By C. Bryson Hull, Reuters

NEAR ISIOLO, Kenya — After a century of broken promises, a paved road linking Kenya to Ethiopia is no longer a mirage for a desert region choked by remoteness.

Hurling up a cloud of blinding white dust, Chinese road engineers are helping to lay down the first kilometres of tarmac to replace a 530-km (330-mile) forbidding rock track that joins Kenya’s farms and port to landlocked Ethiopia.

The stretch of road from Isiolo to Moyale on the border is one of the last unpaved sections of the Great North Road, a British colonial dream to connect Cape Town to Cairo.

But where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years.

In what is a now familiar sight across Africa, China’s drive to secure minerals, oil, and a place for its workers and industries to thrive is converging with Kenyan government plans to tap the potential of undeveloped regions.

The road could turn promises of oil into reality and increase tourism and trade in a starkly beautiful land where, until now, only banditry, desolation and poverty had flourished.

“This progress is going to benefit the whole area for tourism. Once it is finished, we can already see more trade,” said Wu Yi Bao, project manager for the state-owned construction company China Wu Yi (Kenya) Co.

China Wu Yi is building the road with 4.3 billion Kenya shillings (34.1 million pounds) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Kenyan government.

According to AfDB estimates, paving the road between Isiolo, 340 km (211 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, and Moyale could boost trade between Kenya and Ethiopia along that corridor fivefold to $175 million from the present $35 million annually.

Trade between China and Kenya last year was worth $959 million, a 48 percent rise over 2006, according to the Chinese embassy in Kenya.

‘NOT PART OF KENYA’

The tarmac of the Cape-to-Cairo road goes missing at the squared-off edge of pavement at the end of Isiolo.

Here one finds all the restless bustle of a quintessential border town because residents say it’s the frontier between the “Kenya Mbili” — Swahili for the two Kenyas.

“People in the north feel like they are not part of the country,” said Hussein Sasura, assistant minister for Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands. “When someone leaves for Nairobi, people say he has gone to Kenya.”

Hopes are high that the revamped road will draw more tourists and create more revenue for the people living here.

But some people are suspicious of China’s motives, mirroring the ambivalence towards the Asian giant’s investment push felt by many Africans.

Residents of some African nations, like Zambia, complain that China is undertaking a second colonization by focusing on Africa’s resources and dumping its cheapest goods here. China denies this, and has a 50-year history of bilateral trade and cooperation with Kenya.

The Chinese have an immediate interest in rebuilding the first stretch of the Isiolo-Moyale road, so that it can move heavy equipment into Merti, roughly 80 km (50 miles) east of the end of the 136 km (84.5 miles) it has committed to build.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum AB are carrying out seismic tests for oil in Merti in preparation for drilling next year.

Residents in Isiolo have been suspicious of oil exploration since a 1980s venture yielded nothing amid murky circumstances.

There are other signs of simmering resentment.

One Chinese engineer was shot and killed near the Merille River by shiftas — or bandits — on April 21. Tribal elders say he was targeted because of a feeling that not enough men from the area had been employed by the Chinese.

Wu said at least 150 of the nearly 200 people on the project were Kenyans and all the day labourers were locals.

After the shooting, the Kenyan government sent its elite paramilitary General Service Unit to the Merille River area to disarm youths and provide a security presence.

HIDDEN GEMS

There is little doubt the road will offer a lifeline to northern Kenya and could signal an end to years of neglect.

Under colonial rule, Isiolo was an outpost at the edge of the closed Northern Frontier District, which spanned the top half of Kenya from Uganda and Sudan in the west, across Ethiopia to Somalia in the east.

“In those days, Europeans were not allowed to stay there because it was too dangerous and the climate was too harsh. You had to have a permit,” said George Cardovillis, a Kenyan descended from Greek traders who wanted to set up shop at the Ethiopia-Kenya border in 1914.

The government ordered them to keep going more than 600 km (373 miles) south to Maralal.

North of Isiolo to Ethiopia, not much has changed across desolate stretches of black volcanic stones and reddish sands since Cardovillis’ forebears trekked south in a donkey train.

The sun still blasts shimmering heat waves down from an enveloping sky. Mountains loom in a gunmetal haze across the plains. Water is scarce. Electricity, telephone lines and most other services barely exist.

Amid this desolate beauty are some of Kenya’s most unspoiled national parks, rarely visited because of their remoteness.

Barely 50 km (31 miles) past Isiolo lie three game reserves that rival the famed Maasai Mara for the volume and variety of animals. This is where “Born Free” author and naturalist Joy Adamson settled to raise leopards until her murder.

“We think our occupancies will double when the road is finished,” said Jayne Nguatah, manager of the Sarova Shaba lodge in Shaba park. “It will be a Christmas gift to us.”

The Sarova Shaba is built on the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro river, where crocodiles feed and Samburu and Borana herdsmen water their animals. Baboons and monkeys roam the main lodge, which is built like a treehouse and straddles a natural spring.

But infrastructure is not the only problem for those seeking to build a viable tourism industry in northern Kenya.

Banditry and tribal clashes are common here, thanks to weapons flowing in from past and present conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. And security forces are spread thin.

Nomadic herders roam for pasture and water for their sheep, cows, goats and camels, as they have for centuries. But today, some carry AK-47 assault rifles, while others brandish Sterling-Enfield rifles from colonial times.

And despite the Chinese engineers’ industry near Isiolo, far to the north in Moyale, some people doubt the road will ever reach them. Plans to extend the tarmac beyond the stretch being reworked by the Chinese are still on the drawing board.

“For 45 years they have been promising us that road,” trader Gumucha Gisiko said, waving his hand dismissively as a frown rose above his red henna beard.

“Seeing is believing.”

(Additional reporting by Patrick Muiruri)

Olympic return
Sileshi Sihine of Ethiopia will make his second career Olympic appearance in Beijing this summer, where he figures to contend for gold medals in both distance races. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Sihine won a silver medal in the men’s 10,000m.

Building toward Beijing
Sihine had a strong showing during 2007 and appears primed for the Olympic year. He won two of his three starts at 5,000m, taking gold at the Rome Grand Prix and the Brussels Grand Prix, where he ran a season-best 12 minutes, 50.16 seconds, the second-fastest time in the world. At the World Championships in Osaka, Japan, Sihine took silver in the 10,000m behind fellow Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele. Bekele won in 27:05.90 and Sihine ran 27:09.03.

Athens ascent
The strength of the Ethiopian distance squad was on full display at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, with Kenenisa Bekele winning gold in the 10,000m in an Olympic-record 27:05.10 and Sihine taking silver in 27:09.39. It marked the first time that runners from the same country finished 1-2 in the event since the Berlin Games in 1936, when Ilmari Salminen, Aryo Askola and Volmari Iso Hollo of Finland swept the medals.

Clean sweep
Sihine burst onto the international track scene at the 2003 World Championships in Paris. There, he earned the 10,000m bronze medal, completing an Ethiopian sweep along with gold-medalist Bekele and silver-medalist Haile Gebrselassie. It was the first sweep of the event by one country at an international competition since the trio of Finns did it at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Breakthrough year
In 2003, Sihine won national titles in the 5,000m and 10,000m, setting championship records in both events. In his 5,000m victory, he defeated Bekele, the current world-record holder in the event. In the 10,000m, Sihine finished behind Bekele and Gebrselassie. He was then named to the world championship team, setting the stage for the historic sweep at the 2003 Worlds.

No shame in second
Sileshi’s talent is unquestioned, but he has earned the moniker “Mr. Silver” because he has run in the shadow of countryman Bekele, perhaps the greatest distance runner of all-time, throughout his career. With some of the fastest times in history and a stockpile of international medals — most of them silver — it could be argued that Sileshi’s legacy might be that of the most underrated runner in history.

Early inspiration
Gebrselassie inspired Sihine to start running seriously. “Whenever I saw Haile win races, I would feel like standing up and running,” Sihine said. Sihine enjoyed significant success as a junior. At the 2002 World Junior Championships, he took silver in the 10,000m behind teammate Gebre-egziabher Gebremariam, and finished sixth at the 2002 World Cross-Country championships.

Source: NBC Olympics

By Jason McLure, Bloomberg

Titan Resources Corp., owned by U.S. billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, won agreements to explore two areas in Ethiopia for oil and gas, the Mines Ministry said.

The Dallas, Texas-based company will invest as much as $60 million to explore tracts of Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden basin and the northern Blue Nile basin, Abiy Hunegnaw, director of petroleum operations at the Addis Ababa-based ministry, said in a telephone interview yesterday. The two blocks combined cover an area larger than 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles), Hunegnaw said. Titan and Ethiopia agreed to a 25-year production-sharing agreement.

“We are very lucky to have them,” Hunegnaw said.

Exploration in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region was suspended in April 2007 after separatist rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front attacked an exploration team for China’s Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, killing 74 people. ZPEB was working under contract for Petronas Bhd, Malaysia’s state-owned oil company, which controls three exploration zones in the Ogaden.

Hunegnaw said he was confident exploration will resume in the region in the near future.

“Hopefully in one to two months operations will restart,” he said. “We are doing our best to find some contractors.”

Ethnic Somali rebels from the ONLF are seeking independence for the arid region of eastern Ethiopia, and have warned foreign oil firms not to explore in the area. The April attack triggered an Ethiopian counteroffensive that has left much of the region under martial law and spurred reports of human rights violations by the Ethiopian army. Aid workers and journalists have been barred from the region.

Other companies with exploration licenses in the Ogaden include Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum AB, Netherlands-based Pexco Exploration, and South West Energy, an Ethiopian-owned company registered in Hong Kong.

In the most famous attempt to corner the silver market in late 1970s, Hunt and his brother William hoarded the metal and forced the price to jump from to $50 an ounce to $6 in 1980. Eight years later, they were convicted of trying to manipulate the market.

By Barney Jopson, Financial Times

Ethiopia Woyanne has expressed frustration with “internal squabbles” within the Somali government, as Addis Ababa hosted talks between the country’s president and prime minister in an attempt to heal the rift between them.

Thousands of Ethiopian Woyanne troops helped reinstall an interim government headed by president Abdullahi Yusuf, but it retains a tenuous grip on power and its time in office has been marked by growing insurgency, clan warfare, and a humanitarian crisis that is verging on catastrophe.

Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopian Woyanne foreign minister, told the Financial Times that the rift between the president and prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein, appointed eight months ago after his predecessor fell out with Mr Yusuf, was the biggest obstacle to peace.

Ethiopia’s Woyanne own security and credibility are at stake in Somalia, which it invaded at the end of 2006 to oust a coalition of Islamist groups that had taken control. Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers and troops from the transitional federal government remain the target of almost daily attacks by Islamist insurgents and clan gunmen opposed to Mr Yusuf’s regime.

“The main challenge now is not what they call the enemy. It’s an intra-government crisis that is preventing them from focusing on the tasks they need to get done,” said Mr Mesfin. “There has been a lack of vigour and, if I may say so, a lack of commitment.”

Since the beginning of last year more than 8,000 Somalis have been killed and 1m forced from their homes by fighting, which has centred on the capital Mogadishu. Humanitarian relief efforts have been undermined by the assassination of aid workers and the United Nations says that, due also to the additional impact of a drought, up to 3.5m Somalis – or nearly half the population – could need food aid later this year.

But Mr Seyoum gave a less bleak account of the security situation today than many independent observers, saying the country was experiencing less daily violence than Iraq and Afghanistan. To create a durable peace, he said the president and the prime minster needed to implement plans to create regional administrations that would give people a greater stake in government and, potentially, help to reconcile Somalia’s warring clans and sub-clans.

The rift between the leaders overshadowed the signing of a peace agreement in Djibouti on Monday between the interim government and one of two factions of the Somali political opposition. The agreement was welcomed on Thursday by the African Union, but it did little to lighten a mood of gloom among western diplomats who follow Somalia, because it had already been rejected by the other faction as well as by the al-Shabaab Islamist extremists leading the insurgency.

Mr Seyoum said that al-Shabaab, which the US says is linked to al-Qaeda, had been critically weakened: “They cannot sustain their own activities, let alone disband the government.” But other analysts say their strength and boldness appears to be increasing.

By Getachew Teklemariam Alemu, PM Forum

ADDIS ABABA — The biggest solar power project in East Africa, which is being implemented by a German Solar Energy Foundation, is achieving its milestones by installing 2,000 solar systems in/around Rema village in Ethiopia. The project has realized a supply of power to 5,500 residents in the country. Harald Schutziechel, founder and former head of Freiburg, is leading the charity work, with significant support from Good Energies Foundation; an affiliate of New York based renewable energy investor Good Energies.

According to schutziechel, head of the charity work, the interest of the project is not just to install solar systems but rather to train the villagers in installing and maintaining the systems, thereby ensuring the sustainability of the project.

He has also indicated that with a growth in the solar system market in Ethiopia, a partnership with two interested companies is on way to produce the materials in country, and replace the imports, which are being purchased from china.

In addition, the foundation is looking forward to opening 50 solar training centers across the country, comprising classrooms, workshops, and student dormitories. For more on the activities of Good Energies look at www.goodenergies.com

Nokia is customising a range of handsets, including some 3G models for the Ethiopian market by adding Ethiopic text capabilities to their phones. BravoCom, the local distributor for Nokia has ordered the handsets following a surge in sales of PrePay SIMS by the monopoly phone operator, Ethiopia Telecommunication Corporation (ETC).

There has also been a sudden surge in demand which has caught the handset distributors off-guard and lead to handset price rises in the retail outlets due to the shortage of phone stocks.

Levi Girma Wake, General Manager and majority share holder of BravoCom told the Capital Ethiopia that the company took advantage of a duty-free zone in neighbouring Djibouti to ship handsets for sale throughout the Horn of Africa countries. “What we have done is to hold the products primarily in Djibouti. And as demand comes from Ethiopia, we ship to Ethiopia or supplement any other country,” Levi explained.

Levi used to be Nokia’s East Africa Account Manager.

Ethiopian Semitic (also known as Ethiopian, Ethiosemitic, Ethiopic) is a language group which together with Old South Arabian forms the Western branch of the South Semitic languages. Today, the name Ethiopian Semitic languages can be considered a misnomer as the North languages are also found in Eritrea with two of them being exclusively used there; however, the term came into use before Eritrea had separated from Ethiopia.

ZTE recently added 1.2 million GSM lines to the network capacity to cope with demand and also a surge in usage which occurred during the recent celebration of the Ethiopian millennium. A WCDMA overlay is also planed for some parts of the network. There were several serious network failures during the upgrade work, with the mobile operator blaming ZTE for not refarming radio spectrum correctly during the commission of new base stations.

The state owned monopoly ended Q1 ’08 with an estimated 1.6 million subscribers, which according to figures from the Mobile World equates to a population penetration level of just 2%.

Source: Capital Ethiopia