Woyanne ambassador to Washington, Dr (Drunkard) Samuel Assefa, departs. However, it is rumored that he may not return to Ethiopia. He is contacting some colleges in the U.S. for a teaching position.
WASHINGTON DC (VOA) — Ethiopia’s [Woyanne] ambassador to the United States, Samuel Assefa, said his goodbyes last week at a reception at the Ethiopian embassy. Today is his last official day in Washington.
“Farewell,” said the former professor of philosophy and Addis Ababa University vice president, who took the hot seat when Ethiopia was suffering the aftermath of the 2005 election crisis. The diaspora was carrying the green-yellow-red national flag to protest the government arrest of members of the opposition in Addis.
The former academic also had to face Congress on a bill that would strong-arm his government into sweeping democratic reforms. “I thought it would be difficult, I had no idea what difficult meant,” he recalls. Speakers at his reception said the ambassador did a good job in a tough situation, but reports are that a replacement is not coming anytime soon.
Five months after Yamamoto left Addis to become principal deputy assistant secretary in the State Department Bureau of African Affairs, there is no new ambassador in Addis.
“It is a mistake,” says former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn, “that Washington has not assigned a full-time ambassador to Ethiopia. “The administration should have named someone several months ago.
“They are behind the curve already and the longer this drags out, the more difficult it is going to be for the United States to play the role it should be playing in Addis Ababa in the run-up to the election,” said Shinn. The embassy is currently headed by Ambassador Roger Meece, who is retired from a lengthy career as a foreign service officer in embassies in central and western Africa. He is on temporary assignment to Addis as charge’ d’affaires.
Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, who is now deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon, served as charge’ in Addis in the aftermath of the 2005 elections. She said Meece has the confident of the State Department. “So, I think he can do whatever a full-time ambassador can do.”
Shinn said unless the White House names a candidate in the coming two weeks, the process of Senate confirmation will not come in time to place a new ambassador in Addis before the May 2010 elections.
The recently completed Tekeze hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia is said to be the largest public works project in Africa. It also could turn in to the biggest blunder with disastrous environmental impact, as the investigative report below tries to illustrate. There is so much secrecy surrounding the project that it is not even clear who really paid for it, although the ruling Woyanne junta claims that it has provided all the funding.
By Brady Yauch | Probe International
The vastly over-budget and long-delayed Tekeze hydro-electric in Ethiopia is finally finished. The project, which was first proposed seven years ago and was scheduled to be competed in 2008, in the end cost $360-million—$136-million over budget.
At 185 metres, the dam—developed and built by the state-owned Chinese National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Corporation, now known as Sinohydro—is the largest of its kind in Africa and is expected to produce 300 MW of electricity.
Who financed the dam, is not entirely clear.
According to the World Bank, in 2002, China’s state-owned Export-Import (Exim) Bank provided $50 million in concessional financing for this US$224 million dam. But a Taiwanese news source said the China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Corporation that built the dam, financed it entirely. Nor is it clear yet, who will pay for the cost overruns, delays, and lost revenue: according to one report, the Ethiopian government is demanding compensation from the consortium for these losses.
The secrecy surrounding the financing of the Tekeze dam is not unusual. World Bank researchers had to comb Chinese language sources to scrape together enough information to conclude that relatively little is known about the value of Chinese finance for African infrastructure projects in general. They did manage to conclude, however, that most of the financing goes through China’s Ex-Im bank on concessional terms which are better than private sector terms, but not as heavily subsidized as official development assistance from old-time aid agencies like the World Bank. China often gives infrastructure financing in return for natural resources, such as oil, to feed its booming domestic economy.
Though it isn’t exactly clear whose taxpayers—Ethiopia’s or China’s—are paying for this dam, it is clear that the problems Chinese dam builders are having with their dams at home are being visited on their Ethiopian customers: plans to raise the reservoir of the massive Three Gorges dam to its maximum height are on hold because of fears of massive landslides caused by rising and falling reservoir levels. Experts are now beginning to question whether the Three Gorges dam will ever be able to reach its maximum power generating capacity.
At the Tekeze dam, dubbed with the unfortunate moniker the “Three Gorges of Africa,” the same problem is occurring: a massive landslide in April 2008 forced developers to spend an additional $42 million on retaining walls to keep the slopes from eroding.
The Tekeze dam is just the first of many more hydro-electric projects that the Chinese want to build in Ethiopia. The state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) is building, or has plans to build, at least six other hydro electric projects in the country and the Gezhouba Group Company and Sinohydro Corporation have agreed to build two of the six hydro electric projects: the $408-million Genale Dawa 3 hydropower project and the $555-million Chemoga Yeda hydropower project, respectively. Ethiopian officials expect that once all the hydro electric projects are completed, the excess power will be exported to neighboring countries.
Patricia Adams, Executive Director of Probe International, and a long time critic of foreign aid and export credit says Ethiopia should beware of free lunches, whether in the form of heavily subsidized foreign aid from the West or subsidized export credit from China.
“Subsidized project financing is usually given for political reasons, not because an investment is economically viable,” she says. “It usually distorts decisions and locks governments and consumers into ongoing costs. African governments would do better to let the discipline of the market choose projects that will truly generate enough wealth to pay investors back.”
Didn’t the dumb regime in Ethiopia say that 6 million people are currently facing starvation because of rain shortage? If so, how are the Indians and Saudis going to grow crops on the land they are buying from the regime — the same land that we are told cannot produce food for Ethiopians?
How about the question of sovereignty? These land leases and international agreements that are signed by the illegitimate regime in Ethiopia that has no mandate to govern are serious threats to Ethiopia’s long term interest. In early last century, the British signed away the Nile River to Egypt without Ethiopia’s knowledge and now if Ethiopia tries to adjust or cancel the treaty, it will face war, as the government of Egypt warned recently. When the Woyanne regime goes away, if a new regime tries to adjust or terminate all these ill-advised land lease treaties, Ethiopia may face war from the 1-billion-strong India, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Korea and the other countries that are taking over Ethiopia’s land at “bargain-basement prices.” Woyanne’s land giveaway in such a manner is the worst kind of treason.
Washington Post reports the following on the scramble for Ethiopia’s land.
Ethiopia — In recent months, the Ethiopian regime began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland.
”Why attractive?” reads one glossy poster with photos of green fields and a map outlining swathes of the country available at bargain-basement prices. ”Vast, fertile, irrigable land at low rent. Abundant water resources. Cheap labour. Warmest hospitality.”
This impoverished and chronically food-insecure nation is fast becoming one of the world’s leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.
Governments across South-East Asia, Latin America and especially Africa are trying to attract this new breed of investors, creating land-leasing agencies and land catalogues to display their offerings of earth.
In Africa alone, experts estimate more than 20 million hectares have been leased in the past two years.
The trend is driven in part by last year’s global food crisis. Wealthy countries are shoring up their food supplies by growing staple crops abroad. The desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for instance, is shifting wheat production to Africa. The government of India, where land is crowded and overfarmed, is offering incentives to companies to carve out mega-farms across the continent.
Increasingly, though, purely profit-seeking companies are snatching up land, making a simple, grim, calculation. As one Saudi-backed businessman here put it: ”The population of the world is increasing dramatically, so land and food supplies will be short, demand will be higher and prices will rise.”
The scale and pace of the land scramble have alarmed policymakers and others concerned about the implications for food security in countries such as Ethiopia, where officials recently appealed for food aid for about 6 million people as drought devastates East Africa.
A code of conduct to govern land deals was discussed on the sidelines of last week’s UN Food and Agriculture Organisation food security summit in Rome. ”These contracts are pretty thin; no safeguards are being introduced,” David Hallam, a deputy director at the FAO, said. ”You see statements from ministers where they’re basically promising everything with no controls, no conditions.”
The harshest critics conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries. Some express concern that decades of industrial farming will leave good land spoiled even as local populations surge. And sceptics also say the political contexts cannot be ignored.
”We don’t trust this government,” said Merera Gudina, a leading opposition figure who accuses the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, of using the land policy to hold on to power. ”We are afraid this government is buying diplomatic support by giving away land.”
But many experts are hopeful, saying that big agribusiness could feed millions by industrialising agriculture in countries such as Ethiopia, where about 80 per cent of its 75 million people are farmers who plow their fields with oxen.
”If these deals are negotiated well, I tell you, it will change the dynamics of the food economy in this country,” said Mafa Chipeta, the FAO’s representative in Ethiopia, dismissing the worst-case scenarios. ”I can’t believe Ethiopia or any other government would allow their country to be used like an empty womb. The human spirit would not allow it.”
Few countries have embraced the trend as zealously as Ethiopia, where hard-baked eastern deserts fade into spectacularly lush and green western valleys fed by the Blue Nile. Only a quarter of the country’s estimated 70 million fertile hectares is being farmed.
Desperate for foreign currency, the government of former Marxist rebels who once proclaimed ”land to the tiller!” has set aside more than 2.5 million hectares for agribusiness. Lured with 40-year leases and tax holidays, investors are going on farm shopping sprees, crisscrossing the country to pick out swathes of Ethiopian soil.
”There’s no crop that doesn’t grow in Ethiopia,” said Esayas Kebede, who works for a government agribusiness agency, adding that too many requirements on investors might scare them off. ”Everybody is coming.”
Especially Indian companies, which have committed $US4.2 billion ($4.6 billion).
Anand Seth, director general of the Federation of Indian Export Organisations, described Africa as ”the next big thing” in investment opportunities and markets.
As he stood on a hill overlooking 12,000 hectares of rich, black soil, Hanumantha Rao, chief general manager of the Indian company Karuturi Agro Products, agreed. So far, he said, the Ethiopian Government has imposed few requirements on his company. ”From here, you can see the past and the future of Ethiopian agriculture.”
From there – a farm just west of Addis Ababa – it was possible to see a river designated for irrigating cornfields and rice paddies; it is no longer open for locals to water their cows.
Several shiny green tractors bounced across the field where teff, the local grain, once grew. Hundreds of Ethiopian workers, overseen by Indian supervisors, were bent over rows of corn stalks, cutting weeds tangled around them with small blades. Many of the workers were children.
The day rate: 8 birr – about 70 cents.
”The people are very happy,” Rao said. ”We have no problems with them.”
As a worker spoke to one of his supervisors, he whispered that the company had refused to sign a wage contract and had failed to deliver promised water and power to nearby villages.
Supervisors treat them cruelly, he said, and most workers were just biding time until they could go work for a Chinese construction company rumoured to pay $2 to $4 a day.
”We are not happy,” said the man, a farmer-turned-tractor driver who did not give his name because he feared being fired.
”I’m a machine operator and I make 800 birr [about $65] a month. This is the most terrible pay.”
Rao said he had trained about 60 Ethiopians to drive tractors; others would learn to run shellers and how to fertilise and irrigate land. If things work as they should, he said, Ethiopians will adopt the modern techniques in their own farms.
Along a muddy road leading to Karuturi farm, people said they were hopeful that might happen. But they were not sure how. Ethiopians cannot own land, instead holding ”use certificates” for their tiny plots, making it difficult to get loans, or to sell or increase holdings.
”We think they might be beneficial to us in the future,” said Yadeta Fininsa, referring to the new companies coming to town. ”But so far we have not benefited anything.”
(Souce: The Washington Post)
Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church (EOTC), His Holiness Abune Merkorios, will officially open the St. Mary of Zion Church’s new building in New York Saturday, Nov. 28.
The inauguration program will start at 6 AM tomorrow in the presence of His Holiness as well as Abune Melketsedik, Abune Elias, Abune Samuel, Abune Baslios, and other religious leaders and guests from all over the United States.
Location: 77 High Street Yonkers, New York, 10703 (Click here for map)
The event will also celebrate the annual Saint Mary’s Day, according to Melakegenet Gezahegn G. Kirstos, the Church’s administrator.
New York’s St. Mary of Zion Church was first established in 1991 by the late Abune Yesehaq, Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Western Hemisphere. It is the first Ethiopian church that took a stand against the illegal take over of the EOTC by a cadre of the ruling Woyanne junta, Ato Gebremedhin (formerly Aba Paulos).
(For further info call (917) 837-8245, (203) 645-0275, (631) 671-6090. Also visit stmaryofzion.com)
Ethiopia has the highest proportion of people at risk of getting trachoma (85% of its population, about 65 million people), according to a report by The Carter Center. Ethiopia has also the greatest number of people in the final, blinding stage of trachoma (more than 1 million). It has the greatest number of people who have gone blind from trachoma (138,000).
The predeterminants of trachoma are poverty, which manifests as poor access to sanitation, poor access to hygiene, high density living conditions, and a general poor health. All of those go together, then trachoma gets laid on top of it. It used to be the slums of London, now it’s the rural areas of populous countries, like Ethiopia. – Dr. Paul Emerson, director of The Carter Center Trachoma Control Program
The Carter Center has launched trachoma control programs in Ghana, Mali, Niger, Sudan and Nigeria, but its most challenging location is Ethiopia. The Ethiopia program began in 2001, in partnership with the federal Ministry of Health and the Lions Clubs of Ethiopia. It has focused its efforts on the country’s most affected region: the northwestern state of Amhara. Two thirds of its work there has been funded by money raised by the Lions Clubs of Ethiopia, through the Lions Clubs International Foundation. The antibiotic it has distributed, Zithromax, has all been donated by Pfizer. The Center aims to effectively control trachoma in the region by 2012.
Trachoma affects the lining of the eyelid, causing it to form granule-like bumps, and to appear red and irritated. Repeated infections over the years cause the underside of the eyelid to scar. The scar tissue pulls the eyelid inward, so that the eyelashes scratch against the cornea, a condition known as trichiasis. The constant rubbing against the globe of the eye is painful, and causes sensitivity to light and particulate matter, like dust and smoke. Within just 18 months, it can begin to cause irreversible visual impairment. If not surgically corrected, it causes blindness.
Amhara region: Ground Zero
Amhara region, which accounts for roughly 20% of Ethiopia’s population, carries 45% of the country’s trachoma burden.
More than 85% of Amhara’s 17 million people live in rural areas, situated in the mountainous highlands. They are overwhelmingly subsistence farmers, growing teff, a grain that is used to make injera, a spongy, flat bread typically served with Ethiopian meals.
In Ethiopia, Amhara region has the highest rate of active trachoma in children aged 1-9 (62%), and the highest rate of adults who have reached the final, blinding stage of trachoma (5.2%). The prevalence is attributed mainly to the area’s poverty, poor access to water, and poor sanitation. Families live in small huts, crowding a small space in which it’s easy for disease to spread from children to the parents. And in some areas of the rural mountains, mothers or children have to walk hours to get water, and then lug it back home. After cooking, drinking, and feeding the animals, there often isn’t enough left to wash hands, or children’s faces. This contributes to the spread of trachoma.
The other major contributing factor in Amhara is the presence of swarming flies, Musca sorbens, that thrive in places of poor sanitation. The flies like to breed in outdoor human stool, and they feed off of discharge around the eyes and nose. As they feed, they transmit the microorganism that infects they eyes with trachoma, from one person to the next. Sanitation facilities have historically been lacking in Amhara — another effect of the region’s poverty. Since 2003, however, hundreds of thousands of household latrines have been built with the help of The Carter Center and other development groups.
The World Health Organization endorses a four-pronged approach to trachoma control, known as the S.A.F.E. strategy.
S – Surgery to correct inverted eyelids, which occur in the most advanced stage of trachoma.
A – Antibiotics, namely azythromicin, to treat trachoma infection.
F – Facial cleanliness, particularly important for children, to clear off infectious ocular and nasal discharge that attracts eye-seeking flies, and which they spread to other people.
E – Environmental improvements, such as the building of latrines and access to water. Latrines help to reduce the population of flies that spread trachoma, and access to water promotes cleanliness.
