, he decided to change his farming methods in 2006, despite his advancing years.
Self Help, which only employs Ethiopian natives and has been active here since 1987, provided him with the knowledge of a number of agricultural technologies — including how to build a rudimentary holding sump for water, dug into the ground, lined with cement and covered with thatch to prevent evaporation — through “contact” farmers in the locality it had already helped.
It also gave him access to, and knowledge about, seeds for various drought-resistant crops and crops that produce early. “With the surplus wheat and teff I produced, I was able to send some of my children to Arabian country to work,” Ato Shita told the Irish Independent through an interpreter. “And with the money they sent back I am able to send my seven youngest children to school.”
He calculates that he made approximately €1,750 extra last year, which is a heady sum in a country where huge numbers of casual construction workers on the sites in Addis Ababa take home less than €1 per day.
His success has been imitated by many others, with some of his neighbours telling how they can now pay up to €4,000 to build “modern” houses, with corrugated iron roofs.
In a country where up to 80pc of the people are reliant on agriculture for their livelihood, the figures are noteworthy. But they should also be noteworthy a little closer to home.
Last year, the Irish Government — through the taxpayer — gave €35m in aid to Ethiopia, with millions pumped into the country through non-government organisations like Goal and Self Help.
The notable aspect of the Self Help programme, however, is that the beneficiaries get nothing for free. The seeds for the new varieties of crops, for example, have to be paid for — 25pc up front with the remainder paid at the end of the help programme.
The farmers are given advice and encouragement to set up saving and credit cooperatives. There is an emphasis on social services and on health, especially HIV/AIDS prevention in a country where over five million are estimated to have the disease. After five years, any input from Self Help ends.
“These projects give people their dignity,” Mr Awole said. “They want to work, and they want to be a success, and they want their family and neighbours to work and be a success.”
Self Help, which, after its recent amalgamation with UK agency Harvest Help, now operates in nine countries across the continent, believes that Ethiopia can become an example to others of how it is possible to turn things around.
And Ireland may yet have more of a role in helping Ethiopia than the obvious markers of Sir Bob and donations for the starving.
“We’re unique in terms of where we are from because of our relatively recent famine and the conflict in the North,” group CEO Ray Jordan said. “We have effectively gone the full circle to end up as one of the most-developed and successful countries in the world.
“It was the Irish people themselves that turned around the country. Okay, we got assistance from the European Union, foreign direct investment and so on, but it was the people who worked their way from being incredibly poor to being well-educated and world beaters.
“It has to be exactly the same in the developing world. The local people know exactly what their daily struggles are, and who are we to come in from a top-down approach? We can support them though so that they can start taking the small steps needed for change.”
For more information, visit www.selfhelpafrica.com
Kenya will be the first destination for Tanzania’s natural gas exports. The Artumas Group Incorporation, a Mtwara-based gas exploring company, has been given the go ahead by the government to export to Kenya.
A source at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals told The EastAfrican that gas exports to Kenya will depend on whether they can satisfy local demand. The plant has a capacity for 300MW.
The company recently finalised plans to use compressed natural gas for motor vehicles and domestic purposes.
When contacted for comment by The EastAfrican, president and chief executive officer of Artumas Stephen W. Mason, said that he was not in a position to comment on the company’s gas export plans to Kenya.
The Norwegian-listed oil and gas firm discovered a gas deposit at Mnazi Bay in Mtwara Region, which has about two trillion cubic feet of proven gas deposit.
Early last year, the Tanzania government effectively licensed Artumas, which is involved in the exploration of gas to generate electricity to be supplied to Lindi and Mtwara, two of the country’s underdeveloped regions.
According to a statement from Artumas, the Tanzania government has given approval to the firm to finalise negotiations with the relevant parties for the export of compressed natural gas to off-take clients in Mombasa, Kenya.
It further said that the approval allows Artumas to move forward to conclude the relevant Project Agreements, including long term gas sales agreements with the off-take customers and transportation services agreements with the compressed natural gas shipper.
In the statement, Mr Mason said that conclusion of these commercial agreements would underpin the current planning activity in support of commencements of the drilling programme in the fourth quarter of 2008.
He said: “During the past year, Artumas has worked in close co-operation and collaboration with its working interest partner, Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation and the government of Tanzania to determine the optimal use of the large gas resource base located in the Tanzania part of the Ruvuma Basin.
The commercialisation strategy involves balancing Tanzania domestic requirements with high-value export opportunities. The approval for export of compressed natural gas reflects the vision and foresight of the government of Tanzania and is further evidence of the confidence held by the government in the abilities of Artumas to execute on its recommendations.”
The authorities have located a group of kidnappers and the 19 hostages they seized in Egypt on Friday, but no rescue attempt that could endanger the hostages is planned, a Sudanese official said Tuesday.
The official, Ali Youssef Ahmed of the Foreign Ministry, said the group was about 15 miles inside Sudanese territory, near Jebel Uweinat, a mountain near Sudan’s borders with Egypt and Libya. The hostages — five Italians, five Germans, a Romanian and eight Egyptians — were taken in a remote desert area of Egypt. The kidnappers demanded $8.8 million. Sudanese forces surrounded the area and an Egyptian team was negotiating with the kidnappers, Mr. Ahmed said, according to Sudan’s state news agency, SUNA.
————————- Conflicting statements on identities of tourists hijackers in Sudan
CAIRO (ST) – The Sudanese and Egyptian government exchanged conflicting information today on the identity of people who kidnapped 11 Europeans tourists near the borders.
New tourists arrive at a resort in Dakhla oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert, some 850 km (528 miles) southwest of Cairo, September 23, 2008 (Reuters)
Ali Youssef head of protocol division at the Sudanese Foreign ministry told Sudan official News Agency (SUNA) that “all the kidnappers are Egyptians”.
However the daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper quoting unidentified Egyptian officials said that the kidnappers consist of 3 Sudanese and a Chadian national.
The Sudanese official confirmed earlier reports that the kidnappers have been surrounded but emphasized that there is no intention of engaging with them “to preserve the lives of the hostages”.
The tourists were taken at gunpoint last Friday while they were camping near the Sudanese border, Egyptian officials said.
five Italians, five Germans, a Romanian and eight Egyptians were among those kidnapped.
The Egyptian state news agency (MENA) said that the kidnappers are demanding $15 million to release the tourists. The top tourism official in Egypt Zuhair Jarana said that the captives “are in good health”.
One of the relatives of the drivers who were with the tourists said that it is likely that they have strayed 20 kilometers inside Sudanese borders.
Another tour guide by the name of Imam Fawzi revealed that Chadian highwaymen have recently become active in the area.
“I used to hear there were Chadians moving every now & then with arms. I didn’t believe that until I witnessed hijacking of two SUV’s last year at the hands of armed Chadians” he told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) — The African Union (AU) and a Chinese firm signed a contract agreement on Wednesday for the construction of the AU Conference Center.
The signing ceremony at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa took place in the presence of some AU officials and a thirteen-man Chinese delegation, led by Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia Gu Xiaojie, who came to witness the event.
The Chinese firm, China State Construction Engineering Corporation, in July won a bid to build the Chinese government-aided AU Conference Center.
The conference center comprises a 99.9-meter-high office building and a 30-meter-high conference hall with a vault totally covering 11.3 hectares.
At a signing ceremony, Erastus Mwencha, deputy chairperson of the AU Commission, said the signing ceremony of the construction of the new AU Conference Center is an exciting moment and a time to reflect on the existing friendship between China and the AU.
“It is a significant step to realize the project,” said Mwencha, while thanking the Chinese government for their commitment to ensuring the effective implementation of the project.
He further expressed, on behalf of Chairperson of the AU Commission Jean Ping, the satisfaction and commitment of the AU to work hand in hand with the Chinese delegation in facilitating and ensuring the realization of the project within the three-year deadline.
Meanwhile, Mwencha announced that a high-level Chinese delegation will arrive at the AU headquarters on Nov. 7 for the actual groundbreaking ceremony of the construction of the conference center.
It is unusual for an insect to take hostages. Yet, this is the reality of Lango sub-region, Northern Uganda, which registers some of the highest malaria incidence rates in the world; and includes Apac district, whose residents suffer an astonishing 1,568 bites per person per year from mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite.
When a programme of household spraying using the chemical DDT [dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane] was launched to beat the scourge, gleams of hope -and suspicion- appeared. However, an injunction from the Kampala High Court halted the process after only Apac, and neighbouring Oyam, had been sprayed. It appears that DDT’s notorious public image, and evidence of its improper usage in Lango, is offering controversy, but little else, to a population paying a ransom in malarial blood.
Genesis of a controversy
“DDT is toxic to human health”, says Ellady Muyambi, General-Secretary of Uganda Network for Toxic Free Malaria Control (UNETMAC), a conglomerate of anti-DDT lobbies responsible for the court injunction. “We have scientific studies which have demonstrated toxicity of DDT in regard to human health and [know] it will affect the environment. It accumulates in the food chain and can be transported from an area where it was used, to an area where it was not. In all other African countries which have been using DDT, they have failed to eliminate malaria. Seventeen countries have tried it and have failed; now they opted to use other options. So we are saying our country should not rely on it.”
Uganda’s National Malaria Control Programme, under the Ministry of Health, actively supports the use of DDT in indoor residual spraying (IRS). Dr John Bosco Rwakimari, Director of the National Malaria Control Programme argues that “DDT is the most researched chemical on earth. More than a million research papers have come out. Of all these, none has come up with substantial scientific evidence that DDT is harmful to human beings or the environment. The only documented evidence of DDT being harmful to the environment is because it affects mosquitoes, small insects, like earthworms. As far as side effects on human beings, animals, environment in general, there isn’t any proven evidence.”
The writer and scientist Rachel Carson first drew attention to the effects of DDT in her seminal 1962 book “Silent Spring”, which sparked the US environmental movement. She argued that DDT’s presence in the food chain killed birds and fish, prompting, in her words, a “spring without voices” and hinted at the inherent dangers it posed to humans as well. Dr Rwakimari remarks “it’s been 60 years since Carson. So many studies have [since] been done.” Indeed, America successfully used DDT for malaria control and as an agricultural pesticide until banning it in the 1970s.
DDT in Uganda
The official turnaround on DDT was prompted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) approving its use for IRS in September 2006. It argues that by spraying the inside walls of houses, the chances of DDT flowing into the ground or into water sources are minimised. It was subsequently approved by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as a key weapon to fight malaria under the President’s Malaria Initiative, which has allotted US$21.8 million towards malaria control in Uganda.
Yet, DDT is one of twelve chemicals marked for elimination by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, to which Uganda became a party in May 2004. “DDT was never banned for public health, only for agricultural use,” Dr Rwakimari is quick to point out. “The Stockholm Convention left a window open for DDT use as vector [parasite carrying organism] control, for IRS. It’s unfortunate that during the ban of DDT for agricultural use. WHO also relegated IRS strategy to the bottom. It’s one of the best strategies for banning malaria; instead they pushed for nets and medicines. As far as public health is concerned, prevention is best and you target the transmitter or vector first if you want to get rid of the problem.” As part of a tripartite strategy, USAID advocates DDT as the most cost-effective solution, but also provides insecticide-treated nets and anti-malarial drugs through its Uganda programme.
“They are saying ‘DDT is cheap’, compared to other options,” Muyambi responds. “When you look at the requirements for implementing it, it’s not cheap. When we’re looking at cost effectiveness, we’re looking at the whole effect of the programme including health and environmental effects afterwards.”
Poor teamwork hurts the poor
The arguments seem rarefied in marginalised Apac, where malaria has had a damaging effect on the population’s health and economic productivity. The Hon. David Ebong MP (Independent, Maruzi) reflects the need to do something tangible about the situation when he says “I see no immediate option apart from the use of DDT. Having the highest malaria prevalence in the world, what options apart from what we have?”
At the same time leaders are worried that their constituents, many of whom are certified organic producers, will lose their markets as their products may contain traces of DDT, making these unacceptable to overseas buyers. Hon. Ebong feels the district must prepare for this by “diversifying our economic benefits by giving alternative resources” to producers. He is piloting bio-fuel production in Apac, confident that “there’s nothing related to DDT that would affect it. In fact it is surely the only way of running away from the market we’re losing from the use of DDT.”
However, the political establishment recognises that irregularities have occurred. Apac Resident District Commissioner Alex Jurua says “as a government representative, it was my duty to support the programme in the district and I’m happy with the result. [But] there were a few problems of course, relating to the involvement of different stakeholders. We had to struggle to be involved in terms of monitoring, in terms of what was happening in the field but also there was a problem of payments, sometimes, for the field staff.”
Hon. Ebong echoes the sentiments when he says, “we think we could have played a more stronger role in mobilising people to take it [the campaign] in a more positive way. That also determines the extent we were successful in running this programme. We could have done better if all the institutions and stakeholders were working together as a team; I think there was a big gap there.”
(Devapriyo Das is a Freelance Journalist and Public Affairs Consultant)
