By Messay Kebede

We know that the genesis of ethnic conflicts and mobilization in Ethiopia sprung from HaileSelassie’s policy of nation-building. Not only did the policy mean centralization and authoritarianism, but also the integration of different ethnic groups through the imposition of the dominant Amhara culture. However, the lack of necessary reforms, notably, the maintenance of a system of land ownership reducing the southern peoples of Ethiopia to tenants, and the failure of the private sector, together with the proliferation of obstacles to economic progress, mostly due to corruption and nepotism, created an acute scarcity of resources. Access to these scarce resources depended on the control of state power, which was then used to include some groups and exclude others. The outcome was that the Amhara elite group, especially of Showan origin, by far benefited from the protection of the imperial state.

Though the sense of exclusion increasingly invited elites of excluded ethnic groups to mobilize around ethnic criteria, the prevailing tendency became the search for a solution through the revolutionary ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Leaders of the Ethiopian student movement and intellectuals felt that enough revolutionary force could be gathered through the mobilization of class solidarity rather than through ethnic alignment. The establishment of socialism would consequently lead to the dissolution of ethnic dominance and to the equal treatment of all ethnic groups. Because the struggle opposed an alliance of various classes to the imperial state and the nobility, the Ethiopian Revolution became a multiethnic uprising expressing class interest rather than ethnicity.
The intrusion of the Derg with its dictatorial and violent methods of ruling alienated many revolutionaries. Above all, far from decentralizing power, the Derg significantly increased the power of the center to the detriment of regional entities, thereby failing to bring down the dominance of Amhara elite and culture. What is more, the Derg’s socialist policy brought all resources, including land, under state ownership and control, while further intensifying scarcity by the application of a flawed economic policy. The result was enhanced ethnic mobilizations by all those who felt excluded or marginalized.

By stirring up dormant or suppressed identities involving ascriptive criteria, such as common ancestry and language, the ethnicization of politics mobilized the powerful sentiment of solidarity, thereby becoming an effective tool of political mobilization for all those who longed for access to state power as the only means of controlling the distribution of scarce resources. That was indeed one advantageously mobilizing force to fight against the Derg, given the fact that the Derg had appropriated the language of class struggle and had effectively leveled class disparity through a generalization of poverty.

Ethnic mobilization proved efficient by granting victory to the TPLF and EPLF over the Derg. It brought about the secession of Eritrea and the establishment of ethnic federalism under the control of the TPLF. The irony, however, is that this very victory of ethnic politics calls for multiethnic mobilization because of the inherent drawbacks of ethnicization flowing from its gregarious nature. This is what opposition parties and their leaders understood when they speak of the imperative need of unity.

The ethnic paradigm gave birth to ethnic parties that do not allow any competition. It created a situation of dependent parties controlling the various regions under the close supervision and assistance of the central state dominated by the TPLF. The defeat of the TPLF means the demise of these dependent parties and their regional control. A struggle confined to the regional political scene is thus unable to counter the alliance between the central state and the dependent parties: the struggle must go national.
Moreover, political mobilization over ethnic issues has come to an end with the acquired rights, such as the rights to use and develop local languages, to be administered by one’s kin, even to secede. Whether we like it or not, just as class struggle had ceased to be rallying under the Derg, so too ethnicity has lost much of its mobilizing power in Ethiopia, with the exception, of course, of those parties still targeting secession. This is so true that the only ideological defense of the EPRDF is to say that its removal would entail the cancelation of the acquired ethnic rights, and hence the danger of extended ethnic confrontations.

The crucial issue that remains, however, is the huge task of democratizing the ethnic state, as shown by the dictatorial outcome of the Eritrean secession and the hegemonic practice of the TPLF. To move toward democratization means to raise issues of individual freedom and liberty, of economic development and its equitable distribution; it also means the promotion of national sovereignty and unity on which depend the prosperity and safety of all ethnic groups. All these themes are associated with individual freedom, and so are essentially cross-ethnic. For instance, the right of individuals to elect representatives of their choice is not concerned with the fact of being Amhara, Tigrean, Oromo, Gurage, Christian or Muslim: any multiparty competition within the ethnic regions requires the liberation of freedom as an individual characteristic.

Such was the profound meaning of the rise of Kinijit: it was the return of individual freedom back to prominence, the resurgence of individual rights after the primacy given to group rights or solidarity. It springs to mind that the struggle for individual rights can intensify and unit opposition forces only if the acquired ethnic rights are not questioned. Any attempt to return to unitary state––as opposed to federal structure––will only bring back mobilizations around group rights.

(The writer, Prof. Messay Kebede, can be reached at [email protected])

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a must read article to understand how aid by Western countries to dictatorial regime’s is devastating Ethiopia and the whole of Africa.

By DAMBISA MOYO

A month ago I visited Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. This suburb of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is home to more than one million people, who eke out a living in an area of about one square mile — roughly 75% the size of New York’s Central Park. It is a sea of aluminum and cardboard shacks that forgotten families call home. The idea of a slum conjures up an image of children playing amidst piles of garbage, with no running water and the rank, rife stench of sewage. Kibera does not disappoint.

What is incredibly disappointing is the fact that just a few yards from Kibera stands the headquarters of the United Nations’ agency for human settlements which, with an annual budget of millions of dollars, is mandated to “promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.” Kibera festers in Kenya, a country that has one of the highest ratios of development workers per capita. This is also the country where in 2004, British envoy Sir Edward Clay apologized for underestimating the scale of government corruption and failing to speak out earlier.

Giving alms to Africa remains one of the biggest ideas of our time — millions march for it, governments are judged by it, celebrities proselytize the need for it. Calls for more aid to Africa are growing louder, with advocates pushing for doubling the roughly $50 billion of international assistance that already goes to Africa each year.

Yet evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. It’s increased the risk of civil conflict and unrest (the fact that over 60% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under the age of 24 with few economic prospects is a cause for worry). Aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.

Few will deny that there is a clear moral imperative for humanitarian and charity-based aid to step in when necessary, such as during the 2004 tsunami in Asia. Nevertheless, it’s worth reminding ourselves what emergency and charity-based aid can and cannot do. Aid-supported scholarships have certainly helped send African girls to school (never mind that they won’t be able to find a job in their own countries once they have graduated). This kind of aid can provide band-aid solutions to alleviate immediate suffering, but by its very nature cannot be the platform for long-term sustainable growth.

Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, such charity-based aid is relatively small beer when compared to the sea of money that floods Africa each year in government-to-government aid or aid from large development institutions such as the World Bank.

Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population — over 350 million people — live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

Even after the very aggressive debt-relief campaigns in the 1990s, African countries still pay close to $20 billion in debt repayments per annum, a stark reminder that aid is not free. In order to keep the system going, debt is repaid at the expense of African education and health care. Well-meaning calls to cancel debt mean little when the cancellation is met with the fresh infusion of aid, and the vicious cycle starts up once again.

In 2005, just weeks ahead of a G8 conference that had Africa at the top of its agenda, the International Monetary Fund published a report entitled “Aid Will Not Lift Growth in Africa.” The report cautioned that governments, donors and campaigners should be more modest in their claims that increased aid will solve Africa’s problems. Despite such comments, no serious efforts have been made to wean Africa off this debilitating drug.

The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations. In a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in May 2004, Jeffrey Winters, a professor at Northwestern University, argued that the World Bank had participated in the corruption of roughly $100 billion of its loan funds intended for development.

As recently as 2002, the African Union, an organization of African nations, estimated that corruption was costing the continent $150 billion a year, as international donors were apparently turning a blind eye to the simple fact that aid money was inadvertently fueling graft. With few or no strings attached, it has been all too easy for the funds to be used for anything, save the developmental purpose for which they were intended.

In Zaire — known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo — Irwin Blumenthal (whom the IMF had appointed to a post in the country’s central bank) warned in 1978 that the system was so corrupt that there was “no (repeat, no) prospect for Zaire’s creditors to get their money back.” Still, the IMF soon gave the country the largest loan it had ever given an African nation. According to corruption watchdog agency Transparency International, Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire’s president from 1965 to 1997, is reputed to have stolen at least $5 billion from the country.

It’s scarcely better today. A month ago, Malawi’s former President Bakili Muluzi was charged with embezzling aid money worth $12 million. Zambia’s former President Frederick Chiluba (a development darling during his 1991 to 2001 tenure) remains embroiled in a court case that has revealed millions of dollars frittered away from health, education and infrastructure toward his personal cash dispenser. Yet the aid keeps on coming.

A nascent economy needs a transparent and accountable government and an efficient civil service to help meet social needs. Its people need jobs and a belief in their country’s future. A surfeit of aid has been shown to be unable to help achieve these goals.

A constant stream of “free” money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do — it doesn’t need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn’t have to take account of its disgruntled citizens. No matter that its citizens are disenfranchised (as with no taxation there can be no representation). All the government really needs to do is to court and cater to its foreign donors to stay in power.

Stuck in an aid world of no incentives, there is no reason for governments to seek other, better, more transparent ways of raising development finance (such as accessing the bond market, despite how hard that might be). The aid system encourages poor-country governments to pick up the phone and ask the donor agencies for next capital infusion. It is no wonder that across Africa, over 70% of the public purse comes from foreign aid.

In Ethiopia, where aid constitutes more than 90% of the government budget, a mere 2% of the country’s population has access to mobile phones. (The African country average is around 30%.) Might it not be preferable for the government to earn money by selling its mobile phone license, thereby generating much-needed development income and also providing its citizens with telephone service that could, in turn, spur economic activity?

Look what has happened in Ghana, a country where after decades of military rule brought about by a coup, a pro-market government has yielded encouraging developments. Farmers and fishermen now use mobile phones to communicate with their agents and customers across the country to find out where prices are most competitive. This translates into numerous opportunities for self-sustainability and income generation — which, with encouragement, could be easily replicated across the continent.

To advance a country’s economic prospects, governments need efficient civil service. But civil service is naturally prone to bureaucracy, and there is always the incipient danger of self-serving cronyism and the desire to bind citizens in endless, time-consuming red tape. What aid does is to make that danger a grim reality. This helps to explain why doing business across much of Africa is a nightmare. In Cameroon, it takes a potential investor around 426 days to perform 15 procedures to gain a business license. What entrepreneur wants to spend 119 days filling out forms to start a business in Angola? He’s much more likely to consider the U.S. (40 days and 19 procedures) or South Korea (17 days and 10 procedures).

Even what may appear as a benign intervention on the surface can have damning consequences. Say there is a mosquito-net maker in small-town Africa. Say he employs 10 people who together manufacture 500 nets a week. Typically, these 10 employees support upward of 15 relatives each. A Western government-inspired program generously supplies the affected region with 100,000 free mosquito nets. This promptly puts the mosquito net manufacturer out of business, and now his 10 employees can no longer support their 150 dependents. In a couple of years, most of the donated nets will be torn and useless, but now there is no mosquito net maker to go to. They’ll have to get more aid. And African governments once again get to abdicate their responsibilities.

In a similar vein has been the approach to food aid, which historically has done little to support African farmers. Under the auspices of the U.S. Food for Peace program, each year millions of dollars are used to buy American-grown food that has to then be shipped across oceans. One wonders how a system of flooding foreign markets with American food, which puts local farmers out of business, actually helps better Africa. A better strategy would be to use aid money to buy food from farmers within the country, and then distribute that food to the local citizens in need.

Then there is the issue of “Dutch disease,” a term that describes how large inflows of money can kill off a country’s export sector, by driving up home prices and thus making their goods too expensive for export. Aid has the same effect. Large dollar-denominated aid windfalls that envelop fragile developing economies cause the domestic currency to strengthen against foreign currencies. This is catastrophic for jobs in the poor country where people’s livelihoods depend on being relatively competitive in the global market.

To fight aid-induced inflation, countries have to issue bonds to soak up the subsequent glut of money swamping the economy. In 2005, for example, Uganda was forced to issue such bonds to mop up excess liquidity to the tune of $700 million. The interest payments alone on this were a staggering $110 million, to be paid annually.

The stigma associated with countries relying on aid should also not be underestimated or ignored. It is the rare investor that wants to risk money in a country that is unable to stand on its own feet and manage its own affairs in a sustainable way.

Africa remains the most unstable continent in the world, beset by civil strife and war. Since 1996, 11 countries have been embroiled in civil wars. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the 1990s, Africa had more wars than the rest of the world combined. Although my country, Zambia, has not had the unfortunate experience of an outright civil war, growing up I experienced first-hand the discomfort of living under curfew (where everyone had to be in their homes between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., which meant racing from work and school) and faced the fear of the uncertain outcomes of an attempted coup in 1991 — sadly, experiences not uncommon to many Africans.

Civil clashes are often motivated by the knowledge that by seizing the seat of power, the victor gains virtually unfettered access to the package of aid that comes with it. In the last few months alone, there have been at least three political upheavals across the continent, in Mauritania, Guinea and Guinea Bissau (each of which remains reliant on foreign aid). Madagascar’s government was just overthrown in a coup this past week. The ongoing political volatility across the continent serves as a reminder that aid-financed efforts to force-feed democracy to economies facing ever-growing poverty and difficult economic prospects remain, at best, precariously vulnerable. Long-term political success can only be achieved once a solid economic trajectory has been established.

Proponents of aid are quick to argue that the $13 billion ($100 billion in today’s terms) aid of the post-World War II Marshall Plan helped pull back a broken Europe from the brink of an economic abyss, and that aid could work, and would work, if Africa had a good policy environment.

The aid advocates skirt over the point that the Marshall Plan interventions were short, sharp and finite, unlike the open-ended commitments which imbue governments with a sense of entitlement rather than encouraging innovation. And aid supporters spend little time addressing the mystery of why a country in good working order would seek aid rather than other, better forms of financing. No country has ever achieved economic success by depending on aid to the degree that many African countries do.

The good news is we know what works; what delivers growth and reduces poverty. We know that economies that rely on open-ended commitments of aid almost universally fail, and those that do not depend on aid succeed. The latter is true for economically successful countries such as China and India, and even closer to home, in South Africa and Botswana. Their strategy of development finance emphasizes the important role of entrepreneurship and markets over a staid aid-system of development that preaches hand-outs.

African countries could start by issuing bonds to raise cash. To be sure, the traditional capital markets of the U.S. and Europe remain challenging. However, African countries could explore opportunities to raise capital in more non-traditional markets such as the Middle East and China (whose foreign exchange reserves are more than $4 trillion). Moreover, the current market malaise provides an opening for African countries to focus on acquiring credit ratings (a prerequisite to accessing the bond markets), and preparing themselves for the time when the capital markets return to some semblance of normalcy.

Governments need to attract more foreign direct investment by creating attractive tax structures and reducing the red tape and complex regulations for businesses. African nations should also focus on increasing trade; China is one promising partner. And Western countries can help by cutting off the cycle of giving something for nothing. It’s time for a change.

(Dambisa Moyo, a former economist at Goldman Sachs, is the author of “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.”)

UPDATE:

Houston judge dismisses charge against singer Wayna

(Houston Chronicle) — A judge this morning dismissed the charge against rhythm-and-blues singer Wayna, who was arrested Wednesday at a Houston airport for carrying a collapsible police baton.

Prosecutors asked state District Judge Jeannine Barr to dismiss the third-degree felony during a brief hearing at the downtown Harris County Criminal Justice Center.

No details were available on why the dismissal was requested and at which airport the arrest took place.

The Grammy-nominated singer, whose legal name is Wayna Wondwossen, was charged with carrying a weapon in an airport after she tried to board a plane while carrying the baton, authorities said.

She uses the baton as a prop while singing Billie Club, a song about police brutality.

She did not attend this morning’s hearing.

Wayna Wondwossen arrested in Houston Airport

HOUSTON (AP) – Ethiopian-born Grammy-nominated singer {www:Wayna Wondwossen} has been arrested at a Houston airport after trying to get on a plane with a collapsible police baton that she uses while performing.

Wayna, whose full name is Woyneab Miraf Wondwossen, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon Wednesday.

Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said Thursday that security guards at the checkpoint at Bush International Airport discovered the 24-inch baton in her carry-on bag.

Wondwossen, 35, was transported to the Houston jail and posted $5,000 bond.

Wayna released her second album, “Higher Ground,” in 2008. One of the songs on the album is “Billy Club,” a ballad about police abuse, and Wondwossen twirls and points the baton when she performs the song live.

[More from dcist.com]- According to a statement released by her management team, Wayna was attempting to go through security when she was questioned about a stage prop found in her carry-on bag. The item, which is being described as a 24-inch baton, is used during the performance of her song, “Billy Club,” off of her album, Higher Ground. The song, which also features Three Stars artist Muhsinah, is an eerie ballad that protests police brutality. She explained that she was a performer and had inadvertently packed the item in her carry-on as opposed to checked luggage. Even though she insisted that she had no intent to use the prop as a weapon, Wayna was arrested and charged. Early this morning, she was released from jail on $5,000 bail, according to the statement.

“She’s very shook up but she’s had encouragement and love from family and friends around the world,” said Fiona Bloom, Wayna’s publicist.

Just last month, Wayna was up for a Grammy award in the “Best Urban/Alternative Performance” category for her song, “Loving You (Music).”

An arraignment hearing is set for Friday in Houston.

By Seifu Tsegaye Demmissie

The participation of Ethiopia’s dictator {www:Meles Zenawi} in the summit of the group of 20 or G-20 does not have any significance other than validating his status as an accredited International beggar. Zenawi is the name most familiar in the door steps and corridors of western donors and their financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Hence, the designation International beggar is quite befitting to describe his role in his warm relationship with the west.

European leaders and their favorite beggar Meles Zenawi at the EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon

Various sources indicate that the west have spent between 36 and 40 billion dollars on the regime of Meles Zenawi via budget and other support mechanisms. This is a big sum which could have had a significant positive impact on the country if a legal Ethiopian government had been in place to use it. In fact, he does not deserve any kind of western assistance given his dismal human rights records. Commandeering a bloated, expensive but an inefficient bureaucracy whose primary function is to serve as a pillar of his reign of repression and terror, Meles Zenawi is in constant need of foreign aid and financing. Besides, he owns and operates an extensive and permeating network of a repressive security apparatus which requires a substantial amount of resources. Thus, it is not difficult to see where the lion`s share of the budget support he receives from the west ends up. He has to constantly refine and sharpen his begging skills and tools.

The group of 20 or G-20 includes the so called industrial democracies and emerging new economies and was formed after the financial crises of the 90`s. The crisis had mainly hit the emerging Asian and Latin American economies which applied the economic prescriptions of the western financial institutions like the World Bank. However, the current crisis is global in nature and is not restricted to certain geographic areas of the world. Foreign aid dependent regimes can not be immune to the crisis.

The invitation of Meles Zenawi to the summit of the so called group of 20 or G-20 demonstrates his increasing reliance on foreign aid and vanguard role as an International beggar. Thus, the participation of Meles Zenawi in the preliminary and the annual summit of the group of 20 does not raise his status as a statesman as his cadres and beneficiaries would like us to believe. This is not something to brag about but Meles Zenawi and his zombies are devoid of any feeling of qualm and shame and count it as one of their greatest achievements. Rejected by the vast majority of Ethiopians but loved by the west, Meles Zenawi has no legal or moral ground to represent Ethiopia neither at national nor International level.

Considering the criteria for eligibility for western aid, development aid can best be described as a political partnership between western politicians and their client dictators or lackeys in the so called third world. It is well known that developing countries which would like to take their destinies into their own hands and exercise their universally accepted rights of independence and sovereignty, do not qualify for western aid and favours. In general, it is through this partnership (development aid) that the western powers get clout and trample upon the recipient countries. Thus one can not fail to grasp the big influence donors have on the decision making in the recipient countries. The other characteristic feature of this unholy partnership is that it is riddled with corruption and graft which account for the siphoning off and wastage of considerable resources. Though claiming to combat poverty, the partnership is perpetuating dictatorship and preventing the population from taking part in the vital decision making organs and processes. A conducive system built on a broad and free public participation ensuring accountability and transparency, is the prerequisite for combating poverty and attaining economic growth.

The enduring damage this partnership is inflicting on the causes and forces of democracy, freedom and social justice, is visible in Ethiopian at the moment. The regime is escalating its widespread human rights violations and economic deprivations. We have a living memory of the scandalous role of some western diplomats or envoys in bailing out the brutal regime of Meles Zenawi from the strong storm caused by his rigging and daylight robbery of public votes in the aftermath of the May 2005 elections. It is also regrettable to witness that the storm lost its sweeping force in part due to the indecisive and vacillating opposition who failed to seize the moment and go ahead. The cost of removing Meles Zenawi from power is much lower than letting him to stay in power even for few months. After having survived the potentially destructive storm, Meles Zenawi has simply accelerated his paces of killings, imprisonments and secret dealings to give away our legal land to neighbours. Despite the survival of the regime of Meles Zenawi, an increasing number of Ethiopians are convinced of the fact that the era of ballots is over. Emboldened by the unconditional support he gets from the west and lack of domestic resistance, he is determined more than ever before to consolidate and perpetuate his dictatorial rule in the country.

Despite the repeated denials and dismissals, the regime of Meles Zenawi is encountering a chronic shortage of hard currency which is forcing the few foreign material dependent domestic manufacturing factories to halt production. The reality on the ground in Ethiopia shows that the acclaimed economic boom of Zenawi is actually a simple flattery of his cadres and beneficiaries. It is a bust which is causing a drastic fall in the standard of living of the vast majority of the population of the country. As one author has rightly noted, development aid has become Africa`s debilitating drug trapping the continent in its vicious cycle of corruption and poverty. Thus, the aid addicted Economy of the regime of Meles Zenawi is very vulnerable to the current global financial crisis and can collapse in a short span of time in the absence of the badly needed financial injections by his donors.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Is there any thing Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi and his tribal juna that are in charge of the Ethiopian regime can do right? What does the dumb dictator, whose only expertise is killing people to stay in power, know about the coffee market?

By Oliver Schwaner-Albright | The New York Times

In the latest scrimmage in the battle to control Ethiopia’s coffee trade, the government has suspended the licenses of the country’s largest coffee exporters, it is reported today. Until things get sorted out, no coffee is leaving Ethiopia.

The government accuses the exporters of keeping coffee off the international market until prices rise. Coffee is Ethiopia’s number one export and the beleaguered country’s primary source of foreign currency.

This is the latest twist in a saga being watched closely by both the specialty coffee community and those concerned about alleviating poverty in the developing world.

In 2006 the Ethiopian government trademarked “Yirgacheffe,” the name of the country’s most celebrated coffee-growing region, hoping to use its cachet to help all their coffee exports. Then in December, the government mandated that all coffee growers sell their crops through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, to insure that all beans fetched an adequate price. Some antipoverty groups thought this would help all Ethiopiain coffee growers.

It meant, though, that coffee roasters in the United States and other coffee importing nations would not be able to buy from specific growers whose beans they prize the most. It effectively ends direct trade for single-origin and microlot coffee.

George Howell of Terroir Coffee, a respected roasting company near Boston, Also points out that the government’s efforts might cheapen the brand. He wrote in his newsletter:

“What scares me is that the trademark route in no way guarantees that the coffee even comes from the particular ‘designated’ region (ironically while Yirgacheffe now becomes a trademark, any coffee lover thinks of it immediately as a region). It is merely a trademark, without any guarantee of origin or traceability.”