In contrast, there are only about 20,000 Internet service subscribers in Ethiopia, and 0 mobile Internet (accessing the Internet on cellphones) users under a policy instituted by the dictatorial regime of Meles Zenawi that is intended to keep the people of Ethiopia in the dark. Other African nations such as South Africa strive to make information technology accessible to ever one as the following report shows.

THE massive growth of internet usage in South Africa will see mobile internet users in South Africa rise to 15 million in the country according to a report released by a leading information and computer technology firm.

BMI-TechKnowledge also projected mobile internet browsing and mobile e-mail access to rise in the next five years.

“There will be 15-million mobile internet users in South Africa by 2013,” said the organization.

The report that BMI-TechKnowledge has released is entitled SA Consumer Handset Model and Cellular Activities.

Ryan Smit, consumer market analyst at BMI- TechKnowledge, and author of the report, said mobile internet browsing and mobile e-mail access are expected to increase rapidly and forecasted that more than 15 million users would access the internet directly or indirectly on their handsets by the same year.

South Africa’s mobile phone industry has grown immensely in recent years.

According to a recent survey, the country is now the world’s fourth fastest growing cellular communications market, accounting for 80 percent of the population, which equals more than 39 million users.

This represents a market value of US$2.4 billion. It is by far the fastest growing such industry in the whole African continent.

Cutthroat competition characterizes the mobile phone industry in South Africa where three mobile networks, Vodacom (the biggest in the country in terms of subscribers), Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) and Cell C, operate.

Last year, cellphone number portability was introduced across the three networks.

This enables subscribers to change from one network to another while retaining their cellular phone numbers.

– IT News Africa

This is a good example for the Ethiopian opposition to establish bases in neighboring countries, such as those that are friendly, namely Eritrea.

Botswana’s foreign minister has suggested on Wednesday that his country would be prepared to allow MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai to operate there as leader in exile.

Foreign Minister Phandu Skelemani also told BBC World News that regional powers must admit they had failed to resolve the deadlock between Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe and should now bring economic pressure to bear.

Asked whether Botswana would offer Tsvangirai a safe haven if power-sharing talks collapse, Skelemani said: “Anybody who comes to Botswana saying that they fear for their life, from their own country, we will not chase them away.”

Pressed about what Botswana would allow Tsvangirai to do from its soil, the minister said he would not be permitted to launch a military attack on Zimbabwe from there, but could possibly lead a democratic resistance movement.

“That would be the lesser of the two evils, which is probably, taking up arms and getting innocent people killed,” Skelemani said.

Botswana’s President Ian Khama is one of the few African leaders to openly criticise Mugabe, saying his re-election in June was not legitimate.

The foreign minister also said the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc must admit that its mediation efforts have failed.

“The international community, SADC first of all, must now own up that they have failed – which we have said, that we as SADC have failed. The rest of us should now own up and say yes, we have failed,” Skelemani told the BBC.

After that, it should “call upon the international community and tell Mugabe to his face, look, now you are on your own, we are switching off, we are closing your borders, and I don’t think he would last”, he said.

“If no petrol went in for a week, he can’t last.”

Negotiators for Mugabe and Tsvangirai met in a new round of talks in South Africa on Tuesday over a stalled power-sharing deal, that calls for Mugabe to remain as president and Tsvangirai to take the new post of prime minister.
Meanwhile, AP reported that Tsvangirai said talks aimed at resolving his country’s political crisis were making no progress.

Tsvangirai also urged the world to help stop what he called “the impending famine and plague” in Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai said he once thought that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s party was willing to compromise but that “their intransigence to date is making that appear increasingly unlikely”.

The two sides agreed to form a unity government, but ongoing talks have stalled over how to divide Cabinet posts.

Tsvangirai says Mbeki’s “partisan support” for Mugabe’s party has made it impossible for his party to continue negotiating under his mediation.

– Zimbabwe Metro

By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebel movement has slammed a government [Woyanne regime’s] investigation refuting claims of war crimes against the people of a marginalized eastern region it operates in.

Ethiopian authorities Woyanne on Wednesday said a government-funded probe showed a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that found it liable of abuses during a campaign against the ONLF, was fabricated.

“The reality of the matter is that the Ethiopian Woyanne regime has committed war crimes in the Ogaden and is continuing to commit such crimes with impunity,” a statement by the rebels said.

“At the same time Ethiopia Woyanne is actively engaged in trying to conceal such crimes and the real purpose of these teams that it claims to have sent to the Ogaden was to insure that no traces are left.”

HRW issued two reports in June that it said documented attacks on civilians in the arid region, one based on witness accounts and another on satellite imagery showing burnt-out villages during a year-long military offensive.

Ethiopian Woyanne said HRW’s claims were fabricated because it found villages that the rights body said were burnt by government troops untouched, and people allegedly killed, alive and well.

Villagers and elders also denied allegations of extra-judicial killings, rape or torture by the security forces, the Ethiopian investigators’ report said.

Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi’s government accuses the ONLF movement of being terrorists supported by arch-foe and neighbour Eritrea.

It launched the offensive in April 2007 after ONLF rebels attacked Chinese-run oil fields in the remote region also known as Somali, killing more then 70 people.

“If Ethiopia Woyanne has nothing to hide, let it allow free access to international media and independent international investigators from reputable organizations to conduct an impartial investigation,” the ONLF said.

(Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Ethiopian Television Network’s (ETN) interview with Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle will be rebroadcast today, Monday, at 6:55 PM Washington DC time. Part II will run at 10:45 PM. Click here to watch.

By Abdurrahman Warsameh

MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — With Ethiopian Woyanne regime’s announcement of withdrawing its troops from Somalia by the end of the year, as well as the signing and culmination of the Djibouti peace and power-sharing agreements between the Somali transitional government and a major opposition faction, the political and military equations within the war-torn Horn of Africa country have changed, say analysts, but the future remains “as dark as ever.”

The Ethiopian government Woyanne regime said in a letter sent to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the African Union Commission Chairman Jean Ping early last week that it would withdraw its remaining troops from Somalia by the end of 2008, culminating two years of intervention in Somalia.

The announcement, which in effect is the formalization of a long process of silent and low profile withdrawal from the country, comes as the Somali transitional government is only controlling Baidoa, the seat of the parliament and pockets of Mogadishu, where the African Union peacekeepers along with the remaining Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers are protecting government offices as well as the air and sea ports, says Abdurrahman Hussein, a political commentator in the Somali capital.

“Ethiopian Woyanne troops are withdrawing from small areas in the capital and Baidoa in which they still remain, but we should never lose sight of the fact that the (withdrawal) process started way before now,” Hussein told Xinhua. “No single foreign soldier either from Ethiopia or the African Union peacekeepers are outside the two cities. The rest is under the control of the opposition forces.”

The opposition, mainly divided into two camps — the radical Al-Shabaab group and their ideological allies, and the moderate Islamists dominated Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), are united only in terms of their opposition to the presence of Ethiopian troops in the country.

However, the feared Al-Shabaab group is opposed to any talks with what they see as an “apostate government” and demands no less than an Islamic state in Somalia that implements literally every word in the Koran, the holy book of Islam.

In contrast, the political leadership of the ARS faction led by the moderate leader Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed has entered into peace talks with the transitional government and signed a power sharing deal in which the membership of the Somali parliament will be doubled and a new leadership for the country will be elected at the beginning of next year.

The two opposition groups control roughly the same swathes of territories in south and central Somalia with the Al-Shabaab group ruling much of the areas to the south of the capital while ARS’ military wing, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), run much of the regions to the north of Mogadishu.

Although some of the commanders of the ICU on the ground have issued statement rejecting the agreement reached with the government by their political leaders in Djibouti and vowed to continue “the holy war” against government forces, their Ethiopian Woyanne allies and any foreign forces to be deployed in Somalia, the moderate leaders, unlike the Al-Shabaabists, are not opposed to the deployment of UN authorized peacekeeping forces.

They have been adding their voice to the need to expedite the deployment of a UN force, saying, just like Ethiopian Woyanne authorities long held, that “a security vacuum” will be created by the Ethiopian Woyanne troops’ withdrawal.

However, the Al-Shabaab group and their likes are bent to fight any foreign troops — whether Ethiopian Woyanne forces or UN authorized peacekeepers — that are deployed in Somalia. They have also clearly stated their unwillingness to share power with what they see as “enemy collaborators.”

Mohamed Ibrahim, a Somali analyst, says the new leadership will include senior members of the moderate Islamists within the opposition ARS who will need to convince the other groups to join the process with further negotiations needed before a final settlement is reached.

“I am doubtful whether the new leadership, who we expect will come mainly from senior ARS leaders and officials of the current Somali transitional government, will have the clout to convince or the power to subdue the new opposition that is the Al-Shabaab and their allies,” Ibrahim maintains. “To me as things now stand, the future of this country seems as dark as ever if a rethink is not on the cards about the deployment of any further foreign forces to Somalia.”