It is a colonial phenomenon, appropriate land for the needs of the colonists and to hell with those living upon the land, indigenous and at home. Might is right, military or indeed economic. The power of the dollar rules supreme in a world built upon the acquisition of the material, the perpetuation of desire and the entrapment of the human spirit.
Africa has for long been the object of western domination, control and usury, under the British, French, and Portuguese of old. Now the ‘new rulers of the World’ large corporations from America, China, Japan, Middle Eastern States, India and Europe, are engaged in extensive land acquisitions in developing countries. The vast majority of available land is in Sub-Saharan Africa where, according to The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues report, ‘The Growing demand for Land, Risks and Opportunities for Smallholder Farmers’ “80 per cent (of worldwide land) –about 2 billion hectares that is potentially available for expanded rain-fed crop production” is thought to be. Huge industrial agricultural centres are being created, off shore farms, producing crops for the investors home market. Indigenous people, subsistence farmers and pastoralists are forced off the land, the natural environment is levelled, purging the land of wildlife and destroying small rural communities, that have lived, worked and cared for the land for centuries. The numbers of people potentially affected by the land grab and its impact on the environment is staggering. The UN in it’s report states “By 2020, an estimated 135 million people may be driven from their land as a result of soil degradation, with 60 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone.”
Ethiopia
This contemporary ‘Land Grab’ has come about as a result of food shortages, the financial meltdown in 2008 and in light of the United Nations world population forecast of 9.2 billion people by 2050, and three main resulting pressures. 1. Food insecure nations – particularly Middle Eastern and Asian countries, seeking to stabilise their food supply. 2. To meet the growing worldwide demand for agro-fuels and thirdly, by the rise in investment in land and soft commodities, such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, corn, wheat, soya and fruit. Often investors are simply speculators seeking to make a fast or indeed slow buck, by ‘Land Banking’, sitting on the asset waiting and watching for the price to inflate, then selling, the Oakland Institute in its report ‘The Great land Grab’ found “along with hedge funds and speculators, some public universities and pension funds are among those in on the land rush, eyeing returns of 20 to as much as 40%”. Land not as home, land as a chip, to be thrown upon the international gambling table of commercialisation.
Chopping trees cutting Costs
As well we know everything and indeed everyone ‘has its price’. Even the people and land of a country, sold into destitution by governments motivated by distorted notions of development, where people, traditional lifestyles and the environment come a distant second to roads, industrialisation and the raping of the land. People too poor to hold on to their dignity, too weak in a world built and run on power and might, to protest and demand justice for themselves and their families and rounded, responsible husbandry for the environment. And the price of land, well as one would expect bargain basement, with 99 year leases the norm and various government incentive packages. In some cases the land is literally being given away, as the Oakland Institute (OI) states in its report, “In Mali one investment group was able to secure 1000,000 hectares (ha) of fertile land for a 50 year term for free. Elsewhere “$2.00 a hectare (roughly equal to two Olympic size athletic grounds) is the going rate.” According to The Guardian (21/3/2011) “The lowest prices are in Africa, where, says the World Bank, at least 35 million hectares of land has been bought or leased. Other groups, including, Friends of the Earth say the figure is higher.”
Ethiopia. For sale
The Ethiopian government, through the Agricultural Investment Support Directorate is at the forefront of this African Land Sale. Crops familiar to the area are often grown, such as maize, sesame, sorghum, in addition to wheat and rice. All let us state clearly, for export to Saudi Arabia, India, China etc, to be sold within the home market, benefitting the people of Ethiopia not.
The Oakland Institute research “shows that at least 3,619,509ha of land (an area just smaller than Belgium) have been transferred to investors, although the actual number may be higher.” The government claims that the land available for lease is unused and surplus, this is disingenuous nonsense. Large areas of land are in fact already cultivated by smallholders subsistence farmers and pastoralists using land for grazing, all of which are un-ceremonially evicted. Villages are destroyed and indigenous people expelled from their homeland and forced into large scale villagization programmes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report ‘Waiting Here For Death’ states, “The Ethiopian federal government’s current villagization program is occurring in four regions—Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, Somali, and Afar. This involves the resettlement of approximately 1.5 million people throughout the lowland areas of the country—500,000 in Somali region, 500,000 in Afar region, 225,000 in Benishangul-Gumuz and 225,000 in Gambella.” Imposed movement then, often applied with force, in order to provide pristine land, free of any inconveniences to the corporate allies.
Level growing field
There are five areas of prime, fertile land up for grabs. Gambella is the largest where unbelievably a third of the region (around 800,000 hectares) is available. Indian corporations have already snapped up 352,000 hectares (ha) and around 900 foreign investors have so far taken advantage of this giveaway. Afar, The Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region, where 200,000 hectares has been leased or sold, Oromia, where three Indian companies have leased a total of 138,000 ha and Amhara, make up the reduced to clear rail.
With the land grab crucially goes water – and the appropriation of this vital resource, both surface and ground water. Investors are allowed to do what they will with the land they lease, this includes diverting rivers, digging canals from existing water sources, building dams and drilling bore holes. The Oakland Institute in its report ‘Land Investment in Ethiopia quotes Saudi Star stating “that water will be their biggest issue, and numerous plans are being established (including the construction of 30 km of cement-lined canals and another dam on the Alwero River).” There are no controls imposed on foreign corporations whatsoever and no payment structure for ‘appropriating’ water is in place. These politically favoured investors are being offered carte blanche. Water supplies in Ethiopia are poor, even in the capital, where irregular mains flow is common in many neighbourhoods. There is water galore 90% of the Nile e.g. flows through Ethiopia, distribution though is inconsistent, maintained to be so some say, the people drained, exhausted and kept firmly in their place.
In Gambella the government in 2011 offered huge areas of land to Bangalore-based food company Karuturi Global for the equivalent of $1.16 per hectare, to lease more than 2,500 sq. km (1,000 sq. miles) of virgin, fertile land for more than 50 years. This cost compared to an average rate of $340 per ha in the Punjab district of India, no wonder then that the CEO of Karuturi described “the incentives available to the floriculture industry in Ethiopia as “mouthwatering,” including low air freights on the state-owned Ethiopian airlines, tax holidays, hassle-free entry into the industry at very low lease rates, tax holidays, and lack of duties,” reports Oakland in its Ethiopia report. Up to 60,000 workers will be employed by Karuturi, who are paying local people less than $1 a day, which is well below the level of extreme poverty set by the World bank. The company will cultivate according to The Guardian 21st March 2011 “20,000 hectares of oil palm, 15,000 hectares of sugar cane and 40,000 hectares of rice, edible oils and maize and cotton… “We could feed a nation here”, says Karmjeet Sekhon, Karuturi project manager. Land and people for a few rupees, cushioned by a cocktail of sweeteners offered by the Ethiopian government, allowing the decimation of the environment and the destruction of lifestyles – generations old. And in a hurry, The Guardian found “the [land] concessions are being worked [by Karuturi] at a breakneck pace, with giant tractors and heavy machinery clearing trees, draining swamps and ploughing the land in time to catch the next growing season. Forests across hundreds of square km are being clear-felled and burned to the dismay of locals and environmentalists concerned about the fate of the region’s rich wildlife.”
Unstable supply of staples
Around five million people in Ethiopia rely on food aid and live with constant food insecurity that will only increase under the land grab bonanza. According to the Oakland Institutes report “commercial investment will increase rates of food insecurity in the vicinity of the land investments” and Open Democracy reports an interview with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, for the Financial Times (7 August 2008), in which he ‘predicted that “large-scale farming could bring some employment, but “not much”. It would not solve the problem of food insecurity.” Intensifying food insecurity is the transfer of vast areas of land used for the cultivation of traditional staples such as Teff to other crops. This is largely responsible for costs of Teff (used to make injera – the daily bread) quadrupling in the last four years. The Guardian (Monday 23 April 2012) reports Friends of the Earth International “The result (of land sell offs) has often been … people forced off land they have traditionally farmed for generations, more rural poverty and greater risk of food shortages” Food security will be realised when local smallholders are encouraged to farm their land, given financial support, machinery and the needed technology, as Oxfam in its report ‘Land Power Rights’ points out, “Small-scale producers, particularly women, can indeed play a crucial role in poverty reduction and food security. But to do so, they need investment in infrastructure, markets, processing, storage, extension, and research.”
Keep development small, for, of, and close to the people in need, and see them flourish.
Land rights, human cost, environmental damage
The land rights of the indigenous people of Ethiopia are, as one would expect somewhat ambiguous. As a legacy of the socialist dictatorship of the 1960s and ‘70s, the government technically owns all land. However there is protection in law for indigenous people. The Ethiopian constitution Article 40, 3 states “Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange. And 4) “Ethiopian peasants have right to obtain land without payment and the protection against eviction from their possession.” And in regard to pastoralists affected by the land sell off, paragraph 5) “Ethiopian pastoralists have the right to free land for grazing and cultivation as well as the right not to be displaced from their own lands.”
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Ethiopia signed in 2007, making it a legally binding document, states in Article 26/1. “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources, which they have traditionally owned, occupied or other- wise used or acquired.” And paragraph 2.”Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.” The declaration also outlines compensation measures for landowners. Article 28/1. “Indigenous peoples have the right to redress, by means that can include restitution or, when this is not possible, just, fair and equitable compensation, for the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent.” Paragraph 2. “Unless otherwise freely agreed upon by the peoples concerned, compensation shall take the form of lands, territories and resources 10equal in quality, size and legal status or of monetary compensation or other appropriate redress.”
The law it would appear is clear, implementation and respect for its content is required, and should be demanded of the ruling EPRDF by the donor countries to Ethiopia.
Land and People
People are not being consulted or democratically included in the decisions to transform their homeland. This contravenes the Ethiopian constitution, that states in Article 92/3. “People have the right to full consultation and to the expression of views in the planning and implementations of environmental policies and projects that affect them directly”. Hollow words to those being evicted from their land, like Omot Ochan a villager, from the Anuak tribe whose family has lived in the forest near the Baro river in Gambella for ten generations. Speaking to The Observer Sunday 20 May 2012, he “insisted Saudi Star had no right to be in his forest. The company had not even told the villagers that it was going to dig a canal across their land. “Nobody came to tell us what was happening.” He goes on to say “This land belonged to our father. All round here is ours. For two days’ walk.” Well that was the case until the Government in their infallible wisdom leased some 10,000ha to their friend, the Ethiopian born Saudi Arabian oil multi millionaire, Sheik Al Moudi (In 2011, Fortune magazine put his wealth at more than $12bn) to grow rice for his Saudi Star Company. Omot continued, “two years ago, the company began chopping down the forest and the bees went away. The bees need thick forest. We used to sell honey. We used to hunt with dogs too. But after the farm came, the animals here disappeared. Now we only have fish to sell.” And with the company draining the wetlands, the fish will probably be gone soon, too. Sheik Al Moudi plans to export over a million tonnes of rice a year to Saudi Arabia. To ease relations with the Meles regime and as The Observer states “to smooth the wheels of commerce, Amoudi has recruited one of Zenawi’s former ministers, Haile Assegdie, as chief executive of Saudi Star.”
Traditional land rights for people who have lived on the land in Gamabella and elsewhere for centuries are being ignored and in a country where all manner of human rights are routinely violated, legally binding compensations are not being paid.
Government drafted lease agreements with investors state the Meles regime will hand over the land free of any ‘encumbrances’ – people and property that means, anyone living or using the land to graze their livestock or pastoralists moving through. The Independent 18th January 2012 reports “Ethiopia is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land so it can lease it to foreign investors, leaving former landowners destitute and in some cases starving.” The Government says any movement is voluntary and not enforced, a clear distortion of the facts. HRW in their report confirms the government’s criminality “mass displacement to make way for commercial agriculture in the absence of a proper legal process contravenes Ethiopia’s constitution and violates the rights of indigenous peoples under international law.”
A price worth paying it would seem, to the Ethiopian government and those multi nationals appropriating the land, seeing a market and capitalizing on the countries need for dollars. Desperate in a world propelled by growth to maximize the value of every so called asset, even if it means prostituting the land, sacrificing the native people and destroying the natural environment.
About the author:
Graham Peebles
Graham is Director of The Create Trust, a UK registered charity, supporting fundamental social change and the human rights of individuals in acute need. He may be reached at [email protected]
Meles Zenawi is a dictator! Meles Zenawi is a dictator! Free Eskinder Nega! Free Political Prisoners! You are a dictator. You are committing crimes against humanity. Food is nothing without freedom! Meles has committed crimes against humanity! We Need Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
Zenawi was shocked, bewildered, flabbergasted and completely disoriented. It was as though 90 million Ethiopians had lined up pointing an accusatory finger at him and shouting in unison, “Meles Zenawi! You are a dictator!…” In that moment Abebe gloriously realized the true meaning of the tagline of his website addisvoice.com – “A Voice of the Voiceless”. Ironically, the voice of the voiceless rendered speechless the man who had rendered millions voiceless!
Silencing the Silencer: Zenawi Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine
Zenawi had just started pontificating about “agricultural transformation in Africa” and how a “partnership between the farmer and the private sector” would have to be formed to meet the continent’s food needs. But he could only get out 30 words before he was shouted down. It was an incredible sight to behold. Zenawi’s head snapped to attention when he first heard his name and title. He probed the audience confusedly to locate the heckler. When he made eye contact with Abebe, he came unhinged: His eyes bugged out with sheer horror. His jaw dropped as if he had seen a ghost. He looked like the proverbial deer in a headlight; or to use an African metaphor, the vaunted guerilla hero froze like a frightened wildebeest looking into the eyes of a hungry lion. The expression on his face was total disbelief. “Is that Abebe Gellaw? It can’t be! I thought I had him canned in Kality Prison with Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye. What the hell is he doing here?!?”
It was a defining moment — the classic Kodak moment — for Zenawi. After the initial shock, Zenawi tried to quickly regain his composure and continue with his carefully rehearsed and memorized statement. He could not afford to lose his spot in the well-rehearsed statement so he kept on repeating himself like a broken record, “Seventy percent, ah…, seventy percent of the population in Africa…ah..” Nothing doing. He looked to the to the moderator mournfully for help. But the best the stunned moderator could do was bleat out, “security, help please.” For seven seconds, the mighty Zenawi zoned out into a catatonic trance like the patrons of opium dens. For a fleeting moment, he seemed almost comatose. His head was bowed, his back hunched, his chin drooped, his lips quivered and his eyes gazed vacantly at the floor just like the criminal defendant who got handed a life sentence or worse. A close-up video showed him breathing heavily, almost semi-hyperventilating. His pectoral muscles heaved spastically under his shirt. An imminent cardiac event?
Zenawi’s body language spoke volumes. He propped himself up on the edge of his seat. He tried to keep a stiff upper lip as he soliloquized his well-rehearsed monologue. He preteneded as if nothing had happened. He tried to give the impression that he is as cool as a cucumber and unshakable under fire.
After Abebe was escorted out of the hall, Zenawi droned on for just under two minutes arguing for “public investment” and the need for partnership between the smallholder farmer and the private sector. But his argument made no sense at all because smallholder farmers in Ethiopia do not own the land they “hold” as private ownership of land is prohibited by law and the state owns all land. Is it possible to partner with sharecroppers? That was what Zenawi was really talking about. Anyway, he cut to the chase, the real deal: “We want the $22 billion promised. We want the money promised to be delivered,” demanded Zenawi with the polish of a loan shark. He did not say if he wanted it delivered in a suitcase. But everyone got the message. As the old expression goes, “it’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny. You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey.”
As Zenawi robotically regurgitated his rehearsed statement, his hands flailed and fingers steepled to give the impression of imperturbable self-control and self-confidence, steadfast composure and resolute authority. But his past demeanor belied his present cool bravado. This is the same man with a short fuse who went into spontaneous self-combustion at the mere suggestion that he give a break to his opposition: “If opposition groups resort to violence in an attempt to discredit the [2010] election,” Zenawi vowed frothing at the mouth, “We will crush them with our full force; they will all vegetate like Birtukan (Midekssa) in jail forever.” When ten thousand tons of coffee went “missing” in Ethiopia in 2011, Zenawi called a meeting of commodities traders and in a videotaped statement told them he will forgive them because “we all have our hands in the disappearance of the coffee”. But he issued a stern warning that if anyone should steal coffee in the future, he will “cut off their hands”.
Zenawi would have gladly crushed Abebe with his full force, have him vegetate like Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye and even cut off his hands, if he could. But the pompous, imperious, derisive and hubristic Zenawi whose lips usually hemorrhage with insolence, insults, cheap shots, sarcasm, acrimony, antipathy, contempt and slander was tongue-tied and speechless against his young accuser. The man who loves to bark, growl and snarl at his parliamentarians, mock and caricature his opposition, play clever semantic games with his interviewers and always eager to display his faux intellectual prowess and erudition to the world sulked and sat mute as a fish listening to his young accuser call him “dictator, a criminal against humanity…”
But there was not much Zenawi could do in America where “free speech is king” and “kings” dutifully bow and kneel before the altar of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He sat on the stage among the other dignitaries and absorbed a full blast of the raw truth in the face, “Meles Zenawi is a dictator….” “The Emperor has no clothes!”
For the first time Ethiopians witnessed Zenawi at his most vulnerable, outside his cloistered bubble unguarded by his yes-men and unsheltered by his gaggle of worshipping cronies. For some, Abebe’s confrontation of Zenawi represented a triumph of David over Goliath; but for others it was a pathetic and pitiful sight to behold the man who had silenced an entire nation for 21 years rendered speechless in 19 seconds flat!
The Power of Free Speech and Speaking Truth to Power
I am for free speech for all, including dictators. I fiercely defended Zenawi’s right to speak at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum in September 2010 despite withering criticism from many in the Ethiopian opposition. But I also defend the right of hecklers to heckle the high and mighty into humility. Why not? President Obama is frequently heckled during his speeches. This past March, he was heckled at Ohio State University. He did not miss a beat talking back to the heckler: “Sir, I’m here to speak to these folks. You can hold your own rally. You’re being rude… don’t interrupt everybody else. Alright?” It did not faze him because he understands the role of hecklers in the comprehensive scheme of free speech.
The “heckler’s veto” is one of the most precious rights of American citizens. The idea is really simple. It is always governments who abuse their power to silence their critics and those who disagree with them. With the “heckler’s veto”, the individual silences the government and the powerful. The tables are turned. In other words, Zenawi was silenced by Abebe!
But as always, Zenawi never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Here he had the perfect chance to deftly respond to Abebe’s claim that “we need freedom more than food.” He could have paused for a few seconds and told him, as countless African dictators have since the early days ofindependence, that the masses of poor, illiterate, hungry and sick Africans are too dumb and too stupid to appreciate democracy. The African masses are interested in the politics of the belly and not in the politics of democracy. Africans live for and by bread alone. Elections, human rights, the rule of law and all the rest are figments of warped Western neoliberal imaginations. The fact of the matter is that Ethiopia for the last 21 years under Zenawi’s boots has had no freedom and very little food to feed its people. So the question is not food without freedom; the question is starvation under extreme oppression.
It is possible Zenawi may think that he should be treated with respect and deference as an African “leader”. Wikileaks cablegrams paint a portrait of a man who suffers from a chronic Adulation Deficit Disorder (ADD). Zenawi desperately seeks praise, adulation, flattery and acceptance in the West and in the Ethiopian Diaspora. He wants to be seen in the West as an African black knight in shining armor thrusting a lance into the heart of poverty, injustice and inequality. He wants to be praised by the Ethiopian Diaspora as a visionary modernizer, creative trailblazer and as a charismatic and transformative leader. He often harps about the failure of Diaspora Ethiopians in not recognizing and giving him credit for the roads he has built, the shiny glass buildings he has erected in the capital and for all of the fabricated improvements in education, health, energy and so on. In fact, that was the very point made by the brutish thug in his security detail who threatened to kill Abebe in the hallway of the food security conference: “Ethiopia has changed. It is because you have not been back and seen the changes [that you are complaining]. Ethiopia is in a very good situation. It is people like you who make noise from a distance.”
But Ethiopia is not in a “very good situation.” Though Ethiopia is Africa’s oldest independent country and has the second largest population, she is also the second poorest country in the world after Niger according to the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHDI) Multidimensional Poverty Index 2010 (formerly annual U.N.D.P. Human Poverty Index). Tens of millions of Ethiopians have managed to live for the past two decades only because of international food handouts. Transparency International (Corruption Perception Index) has ranked Ethiopia at the bottom of the barrel of countries ruled by the most corrupt governments for the past decade. The Legatum Institute in 2011 reported Ethiopia has the “sixth highest unemployment rate in the world… [It has a] communication infrastructure [that] is weak with only five mobile phones for every 100 citizens…The education system is poor at all levels and its population is deeply dissatisfied… Access to hospital beds and sanitation facilities is very limited, placing the country 109th and 110th (very last) on these measures of health infrastructure…”
Just last week the Economist Magazine reported: “The heart of the Ethiopian capital may be traversed by new concrete arteries and bridges, built by Italian and Chinese contractors with Chinese loans. But the rest of Addis Ababa is a patchwork of dirt paths lined by corrugated-tin dwellings that are the capital’s shantytowns and slums… Outsiders wanting to do business in Addis Ababa must forge good relations with Mr Meles and his ministers.” In other words, if you want to do business in Ethiopia, you better be prepared to grease some palms (that is, lay some serious cash on Zenawi and Co.) big time. These are the incontrovertible facts about Ethiopia’s “very good situation”.
A Teachable Moment
In 1798, the U.S. Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act and imposed fines and imprisonment against anyone who “wrote, printed, uttered or published any scandalous and malicious writing” against the government. Various newspaper editors of the time were arrested and some imprisoned for criticizing President John Adams’ “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and self avarice”. Thomas Jefferson pardoned all of those serving sentences under the Act when he became president. In 1787 he wrote: “If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.”
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers no safe harbor from criticism to the president of the United States or to a tin pot African dictator visiting the United States. Withering and stinging criticism are the price of political office in America. Holding political office in America is a solemn constitutional duty and criticizing political leaders and institutions is a bedrock constitutional right of all citizens. All American politicians understand and live by one rule: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” It’s good advice Zenawi should heed.
Just as I am for free speech, I am also for civility, affability and cordiality. But Zenawi must understand that he cannot get what he cannot give. In his stage-managed dramatic appearances at his parliament, he harangues, berates, belittles and humiliates his timid rubber-stampers. He scorns, scowls at, threatens, browbeats and mocks his opposition. He desecrates the memory and scandalizes the names of past Ethiopian leaders who fought European colonialism with bows, arrows and spears and shed blood, sweat and tears to keep Ethiopia free and independent. Today, he has placed on the auction block the land those great leaders fought to keep free for the new colonial masters from India, China and Saudi Arabia. Wikleaks cablegrams even show that he manipulates, badgers, bullies and strong arms diplomats who interact with him and give him counsel to temper his vengefulness with reason and mercy. But in a country where free speech is a secular religion, he should expect that every word he utters will be challenged, every sentence scrutinized and every idea he introduces in the public forum sliced and diced on the chopping block of critical analysis. More specifically, when Zenawi comes to America on official visit, he has to come prepared not only to con the American public and snag billions in handouts but also defend his shameful record of massive human rights violations in Ethiopia.
It would be a crying shame for Zenawi to hop on his plane and go back to Ethiopia mumbling to himself something about the ‘extreme Diaspora’ and so on because he is heckled, disrupted or somehow impeded from speaking… Perhaps this opportunity will afford him a glimpse of the clash of ideas that routinely take place in American universities. He may begin to appreciate the simple truth that ideas are accepted and rejected and arguments won and lost in the cauldron of critical analysis oxygenated by the bellows of free speech, not in prison dungeons where journalists and dissidents are bludgeoned and left to rot… Free speech is the key by which one escapes from the steel bars and stonewalls of ‘prejudice and narrow-mindedness.’ I sincerely hope Zenawi will find that key at Columbia and finally escape from his bleak and desolate planet of ‘prejudice and narrow-mindedness.’
Hope, I hope, springs eternal in Ethiopia. I doubt Zenawi will draw a positive lesson from this trip to America, but I pray he will draw a much bigger lesson from history itself: “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”
“Food is nothing without freedom! We Need Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” Abebe Gellaw
By Mohammed Keita | CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator
Two members of the U.S. Congress, a Republican and a Democrat, have publicly voiced indignation at Ethiopia’s persecution of journalists under the leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, with both declaring that stability and security are enhanced by press freedom.
Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, published a statement Monday in the Congressional Record, the official daily journal of the U.S Congress, following the Camp David G8 Summit last weekend during which President Barack Obama convened four African leaders, including Meles of Ethiopia, for talks on food security in Africa.
In a letter to Obama, CPJ urged the president to engage Meles on ending Ethiopian censorship practices–such as suppressing independent reporting and denying media access to sensitive areas–that undermine international responses to food crises.
“I want to take this opportunity to address the necessity for the United States to help foster stable and democratic nations as partners as we build multilateral coalitions to tackle global issues,” Begich said in his statement. Ethiopia is a key partner of the United States in counterterrorism and regional stability and a major recipient of U.S. humanitarian assistance. Recalling Obama’s 2011 commitment to a G8 declaration on democracy, Begich declared that “as the events in North Africa and the Middle East have shown, supporting reliable autocrats who are helpful on matters of security and economics at the expense of human dignity, basic democratic rights, and access to economic opportunity is more perilous than ever to long-term U.S. national security interests.”
Begich called for the end of the persecution of independent journalists and dissidents rounded up in Ethiopia in the wake of the Arab Spring. “To foster the benefits of a diverse citizenry, the many political prisoners and journalists should be released,” he said. The senator urged colleagues in the U.S. Congress to join him in helping the citizens and government of the Horn of Africa country achieve a national consensus on the value of the free flow of information and make press freedom, as outlined in Ethiopia’s constitution, a reality. “Such are hallmarks of inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and they provide a return of accountability and transparency to both American taxpayers and Ethiopian citizens,” he added.
On Friday, Rep. Edward Royce sent a public letter to Meles in which he expressed “deep concern with the Republic of Ethiopia’s disregard for press freedom.” Royce, a California Republican who chairs a House subcommittee on terrorism, said “national security must not cripple press freedom.” Expressing concern over the prosecution of 11 journalists on terror charges, Royce said that “the judicial process clearly fails to meet international standards,” citing as an example the government’s use of national public media to pressure the courts.
Over the weekend, hundreds of Ethiopian expats gathered near Camp David to protest the country’s slide into authoritarianism, according to news reports. Washington is home to one of the largest Ethiopian diaspora communities in the world, a population that includes three Ethiopian journalists charged in absentia with terrorism in relation to their work, according to CPJ research. A fourth journalist, now languishing in a prison in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, was educated in the Washington area before returning to Ethiopia and launching one of the country’s first independent newspapers. The former editor of another independent Ethiopian paper also lives in Washington after fleeing his homeland in the face of government intimidation.
…. My view is that there is no direct relationship between economic growth and democracy historically or theoretically. But my view is that democracy is a good thing in and of itself irrespective of its impact on economic growth. And my view is that in Africa most of our countries are extremely diverse, that may be the only possibility, the only option of keeping relationships within nations sane. Democracy may be the only viable option for keeping these diverse nations together. Sowe need to democratize but not in order to grow. We need to democratize in order to survive as united sane nations. That’s my view. But I don’t believe in this nighttime, you know, bedtime stories and contrived arguments linking economic growth with democracy. There is no basis for it in history and in my view no basis for it it in economics. And there is no need to have this contrived argument because the case for democracy and can stand and shine on its own…
While visiting Ghana in 2009, President Obama told the following “contrived bedtime story linking economic growth with democracy” to Africans:
Development depends on good governance. History offers a clear verdict: Governments that respect the will of their own people, that govern by consent and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable, and more successful than governments that do not. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny. And now is the time for that style of governance to end…. In the 21st century, capable, reliable, and transparent institutions are the key to success — strong parliaments; honest police forces; independent judges; an independent press; a vibrant private sector; a civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in people’s everyday lives…. History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions. With better governance, I have no doubt that Africa holds the promise of a broader base of prosperity….
My Favorite Bedtime Stories
I enjoy bedtime stories as much as the next guy. My favorite is “Pinocchio in Africa”. The wooden puppet wanted to become a human boy but could not stop telling lies and tall tales. Whenever Pinocchio lied, his nose grew longer.
I like the story of “Puff the Magic Dragon and the Land of Living Lies”. Puff took a little girl called Sandy, who lies a lot, to the Land of the Living Lies where honesty and truthfulness are prosecuted. She meets the famous fibbers Pinocchio and the boy who cried wolf; and saw the famous purple cow that no one has ever seen and a pink elephant.
I also enjoy the morality tales of Aesop, the ancient Ethiopian storyteller. Once upon a time there was a wolf who schemed to snatch sheep grazing in the pasture, but could not because the shepherd was vigilant. One day the wolf found the shorn skin of a sheep and dressed himself in it and joined the flock. Soon he began dining on the sheep one by one until he was discovered by the shepherd. That was the end of the wolf; he could no longer steal, kill and eat the sheep.
George Orwell’s allegorical stories of doubletalk and doublespeak told in “political language” are rather delightful because they “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” So, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” George could have added, “dictatorship is democracy. Tyranny is liberty. Poverty is wealth. Famine is plenty. Censorship is press freedom. Brutality is civility. Mendacity is veracity. Opacity is clarity. Shadow is reality. Depravity is morality and greed is good.”
Oh, Yes! I like children’s rhymes too:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall….
Sane Nations, Insane Dictators and Democrazy
Zenawi said “democracy is the only option of keeping relationships within nations sane”. Here are some true stories of democrazy from the Land of Living Lies:
In April 2008 local elections were held throughout Ethiopia. Freedom House and USDoS report that opposition candidates were subjected to intimidation and arrest by the government prior to the elections making it difficult for them to compete, leading to the opposition boycotting the elections and resulting in a massive victory for government supporters. The ruling party won 99% of the more than three million seats contested.
The May 2010parliamentary elections resulted in a 99.6 percent victory for the ruling EPRDF and its allies,reducing the opposition from 174 to only two seats in the 547 member lower house… Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Sub-Saharan… At US$390, Ethiopia’s per capita income is much lower than the Sub-Saharan African average of US$1,165 in FY 2010, ranking it as the sixth poorest country in the world.
The Ethiopian parliament has adopted a potentially repressive new law which could criminalise the human rights activities of both foreign and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Charities and Societies Proclamation law (2009) is designed to strictly control and monitor civil society in an atmosphere of intolerance of the work of human rights defenders and civil society organisations. The law’s repressive provisions are believed to be an attempt by the Ethiopian government to conceal human rights violations, stifle critics and prevent public protest of its actions ahead of expected elections in 2010.
Ethiopia’s citizens are unable to speak freely, organize political activities, and challenge their government’s policies—through peaceful protest, voting, or publishing their views—without fear of reprisal. Democracy’s technical framework will remain a deceptive and hollow façade so long as Ethiopia’s institutions lack independence from the ruling party and there is no accountability for abuses by state officials.
Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion to outflows of ill-gotten gains between 2000 and 2009. That’s a lot of money to lose to corruption for a country that has a per-capita GDP of just $365. In 2009, illicit money leaving the country totaled $3.26 billion, double the amount in each of the two previous years. The capital flight is also disturbing because the country received $829 million in development aid in 2008. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries on earth as 38.9% of Ethiopians live in poverty, and life expectancy in 2009 was just 58 years. The people of Ethiopia are being bled dry. No matter how hard they try to fight their way out of absolute destitution and poverty, they will be swimming upstream against the current of illicit capital leakage.
Ethiopia trails only Eritrea as the foremost jailer of journalists in Africa. Ethiopia’s repression of the independent press has also driven into exile the largest number of journalists in the world. Yet Zenawi told Aftenposten [Norwegian paper] that ‘We have reached a very advanced stage of rule of law and respect for human rights. Fundamentally, this is a country where democratic rights of people are respected.’
The Ethiopian government is exploiting its vaguely worded anti-terror law to crush peaceful dissent. The anti-terror law itself is a huge problem. The international community, especially the European Union, United States, and United Kingdom, should ask the Ethiopian government hard questions about why it is using this law to crack down on peaceful independent voices.
H.R. 2003 (Ethiopia Democracy and Accountability Act of 2007, sponsored by Cong. Payne passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 2, 2007) requires the secretary of state to support human rights by establishing a mechanism to provide funds to local human rights organizations. The bill supports democratization by directing assistance to strengthen democratic processes, prohibits non-humanitarian assistance to Ethiopia if the ruling party obstructs United States efforts to provide human rights, fosters accountability for the actions the Ethiopian Government has taken that undermine rule of law and fundamental political freedoms…. and holds security forces accountable for human rights abuses related to the demonstrations of 2005…
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Support for Democracy and Human Rights in Ethiopia Act of 2008. Senator LEAHY joins me as an original cosponsor. The purpose of this bill is to reaffirm policy objectives towards Ethiopia and encourage greater commitment to the underpinnings of a true democracy–an independent judiciary and the rule of law, respect for human and political rights, and an end to restrictions on the media and non-governmental organizations…. As we turn a blind eye to the escalating political tensions, people are being thrown in jail without justification and non-government organizations are being restricted, while civilians are dying unnecessarily in the Ogaden region–just like so many before them in Oromiya, Amhara, and Gambella….
The separation between the ruling party and the public administration was blurred at the local level in many parts of the country. The EU EOM directly observed cases of misuse of state resources in the ruling party’s campaign activities. The ruling party and its partner parties won 544 of the 547 seats to the House of Peoples Representatives and all but four of the 1,904 seats in the State Councils…. As a result, the electoral process fell short of international commitments for elections, notably regarding the transparency of the process and the lack of a level playing field for all contesting parties.
The EU report is trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage. The report is not about our election. It is just the view of some Western neo-liberals who are unhappy about the strength of the ruling party. Anybody who has paper and ink can scribble whatever they want.
Such are the nightmarish bedtime stories of Meles Zenawi’s Democrazy in Ethiopia!
White House spokesman Jay Carney announced last week that President Obama has invited the presidents of Ghana, Tanzania, Benin and Meles Zenawi to attend the G8 Summit (the forum for the governments of eight of the world’s largest economies) for a discussion of food security on May 19 at Camp David (Presidential retreat) in Maryland. The U.S. has been handing out food aid to the African continent for decades. Now President Obama says there is another looming “food crises” in Africa. Oxfam says, “All signs point to a drought becoming a catastrophe if nothing is done soon.” The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has issued appeals for an extra $70 million to aid some 800,000 households in the drought-hit Sahel region in West Africa. Ethiopia and Somalia are expected to be ground zero for the anticipated famine. According to the April 25, 2012 report of the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), southern Ethiopia will most likely experience famine: “The anticipated below-average rains will have significant negative impact on crop production, pasture regeneration, and the replenishment of water resources throughout the region, with the most severe and immediate impactin belg-dependent areas of southern Ethiopia.” Over the past couple or so years, I have written over one-half dozen commentaries on famine and food shortages in Ethiopia. (See links below.)
The Hunger Word Games in Ethiopia
Ethiopian governments over the past four decades have blamed food shortages and famines on everything except their own indifference, incompetence and negligence. Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 pretended there was no famine until “The Hidden Famine” by Jonathan Dimbleby was aired to a shocked and angry Ethiopian public. Former socialist junta leader Mengistu was arrogantly dismissive of the 1984-85 famine in which an estimated one million people perished. Mengistu would contemptuously respond to reporters by challenging them, “What famine?”
Zenawi is more clever than his predecessors. He plays public relations and semantic games with famine in the country. He will use any word, except the “F” word, to describe the chronic and massive food shortages in the country. For Zenawi there is “no famine in Ethiopia”, only “spot shortages,” “severe malnutrition”, “food insecurity”, “food crisis”, “serious drought” and so on. “Food shortages” are not the result of poor agricultural planning and practices, official incompetence, massive corruption, criminal negligence, etc., but are caused by “drought conditions,” “erratic rains” “damaged or delayed crops”, “deforestation”, “soil erosion,” “overgrazing” and other ecological factors. In January 2012, Zenawi once again denied famine in Ethiopia in a CNN interview: “Ethiopia is facing a major famine. How can you justify spending on a military operation in another country when your own people are starving?” Zenawi responded, “There is no famine in Ethiopia as all humanitarian organizations will tell you. There is a serious drought, but we are able to keep our people fed….”
The international poverty mongers/pimps (PMPs) have invented a “scientific” classification system for “food shortages” behind which Zenawi has been able to hide the true magnitude and severity of the problem in the country. The euphemisms of the PMPs avoid the “F” word altogether regardless of the extremity of the food shortage. For the PMPs the conditions fall into one of the following categories: “Acute Food Insecurity, Stressed, Crisis, Emergency and Catastrophe.” It is “scientifically” impossible to have famine in Africa! So the conspiracy of silence goes on to keep famine in Ethiopia hidden by clever use of masking euphemisms.
Zenawi and his top lieutenants have been promising to end “food shortages caused by drought” in a very short time. In 2009, Simon Mechale, head of the country’s “Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency”, proudly declared: “Ethiopia will soon fully ensure its food security.” For several years now, Zenawi has been advertising his “Productive Safety Net Programme” as the mechanism to end the “cycle of dependence on food aid” by bridging “production deficits and protecting household and community assets”. In October 2011 Zenawi told his party faithful: “We have devised a plan which will enable us to produce surplus and be able to feed ourselves by 2015 without the need for food aid.” Zenawi’s “plan to produce surplus” is by “leasing” out millions of hectares of the country’s prime agricultural land to so-called international investors (land grabbers) whose only aim is to raise crops for export. Ethiopia will produce food to feed other nations while Ethiopians starve. Zenawi has adamantly opposed private ownership of land, which by all expert accounts is the single most important factor in ensuring food security in any nation. Yet last year, food inflation in Ethiopia remained at 47.4 percent.
Food has been used as a political weapon in Ethiopia. Hunger has been the new weapon of choice to generate support for Zenawi’s regime and to decimate his political rivals. Zenawi has been pretty successful in crushing the hearts, minds and spirits of the people by keeping their stomachs empty. Those who oppose Zenawi’s regime are not only denied humanitarian food and relief aid, they are also victimized through a system of evictions, denial of land or reduction in plot size as well as denial of access to loans, fertilizers, seeds, etc. In the case of the people of Gambella in western Ethiopia, entire communities have been forced off the land to make way for Indian “investors” in violation of international conventions that protect the rights of indigenous peoples. Human Rights Watch, among other organizations, has raised serious concerns over the misuse of humanitarian food aid: “The Ethiopian government is routinely using access to aid as a weapon to control people and crush dissent. If you don’t play the ruling party’s game, you get shut out. Without effective, independent monitoring, international aid will continue to be abused to consolidate a repressive single-party state.” In 2009, U.S. State Department promised to investigate allegations that “$850 million in food and anti-poverty aid from the U.S. is being distributed on the basis of political favoritism by the current prime minister’s party.” No report has been issued.
In 2011, U.S. Census Bureau made the frightening prediction that Ethiopia’s population by 2050 will more than triple to 278 million. Ethiopia’s chronic “food insecurity” is expected to get increasingly worse culminating in a “Malthusian catastrophe” (where disease, starvation, war, etc. will reduce the population to the level of food production) in the foreseeable future. Zenawi’s regime has failed to implement a national family planning program which will avert such a catastrophe.
Famine in Ethiopia is Ninety Percent Man-Made
In 2011, Wolfgang Fengler, a lead economist for the World Bank, in a refreshingly honest moment for an international banker said, “The famine in the Horn of Africa is a result of artificially high prices for food and civil conflict than natural and environmental causes. This crisis is manmade. Droughts have occurred over and again, but you need bad policymaking for that to lead to a famine.” In other words, it is bad and poor governance that is at the core of the famine problem in Ethiopia, not drought or other environmental causes. Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s international director, after visiting Ethiopia observed: “Drought does not need to mean hunger and destitution. If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores, and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them.” Martin Plaut, BBC World Service News Africa editor explains that the “current [Ethiopian food] crisis is in part the result of policies designed to keep farmers on the land, which belongs to the state and cannot be sold.” So the obvious questions are: Why does a regime that has rejected socialism and is presumably committed to a free market economy insist on complete state ownership of land? Why is there not an adequate system of irrigation for crops, grain storages and wells to harvest rains throughout the country? Does Zenawi really have a food security policy for the country?
The Hunger Games at Camp David
After four decades at the humanitarian food aid trough, it is unlikely that Ethiopia will achieve food security even in the distant future. President Obama is rightly concerned over the “food shortages” in the Horn and the Sahel in the coming year. Last month, the United States pledged to provide nearly $200 million in additional humanitarian aid to the Horn in anticipation of “poor rains and drought”. In 2011, the U.S. provided over $1.1 billion in humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia.
On May 19, President Obama and the G8 leaders will have to face some tough questions: What is the moral hazard of endlessly supplying food relief to the Horn countries? Why should the world continue to help a country that leases millions of hectares of the most fertile land in the country and become the breadbasket for India and the Middle East while its people are starving? Why should the world provide food aid to a country when the ruling regime weaponizes the aid to decimate opposition, crush the democratic aspirations of the people and flagrantly violate human rights? Does aiding dictators who use food aid for political purposes end famine and food shortages in Africa?
The G8 leaders can talk about “food shortages” until the cows come home, but the answer to famine in Ethiopia and in the Horn is not never ending handouts to starving populations and free lunches to panhandling dictators. Handouts create a moral hazard of negative dependency by recipients which incapacitates them from fending for themselves. Zenawi and the other African dictators have no incentive to address the “food shortage” issue because they are absolutely and positively sure that the U.S. and other G8 countries will ALWAYS deliver humanitarian food aid to their starving populations year after year. As a world leader, the U.S. has a moral obligation to provide humanitarian food aid to famine victims; but it also has the moral responsibility of leveraging the billions in handouts (development aid, loans from the multilateral institutions and budget support payments) to dictators to promote democracy, human rights and rule of law in Africa.
In May 2010, Zenawi’s party won 99.6 percent of the seats in parliament. Despite two decades of one-party domination, Zenawi has not been able to do much to address the structural problem of food insecurity in the country. But he has been blowing his horn about bogus stratospheric economic growth. Ethiopians suffer from chronic food shortages and famine because they lack a political framework that can deal effectively with the problem. The Indian economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen argued that the best way to avert famines is by institutionalizing democracy and strengthening human rights: “No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy” because democratic governments “have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.” Famines are kept hidden from public view by jailing opposition leaders, journalists and civic society advocates who could sound the alarm over an impending famine.
What Should the U.S. Do for Ethiopia?
All the U.S. needs to do for Ethiopia is practice what it preaches. In 2009 in Accra, Ghana President Obama preached:
Development depends on good governance. History offers a clear verdict: Governments that respect the will of their own people, that govern by consent and not coercion, are more prosperous, they are more stable, and more successful than governments that do not. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny. And now is the time for that style of governance to end…. In the 21st century, capable, reliable, and transparent institutions are the key to success — strong parliaments; honest police forces; independent judges; an independent press; a vibrant private sector; a civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in people’s everyday lives…. History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions. With better governance, I have no doubt that Africa holds the promise of a broader base of prosperity….
Listening to Zenawi plead for more aid before the G8 to deal with the looming “food crises” (but “no famine”) is like listening to the man who killed his parents and asked for leniency from the court because he is an orphan. Now that’s chutzpah!
Amharic translations of recent commentaries by the author may be found at:
Editor’s Note — The Obama administration has cynically betrayed the people of Ethiopia by inviting Meles Zenawi to Camp David. Zenawi has arrested, tortured and brutalized thousands, including journalists and political opponents; he has stolen many elections; he has gunned down 193 innocents protesting electoral fraud; he has massacred civilians in Gambella, Ogaden, Afar and Oromia. He is a war criminal that should be hauled before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
The Obama administration is lending respectability to a criminal because Zenawi is a staunch ally in the war against terrorism. No matter Zenawi has terrorized 85 million Ethiopians for the last 20 years. Zenawi has zero legitimacy among his own people. The legitimacy of this international beggar comes from hypocritical donors who show little sympathy for the suffering of the Ethiopian people.
We call on all Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia to come out in droves on May 19 to say no to hypocrisy and to lending respectability to a ruthless, manipulative tyrant.
Mass Protest planned against Meles Zenawi in Camp David
All Ethiopians joining hands to demand Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s dictator, to be disinvited from the G8 Summit for crimes he committed against humanity.
Various Political Parties, Civic Societies, Religious groups, and many activists worked together to call these protests and campaigns jointly. You are invited to be part of these historic campaigns.
Monday May 14th, 9AM – Protest at White House
Monday May 14th, 12PM – Protest at Indian Embassy (Stop Land Grab) (2107 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC)
Saturday May 19th – Camp David, MD
Transportation will be provided from Washington Metro Area. To register Call or text (571) 278-5346 or (571) 239-7001
Traditional campaign
Writing Letter, Email, phone, and fax campaign to White House, State Department,
Congress, and Senate (your elected officials)
Zenawi had just started pontificating about “agricultural transformation in Africa” and how a “partnership between the farmer and the private sector” would have to be formed to meet the continent’s food needs. But he could only get out 30 words before he was shouted down. It was an incredible sight to behold. Zenawi’s head snapped to attention when he first heard his name and title. He probed the audience confusedly to locate the heckler. When he made eye contact with Abebe, he came unhinged: His eyes bugged out with sheer horror. His jaw dropped as if he had seen a ghost. He looked like the proverbial deer in a headlight; or to use an African metaphor, the vaunted guerilla hero froze like a frightened wildebeest looking into the eyes of a hungry lion. The expression on his face was total disbelief. “Is that Abebe Gellaw? It can’t be! I thought I had him canned in Kality Prison with Eskinder Nega, Reeyot Alemu and Woubshet Taye. What the hell is he doing here?!?”
White House spokesman Jay Carney announced last week that President Obama has invited the presidents of Ghana, Tanzania, Benin and Meles Zenawi to attend the G8 Summit (the forum for the governments of eight of the world’s largest economies) for a discussion of food security on May 19 at Camp David (Presidential retreat) in Maryland. The U.S. has been handing out food aid to the African continent for decades. Now President Obama says there is another looming “food crises” in Africa. Oxfam says, “All signs point to a drought becoming a catastrophe if nothing is done soon.” The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has issued appeals for an extra $70 million to aid some 800,000 households in the drought-hit Sahel region in West Africa. Ethiopia and Somalia are expected to be ground zero for the anticipated famine. According to the April 25, 2012 report of the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), southern Ethiopia will most likely experience famine: “The anticipated below-average rains will have significant negative impact on crop production, pasture regeneration, and the replenishment of water resources throughout the region, with the most severe and immediate impactin belg-dependent areas of southern Ethiopia.” Over the past couple or so years, I have written over one-half dozen commentaries on famine and food shortages in Ethiopia. (See links below.)