This is a misinformed report or a PR scam. What the writer failed to see is that unlike the American farmers, Ethiopian farmers do not own their land and are forced to sell their farm products to Woyanne-controlled agricultural companies at below market prices. Only the Woyanne and Al Amoudi mega corporations are the beneficiaries of the “Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.” The farmer will continue get the crumbs left from the Woyanne crime family. Where are Ethiopian economists who can take this scam apart and expose it for what it is?

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By ROGER THUROW, The Wall Street Journal

MOJO, Ethiopia — This country has some of Africa’s most fertile land, with fields of wheat and corn stretching to the horizon. Yet a few years ago, 14 million Ethiopians stood at the brink of starvation, saved only by vast international aid.

Now Ethiopia has hopes of breaking its deadly cycle of famine. Not with a Green Revolution, but with a market revolution.

The means is the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, which is expected to open next month in the capital, Addis Ababa. The dawn of modern trading here comes 160 years after the Chicago Board of Trade transformed American agriculture by giving farmers more choice in how and when they market their crops. Economists in Ethiopia foresee similar gains from an exchange, believing it will encourage farmers to think longer-term and avoid decisions that can turn an ordinary crop shortfall into a calamity.

Their timing couldn’t be better, with global grain prices soaring. From a world-wide perspective, more-productive farming here could help meet a surge in grain demand that has Western growers straining to keep up. World stockpiles of one crop that will be traded on the exchange here, wheat, are projected to reach 30-year lows.

First, though, the new exchange will have to succeed in a land long stalked by poverty, hunger and conflict. Ethiopia presents many challenges for a sophisticated free-market instrument: spotty telecommunications and other ragged infrastructure, an economy trying to shake a legacy of Marxist thinking, and an unstable neighborhood of Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.

Good Rains

Still, blessed by good rains in recent years, agriculture has been propelling double-digit economic growth. Emblematic of the tension between Ethiopia’s poverty and possibility is a vendor on the street in front of the glistening green-glass building that will house the new exchange: He sells books like “The Power of Positive Thinking” and “You Can Win” from a plastic tarp laid on the dirt.
[Eleni Gabre-Madhin]

“The biggest revolution of the exchange is that our farmers will start to think national and global instead of local,” said Eleni Gabre-Madhin, an economist who is the force behind the exchange. Today, “they think only of their nearest market down the road,” she added. But “if they can see that global markets are up, that there is demand for the harvest, they will make better decisions on how much to plant, how much to invest in seeds and fertilizer, when to sell. We’ll start seeing bigger gains in agricultural productivity.”

As she spoke, welders were finishing the exchange’s trading pit. There, buyers and sellers will engage in “open outcry” bidding on corn, wheat, beans and sesame, and later coffee and a local grain called teff. (The exchange won’t handle nonagricultural commodities, at least at the beginning.)

Around the country, a network of exchange warehouses will offer places where farmers can deposit their crops until they want to sell them. No longer will most farmers have to sell right after harvest, depressing prices, for lack of storage.

Electronic screens set up in about 20 market towns, meanwhile, will display real-time prices, helping farmers decide when to sell. Farmers and buyers will benefit from standardized grading and certification of crops at the warehouses, producing a level of quality control now missing.

It’s a radical shift from an existing system of middlemen and donkey-drawn wagons that’s not much changed since the Middle Ages. Small farmers with a few acres produce 95% of Ethiopia’s crops. They commonly sell to the first merchant to stop by after harvest, taking whatever price is offered. Reflecting the small scale, grain in Ethiopia is packaged in sacks, a labor-intensive system that farmers in the U.S. Midwest wouldn’t dream of.

Produce moves from one trader to another before reaching the consumer. At each stop, it’s re-inspected and repackaged, and the price is increased. The Ethiopian farmer may get only one-third of the final price.

Some small farmers belong to large cooperatives, but methods remain primitive. At a co-op in the village of Mojo on a recent day, dozens of women sat on a floor preparing a bean harvest the way their ancestors did. With quick hands, they plucked weeds, stems and pebbles from several tons of white pea beans and then tossed them in the air to shake off any remaining dirt, catching them in reed baskets.

Demere Demissie, the co-op’s general manager, strode into this backward scene, looking forward. “Soon, we’ll be connected to the world,” he proclaimed.

When the exchange opens, he will take the beans and other crops grown by the co-op’s 19,000 members to one of the new warehouses, where they’ll be weighed and graded. Individual farmers can do the same. In return, farmers will receive a warehouse receipt that they can sell on the commodities exchange, either right away or later when prices have recovered from harvest-season lows.

The exchange system, by showing current trades and prices, will help farmers decide when to sell. “If a trader in Addis [Ababa] offers us, say, 200 birr,” says Mr. Demissie, citing the Ethiopian currency, “we can say, ‘No, Chicago is at 250, London is even higher.’ Before, we have to take the Addis offer. Now we will know what’s out there.”

Mr. Demissie expects to be able to trade for the co-op, as a member of the exchange. Other farmers can trade through brokers. After they sell a warehouse receipt, the produce it represents will move from storage to the buyer.

The exchange will begin with spot trading and later add futures, or contracts for delivery of a set amount at a set date. Among other innovations, farmers will be able to lock in a price for a crop they haven’t yet grown, just as Iowa corn farmers do through the Board of Trade.

Futures and other aspects of the system should help spread the risk of price swings, which until now has been borne solely by Ethiopia’s farmers. This is what made a crop shortfall in 2003 far worse than it might have been.

The previous two years had produced bumper crops. But farmers — needing cash to repay planting debts, and having no way to store their surplus — flooded local markets with produce right after the big harvest. Prices collapsed by as much as 80%. There was no market system to sell and move these surplus crops efficiently to food-short regions in Ethiopia or elsewhere. With prices so low, some farmers didn’t even go to the expense of harvesting crops and hauling them to market, leaving 300,000 tons to rot in the fields.

Farmers lost not just money but motivation. Unlike U.S. and European growers of certain crops, those in Ethiopia don’t receive subsidies that would lead them to plant even if they expect market prices to be low. So the following season, farmers did whatever they could to cut expenses — reducing fertilizer use, shutting off irrigation systems and simply not planting some fields. Many planted just enough to feed their families.

Relying on Food Aid

Bulbula Tulle, a commercial corn and wheat grower, had his best harvests in 2001 and 2002 yet lost $200,000 when the bumper crops drove down prices. In 2003, he let 2,200 of his 2,700 acres sit idle. When drought struck, the result of such cutbacks was a drastically reduced harvest. Famine spread. While his countrymen relied on international food aid, weeds grew in Mr. Tulle’s fields.

“If we had the exchange then, maybe we wouldn’t have had the famine,” he says. In the bumper-crop years, “maybe China or Chicago could have bought the surplus grain and kept the price from falling. If we had known we could sell our surplus, we would have planted as normal” in 2003. “Instead, we were blind.” Mr. Tulle was among the first to sign up to be a member of the commodity exchange.

Says Mr. Demissie: “Only price creates incentive to produce as much as possible.”

Boosting Food Output

Seeing the famine develop, Ms. Gabre-Madhin seethed. For years, while at the World Bank and the U.S.-based International Food Policy Research Institute think tank, she had advocated modernizing Ethiopia’s farm markets. The country had made a big push to boost food output after an epic famine in 1984, but she warned that the effort would falter unless there were markets that could sop up periodical huge harvests without radically depressing prices. “The market side hadn’t been thought about at all,” says Ms. Gabre-Madhin, who returned to her native Ethiopia to study the markets.

Elsewhere in the developing world — in China, India and South America — commodity exchanges proliferated as the Green Revolution took hold. But in Africa, which largely missed out on the scientific and technological advances of the Green Revolution, only South Africa, with its modern agriculture system, established a flourishing exchange.

After the 2003 famine, the Ethiopian government made a commodities exchange a priority, and contributed about $2.4 million to its $21 million startup budget. The rest came from the World Bank, United Nations agencies and individual countries such as the U.S. Ms. Gabre-Madhin, heading the project, gathered a staff and set out to study exchanges in India, China and South America.

The biggest revelation came in Chicago. “Wow, there it is. It’s right in front of us!” she shouted as her taxi turned onto Chicago’s LaSalle Street last spring, with the Board of Trade tower looming ahead. Later, after exploring the trading floor, she said, “This is what it really is — the color, the people, the excitement, the numbers.”

Her enthusiasm grew as she learned about the state of the American farm trade in the early 1800s, before the Board of Trade was formed. Most grain went to market in the weeks following harvest, hammering prices. Farmers sometimes ended up dumping their crops at a loss. “Pretty much like Ethiopian farmers today,” she said to her colleagues.

She returned home convinced the planned new commodities exchange could bring Ethiopia the same innovations the Board of Trade brought the U.S.: uniform quality standards, fair “price discovery” and futures contracts. And if it’s successful, she thinks, it could be the catalyst for other development, such as better rural telecommunications and greater irrigation from the country’s bountiful water resources.

Others also have big hopes. The U.N.’s World Food Program, which feeds the hungry, sees the exchange as possibly helping it reduce food-distribution expenses. Rising food and fuel costs are squeezing the WFP’s budget. If it can buy more of its food from places within Africa such as Ethiopia, the agency can cuts its transport costs to feeding stations on the continent. The WFP also believes consistent purchases on the exchange would encourage greater production by Ethiopia’s small farmers.

Having a commodity exchange won’t do anything about drought or insects, nor about the backward technology most farmers here still use. The exchange faces many challenges in introducing a modern financial instrument in a land of such poverty. Many farmers have little formal education, and still do their plowing walking behind oxen. Farm-to-market transport relies on donkeys or five-ton Isuzu trucks that race over the rugged roads. (They’re called “al Qaedas” for the way they terrorize other traffic.) Layers of traders accustomed to setting prices between themselves will be exposed to the transparency of a trading floor.

At a training session for exchange members, traders said they were counting on the new system to end their isolation from traders elsewhere in the world. As things stand, “we’re dependent on the information provided by our buyers who contact us,” said Solomon Tekeba, who deals in beans, corn and sesame seeds. “They won’t tell us somebody else is offering a better price.”

He pointed to another trader: “I don’t even know what price he’s selling for, and he doesn’t know what I’m getting.”

Ingida Kelkilay, a small farmer from the Mojo region, was looking forward to having more flexibility about when to sell his crops. “In the past, we’ve had to take what we can get,” he said. “Now finally we’ll be able to profit from our sweat.”

Write to Roger Thurow at [email protected]

By Tsegaye Tadesse

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian rebels said on Wednesday they had killed 43 [Woyanne] soldiers during two weeks of battles in the remote Ogaden region, but the government said there had not even been fighting in the area.

“The bulk of the fighting has taken place in northern Ogaden in and around Nogob province,” the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said in a statement.

Reporters are generally barred from the area and there was no independent verification.

The rebels said dozens of soldiers were wounded and a government armoured car destroyed in the clashes.

Zemedhun Tekle, Ethiopia’s [Dis]Information Ministry spokesman, said the rebel statement was untrue and the guerrillas were on the run.

“They are in no position now to challenge government troops,” he told Reuters. “The ONLF is no longer a fighting force. If there are any remnants left, they are in hiding.”

(Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

A list of candidates for the April 2008 elections representing Addis Ababa and its sub-cities has been released today by the Woyanne-controlled Electoral Board of Ethiopia… Read more at zikkir News Service

በአዲስ አበባ ከተማ ለቀጣዩ የሚያዝያ የህዝብ ተወካዮች ም/ቤት የማሟያና የክፍለ ከተማ/የቀበሌ/ ም/ቤትየሚወዳደሩ እጩዎች ዝርዝር በዛሬው እለት ይፋ ሆነ፡፡ ዝርዝሩን የሚያሰራጩ ከ300 በላይ አባላት ተመድበዋል፡፡

በምርጫ ውድድሩ የኢትዮጵያውያን ዴሞክራሲያዊ ሃይሎች ህብረት፤ የኦሮሞ ፌዴራላዊ ዴሞክራሲያዊ ንቅናቄ፤ የመላው ኢትዮጵያውያን ብሄራዊ ንቅናቄ፤ የኢትጵያውያን ዴሞክራሲያዊ ህብረት፤ ኢህአዴግ፤ የግል ተወዳዳሪዎችና የአየለ ጫሚሶ ቅንጅት ይገኙበታል፡፡

አብዛኞቹ ተቃዋሚ ፓርቲዎች እጩዎቻቸውን ያቀረቡት ለተወካዮች ም/ቤት የማሟያ ምርጫ ሲሆን በአብዛኞቹ ክፍለ ከተሞች ከፍተኛ ፖለቲካዊ አንድምታ ያለውን የክፍለ ከተሞች ም/ቤት በተለያዩ ምክንያቶች ሳይሳተፉባቸው ቀርተዋል፡፡ የወያኔ ዋንኛ ትኩረት ደግሞ እነዚህ የምርጫ እድሎች በመሆናቸው ሙሉ ሃይሉን በክፍለ ከተማ ም/ቤቶች ላይ በማድረግ ከፍተኛ ቁጥር ያላቸው እጩዎችን አቅርቧል፡፡ የእጩዎቹን መስፈርትም ከዚህ በፊት ያደርግ እንደነበረው ‹‹በታማኝነት›› ከማድረግ ይልቅ በምርጫ 97 ቅንጅት የተማረውን ሃይል በማሰባሰቡ ያገኘውን ህዝባዊ ድጋፍ ግንዛቤ ውስጥ በመክተት ዝቅተኛው የትምህርት ደረጃ 12ኛን ያጠናቀቀ እንዲሆን በማድረግ የሃይል ሚዛኑን ለመቀየር ሲንቀሳቀስ ቆይቷል፡፡ በዚህ መሰረትም ለምርጫው ከሚቀርቡት ከ60 በመቶ በላይ ያህሉ የመጀመርያ ድግሪ ያላቸው እንዲሆኑ አድርጓል፡፡ በዝርዝሩ ዙርያ ተቃዋሚዎች በዚህ ሳምንት መግለጫ ይሰጣሉ ተብሎ ይጠበቃል፡፡

በክልል ለምርጫው ከቀረቡ የተቃዋሚ ፓርቲ እጩዎች በደረሱባቸው የተለያዩ ተጽእኖዎች የተወሰኑት ራሳቸውን ማግለላቸውን ፓርቲዎቻቸው የገለጹ ሲሆን በአዲስ አበባ ወረዳ 18 ሪቼ አከባቢ መኢብንን በመወከል እጩ ሆነው የቀረቡትና ቀድሞ የፓርላማ ፕሮቶኮል ሹም እንደነበሩ የሚታወቁት ወ/ሮ ገነት አየለ ተመሳሳይ ማስፈራርያ ደረሰኝ በማለት ራሳቸውን ከምርጫው ማግለላቸውን ሊቀ መንበሩ አቶ መስፍን ሽፈራው ገልጸዋል፡፡

ይህ በእንዲህ እንዳለ በጋሞጎፋ ዞን የዛላ ወረዳ የቅንጅት አስተባባሪ የነበሩትና ባለፈው ሳምንት ከስራ ቦታቸው ታፍነው በመወሰድ ታስረው የነበሩት አቶ አየለ የመጨረሻ ማስጠንቀቂያ ተሰጥቷቸው ተፈተዋል፡፡ አስተባባሪው ከስራ አስፈጻሚው ቡድን ጋር አንዳችም አይነት ግንኙነት ሲያደርጉ ቢገኙ ሃላፊነቱን እንደሚወስዱ አስፈርመው እንደፈቷቸው ያገኘነው መረጃ ያመለክታል፡፡

By Joe Nelson, The San Bernardino Sun

Dr. Richard Parker, a Loma Linda University School of Dentistry graduate, and a team of dental students recently returned from a medical missionary trip to western Ethiopia, where they provided medical and dental service to more than 350 people.

Parker and his team spent two weeks at Gimbie Adventist Hospital. They also traveled the countryside to serve Ethiopians who rarely have dental care available.

Parker, who runs a private dental practice in Calimesa, said the missions are aimed at providing dental students an opportunity to practice dentistry in a setting outside the traditional clinic environment.

Parker’s first dental mission was to Guatemala in 1967.

“It gives you a sense of satisfaction to be able to do that, and I think the students get that same satisfaction,” Parker said.

Accompanying Parker on the most recent trip were his wife, Bonnie, their son, Scott, who is a dental student at Loma Linda University, and Scott’s wife, Erika, a physician. Dental student Tate Montgomery of Redlands also went on the trip.

By Melaku Tegegne

In this article, I would like to compare the press freedom of Ethiopia with that of Russia, China, and North Korea.

Press Freedom in Russia

Time Magazine, in its special edition devoted to Vladimir Putin – Person of the Year 2007 – revealed the grim picture of press freedom in Russia “today, for example, the Russian government doesn’t just have supporters at the national television stations; it owns the stations outright. In a meeting at the Kremlin before I began my trip, Putin’s spokesman didn’t even try to deny that national news was slanted in the government’s favour. But he said the regional media were thriving and independent. ‘Study them,’ he said, and ‘you will understand that this is the freest country in the world.’”

The freest country in the world? Sarcastic at its best. On this point, the journalist who wrote the article went on to say that: “I met journalists throughout my travels and found the Kremlin’s assessment disingenuous at best. In America, you are free to criticize Bush, a television talk-show host told me in his kitchen in Novogorod, wrote the journalist and added ‘Me, too. I am also free to criticize Bush.’ He laughed. Then, not smiling, he said, ‘I am actually scared to be talking to you. Time Magazine is far away. But if I express my opinions, I will have to face the authorities – not Putin, but someone here on a local or provincial level. I will lose my job.’”

The writer states that the will of the central government is well understood by the officials at all levels of the government – how to silence dissenting views or opinions – and gave it the name “grass-roots autocracy”. Noting further, he says, “This is a new phenomenon in the post-Soviet era, but in the words of the talk-show host, Russians have “historical experience” of voluntarily and enthusiastically carrying out the perceived will of the supreme leader.

This heavy-handed action or a subtle method of restraint on the press freedom in Russia was given justification that in the 1990s there was much freedom of the press, and the purpose of the whole exercise now is to “systematize political discourse”. Again it is an ironical statement made against freedom of expression. Briefly stated, the press freedom or freedom of expression in Russia at present is meant only to serve the interests of the new ruling class. The majority people of Russia are deprived one of their basic rights.

The same applies to my homeland, Ethiopia. The principal of the governing law of the press, which is often not expressly stated, is the same as the Russian (unwritten) law. The unwritten law in both cases is “the will of the ruling elite”. The only difference between the two is that in Ethiopia, ideology is added. There is what they call “revolutionary democracy”, reminiscent of Marxism and Leninism. So freedom of expression falls under these two foul practices – ideology and hidden will of the ruling elite. Hence, any journalist who tries to counter both the expressed and unexpressed will of the ruling elite group is knocked out by legal or forced means. That is why many Ethiopian journalists of the private press have been incarcerated, thrown out of jobs, or forced to flee the country.

In Russia, in the past few years, many journalists have been killed in a mysterious way, as stated in Time Magazine, referred to above. But the question is that how can the deaths of journalists, who have respected places in society, be mysterious for a government like Russia which has a very strong security system, a sophisticated means of control?

The nefarious practice in the case of Ethiopia is that the few mass media are now largely controlled and staffed by kinsmen and women of the Prime Minister. Just to mention one example, when I left Ethiopia in 2001, Assefa Bekele, was head of Ethiopian Television. During the previous military regime, both of us were ordinary reporters; I was at Addis Zemen newspaper, and he was at Ethiopian TV. Assefa became head of Ethiopian TV during the time of the new government, not because of his exceptional talent or merit, but because of nepotism: he is a kinsman of the ruling elite.

This is naked tribalism or racism based upon nepotism or abuse of state power. This kind of nepotism was imitated by the Prime Minister and his cohorts from the late Somali dictator, Ziad Barre. He gave all the higher echelons of the government to his kinsmen and women from the Merihan clan. This nefarious practice by the present government of Ethiopia is practiced in all government ministries, commissions, agencies, military institutions, higher education institutions, etc. In all places, one can find “a guardian angel”, a watchdog of the ruling elite. It is very sad to see such a tribalistic situation in one of the ancient countries of the world in the 21st century,

Press Freedom in China

Under the title “Ruthless Media Manipulation”, the Economist Magazine in its special issue of December 22, 2007, (page 124), states how Mao, the founder of modern China, manipulated the media.

Chairman Mao had his “Little Red Book”, a guide to the ideology to be followed by the country. Meles Zenawi authored a voluminous draft work – 700 pages – called “Revolutionary Democracy”, an ideology book for the 21st century of Ethiopia. He wrote the book in 2001 during a crisis period that he faced from his closest friends, founders of his liberation movement. The draft was not published in a book form, which is in some ways good for circumventing the wider dissemination of the ideology throughout the country.

Let me add one more point.

Like Chairman Mao, PM Meles has established a system where he can only talk to a very select group of journalists. The former Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, had also a similar fashion. These select groups of journalists are either cadres or kinsmen and women of the government officials of the day.

Press Freedom in North Korea

I visited North Korea in 1989, during the International Festival of Youth and Students, representing young Ethiopian journalists. In my stay with the delegation of the Ethiopian youth and students, numbering 150 persons, I observed that in North Korea, there are no BBC, CNN, CBC, ABC, CBS, or any other international radio, TV, magazines, or newspapers. It is a closed system to the outside world. In the international news broadcasts on North Korean TV, one can listen to their version of international news, which is heavily biased in favour of the Communist state. Even our music cassettes and players were taken by the security at Pyongyang airport and returned to us when we went back home.

I saw very few books on shelves, and these books are nothing but portray the juche ideology (“man is the master of everything and decides everything”) architected by the late Korean leader, Kim Il Sun. There are also some books written by the current leader, Kim Jong Il. He was praised as the guardian of journalism and the arts.

I mentioned the North Korean experience in press freedom to make a direct link with the current trends in Ethiopia. The government of Meles Zenawi is quickly moving towards the Korean style of suppressing news and information from the international media. Latest reports indicate that the regime blocked the two radio stations based in Washington, DC, and Cologne, Germany, broadcasting in three Ethiopian languages. It also blocked pro-democracy web sites. It has become also a public secret that the regime wiretaps telephone lines of persons who have dissenting views. This simply shows that the Meles regime wants to deny the 70 million people of Ethiopia of the right to information. Following such irresponsible anti-democratic practice, the regime can only drag the all-round development of the country. Without press freedom, free opinion, and ideas, it is inconceivable to envisage a better Ethiopia.

Spin Doctors

In Ethiopia, there are four main spin doctors who manipulate the dissemination of domestic and foreign information. At the forefront comes Bereket Simon, Public Relations Advisor of the Prime Minister. Well known by his notorious activities in the election in 2005, Bereket Simon has rigged the election by illegally knocking out his competitor from the main opposition party and has managed to give interviews to the main international media such as the BBC and CNN. Bereket speaks broken English and this made him a laughing stock among many Ethiopians in the diaspora. How can a person who is not versatile with foreign language, especially English, be a Public Relations Minister?

The second spin doctor is Dr Tekeda Alemu. He is the Deputy Foreign Minister and speechwriter of Meles Zenawi. He spins all the information relating to foreign relations of the country. Although a sophisticated scholar, he lacks integrity and is a well-known opportunist. He is responsible for tarnishing the image of the country, for he has always been providing unsound advice to his bosses, the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister, who lack professionalism, foresight, and wisdom as he does.

Berhan Hailu, the Minister of Information, is the third spin doctor. However, like his predecessor, Bereket Simon, he is also poor in English. It is indeed shameful to see such people in ministerial positions representing the people of Ethiopia in the 21st century.

The last person whom I would like to mention is Wahide Belay, my former colleague at the Ottawa Embassy. He is now the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I laughed when I heard him speaking about the Human Rights and Democracy Act of Ethiopia, a document which was unanimously passed by the US Congress advocating the protection of human rights, as a document which undermines the sovereignty of the country. He said the document considers Ethiopia as one of the 52 states of the USA. Ridiculous, indeed. A twisted argument, lacking any rationality.

In short, as I stated earlier, the current regime is heading fast towards the suppression of free opinion at the mainstream media and academic institutions. It is worrisome indeed to hear nowadays that professors and doctors in academia are signing their contractual agreements by entering oaths of allegiance not to criticize the political system of the country, which is naked tribalism; this does not augur well for the all round development and progress of the country.

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Melaku Tegegne is a former Ethiopian journalist and diplomat, now a peace and democracy activist and can be reached at [email protected]. Blog: http://issues-in-focus.blogspot.com/