We, the current generation of Ethiopians, as a society should be ashamed of our inability to provide food for millions of our children. The latest estimate is that over 6 million Ethiopians are facing starvation and millions of children are malnourished, while the so-called “government” of Ethiopia is selling the country’s fertile land to Saudi Arabia and India so that they can secure food for their people. And yet a group of Ethiopian tour companies, 25 of them, are currently up in arms against BBC’s coverage of the food shortage in Ethiopia (see below a report by Ash Smyth). These companies could be owned by Ethiopia’s vampire regime that is sucking the life blood of our country. BBC is doing a good job in exposing the starvation in Ethiopia that the regime and its opportunist friends try to hide. The ongoing starvation in Ethiopia should put the regime, and every Ethiopian, to shame.
Ethiopian tour operators attack BBC’s doom-laden coverage
By Ash Smyth (The First Post): Ethiopian tour operators, in London for this month’s World Travel Market, have addressed a furious open letter to the BBC’s Director General, concerning the Corporation’s recent coverage of the drought in Ethiopia. The letter, signed by some 25 companies, accuses the BBC of casually dramatising its broadcasts with footage from the infamous 1984 famine.
“Ethiopia,” they wrote, “has changed beyond all recognition since 1984, yet the BBC insists on showing images from that time. They are very intrusive and are deeply upsetting to many millions of Ethiopians.”
[Ethiopia has changed only for the few Woyannes and their collaborators.]
But beyond the matter of stung pride, the tour operators insist that the “doom-laden scenario” implied by the BBC’s use of old newsreel damages the national image, deterring foreign investment and scaring off tourists. “Investment, trade and tourism are key to Ethiopia’s development,” they claim “more so than aid.”
[BBC runs old newsreel because the regime does not allow reporters to videotape the current famine.]
Which is true. The tourism industry currently accounts for approximately five per cent of Ethiopia’s GDP and tourism is a “featured component” of the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. With about 400,000 tourists a year, the country is still not exactly a hotspot, but adroit marketing of events like the 2007 ‘millennium’ and the annual Addis ‘Marathon’ (10km) have seen visitor numbers increase steadily over the last five years (visitors, incidentally, who invariably comment on how green the country is).
[It is true, the country is green and fertile. So do not say the starvation in Ethiopia is due to rain shortage and drought. That is a lie told by the regime and repeated by poverty-mongers like the World Bank. The problem is that the regime is busy stealing the country’s wealth, instead of governing.]
The Ethiopians are not hiding the scale of the current problem, either – they can’t afford to. Poor rains in the first six months of this year, above-average food prices, and shrinking levels of routine foreign aid, have resulted, by the government’s own figures, in 6.2 million empty mouths. [This is a lie. poor rain is not the cause of food shortage in Ethiopia. If so, why do Saudi and Indian companies come, grow wheat and corn in Ethiopia and export them to their countries?]
Just to see out the rest of 2009, Ethiopia will need some 350,000 metric tonnes of additional foodstuffs: $120m worth.
But “there will not be famine again in Ethiopia,” promises Prime Crime Minister Meles Zenawi. The state has built (with Chinese assistance, of course) more than 100,000km of new roads to facilitate distribution, shelled out for more food, arranged for the berthing of extra supply ships in Djibouti, and increased trucking capacity. “The government has an efficient early warning system and keeps stores of food for times of shortfall.”
[Is that why millions of children are malnourished in Ethiopia?]
Unfortunately, though, Ethiopia’s shortfall policies can still only cater for a couple of million people in a good year. Moreover, these are all emergency measures, addressing the results of food crises, not the causes.
Ethiopia’s constant need for aid stems largely from increasingly frequent droughts, wars both internal and external, and a population (thanks, ironically, to all the improvements of the last quarter-century) expanding by two million a year. But it is also the result of bad agricultural policies.
[There is no drought in Ethiopia. The problem is mismanagement and only mismanagement of the country by the regime that is run by village idiots.]
Chief among these is the fact that all land is state-owned (a hangover, perhaps tellingly, from previous famine-struck eras). This stifles growth, since farmers can’t take out loans against the land, and fosters inefficient subdivision as plots are endlessly divided through the generations.
The result is that, in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world (according to Economist [false] predictions), the agricultural sector employs 80 per cent of the workforce and yet 40 per cent of the country lives below the poverty line; agriculture accounts for half of Ethiopia’s GDP and one of her chief imports is food.
Ethiopians, meanwhile, tend to blame donor nations for dumping grain on them, rather than giving them cash to buy it locally. My enquiries also met with a reminder that more than 12m Britons receive government subsidy of some kind (which would have been a neat comeback if, given the circumstances, the correspondence hadn’t also sported the line: “Ethiopia, the water tower of Africa”).
But whatever the immediate cause of the current crisis, the BBC’s lazy Geldof-ite coverage certainly isn’t helping its effect. Worse, it is not the first time this has happened. In 2004, Michael Buerk’s ’20th anniversary’ broadcasts prompted a raft of cancellations from prospective visitors under the impression that famine was once again rife. Again, Ethiopian tour operators complained.
To date, neither letter has had a response. The BBC well deserves the rap on the knuckles and the Ethiopians deserve an apology.
Bloomberg reports that the Government of Kenya wants to invest in hydroelectric plants in its northern neighbor, Ethiopia, to ensure the country secures enough energy imports to cover a domestic supply shortfall.
Kenya Electricity Generating Corporation’s CEO Eddy Njoroge and Kenyan Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi will hold meetings with government officials in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, next week to discuss the proposal, according to the report.
“We want to be equity holders,” said Njoroge. “Ethiopia has good hydropower potential and it’s very cheap.”
Kenya is also turning its attention to renewable energy, with backing from the World Bank. Speaking during a tour of the Olkaria Geothermal Power Plant on Tuesday, World Bank Vice President for Africa Obiageli Ezekwesili said as the world shifts focus on mitigating effects of climate change, renewable sources of energy such as geothermal was the way of future power production.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has already indicated that Kenya has the capacity to produce its entire electricity requirements from clean energy sources.
The UN agency puts the potential wind energy at 2,000MW and 7,000MW from geothermal and substantial biomass resources.
Ms Ezekwesili revealed that geothermal development was one of the key energy projects the bank would be ready to finance to help boost power production.
“Over a period of 10 years the government would need to invest $4.5 billion in up-scaling the contribution of geothermal energy to 49 percent of its energy mix which we would be willing to partner with the government to make it possible,” she said.
Ms Ezekwesili was however quick to add that the government should not rely on direct foreign investments to finance energy projects adding they should be in the forefront of generating its own funds.
“I am therefore pleased when I hear that KenGen recently had a public infrastructure bond offer to raise its own capital for infrastructure development.”
Also speaking during the tour, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) Managing Director Eddy Njoroge pointed out they were keenly looking towards Solar Thermal energy to further strengthen power production capacity that is also environmentally friendly.
“I will be going to Spain with a team from KenGen to learn from them since they are a world leader when it comes to harnessing solar and thermal energy,” he revealed.
The government has also revealed it was keen on importing hydropower from Ethiopia to stabilise power supply and demand. Mr Njoroge welcomed the move saying it would offer Kenya cheap hydro energy (pegged at four US cents per kilowatt-hour) which could be added on to the national grid.
Ms Ezekwesili further stressed this point adding that Kenya had the potential to solve its energy crisis, which she noted was a major constraint to economic development.
“I have had the opportunity to look at your economic blue print and see that energy is one of the key areas the government is addressing the energy situation,” she said in reference to Vision 2030.
She however urged the government to focus on enhancing its distribution capacity, to make power more accessible to Kenyans as they seek to improve their social status.
Ethiopia’s autocratic leader Meles Zenawi has embarked on a controversial policy of leasing huge amount of land to foreign private investors in an attempt to boost agricultural production for the local market and for export. However, environmentalists and agricultural policy planners fear the leasing of huge tracts of land to private developers in some countries could harm the environment. They are concerned that land which is already under strain from years of degradation will suffer more. They say the loss of trees in particular has caused an imbalance in the eco-system, resulting in regular drought and famine.
By Billie O’Kadameri
(RFI) — Indian businessman Ramakrishna Karuturi, managing Director of Karuturi Global Ltd, one of the world’s top agribusiness transnational corporations, has acquired nearly 765,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia. His company is involved in flower and food production.
Karuturi told Radio France International (RFI) that the world should applaud instead of vilifying efforts by people like him. “When you look at the last ten years of world food production vis-à-vis consumption, I think over six of those ten years, we in the world have eaten more than we produced, and world food stocks are at a debilitatingly low 67-day stock. 67 days of food is disastrous and I don’t think in the history of mankind, the world has ever come this close.”
With very low per capita electricity coverage, nearly 85 percent of Ethiopia’s rural population relies on wood fuel for domestic energy for cooking, according to Dr Gemedo Dalle, Head of Forest Genetic Resources Department at the Ethiopian Institute for Biodiversity and Conservation in Addis Ababa.
This already constitutes an emerging crisis for the government and policy planners. Yet more land tree cover will be under pressure as large-scale land investors flock to Ethiopia taking advantage of the country’s land policy that makes it easy to acquire huge land areas.
Professor Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere, Director of the Addis Ababa-based Knowledge, Capacity and Innovation Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute opposes the leasing of huge tracts of land to foreign investors:
If you are acquiring say hundreds of thousands of hectares of land and you clear all of this land, the impact on the environment is very severe, because you are going to cut all the trees. […] Sometimes they don’t grow food, sometimes it is for bio-fuel plants and other things so it is not going to improve the food security of the people. Sometimes they even cultivate food but the food is shipped completely out.
But 43-year old Karuturi rejects the claims that his investment will not address food security problems in Africa. “Africa is the world’s largest market for food. Africa imports 16 billion dollars worth of food every year. Out of 25 million tonnes of rice that is traded globally per year, 10 million tonnes is imported by Africa. Of course I will sell my food in Africa because Africa is the best place to sell food […] people are acutely short of food here.”
The Ethiopian government insists that its policy will seek to balance investment in agriculture, with a strict regime for protecting the environment.
Abera Deressa is Ethiopia’s Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development. “They cannot harm the environment. We are very clear on this. We in the Ministry of Agriculture are developing an environmental code of practice for the private sector. […] We are also advising them not to cut trees, they have to manage soil erosion.”
“As you know very well the global climate change crisis is because of poor management of the environment in developing countries; the other is by emission of carbon dioxide into the air by developed countries through industrialisation process.”
“But but here in Africa, in our country pollution of the environment is by poor management of agricultural practices; deforestation, degradation, improper land management; these are the factors that we have to control”.
ABYAN, YEMEN (Saba) — Yemen police arrested 25 Ethiopians, including 2 women, who had arrived in Ahwar District in Abyan Province, Interior Ministry has reported.
The refugees, who entered Yemen illegally, were sent to a refugee camp where currently hundreds of other Ethiopians are housed.
Furthermore, 45 Somali refugees, including 4 women and 4 children, have arrived in Ahwar Coast.
GENEVA — A rare historical pocket watch made for an Ethiopian emperor Menelik II has sold to an unknown buyer for £30,000 at an auction in Geneva, Switzerland.
The historically important clock — which is known as ‘The Negus Watch’ and is made from 18K yellow gold — was a gift from Emperor Menelik II to Léon Chefneux in recognition of his contribution to building Ethiopia’s first railway line.
It is thought the watch was probably presented as a welcome gift before the commercial agreement was signed between the emperor and the railway designer.
The watch stands for progress, innovation and modernity and has remained in the same family for over 100 years.
It has a white enamel dial and is paved with rubies and diamonds.
This was the first time it had appeared at auction and it was sold with its presentation case and the original First Class Geneva Observatory Certificate.
