CHARLOTTE, NC (Charlotte Observer) — Staying in Ethiopia was a death sentence for the pretty, thin 17-year-old girl with a heart defect.
Tigist Yemane was weak. She couldn’t walk more than a few steps without passing out.
Without an operation, doctors told her in 2004, she would be dead in six months.
In the United States, the operation to fix her mitral stenosis is relatively simple and involves an overnight hospital stay. In her native Ethiopia, the operation was out of her reach.
Yemane had become the woman of the house after her mother died when she was nine. Her father, she told friends, was an alcoholic and mostly out of the picture. She cooked and cleaned and looked after her younger siblings. And as her ailment progressed, Yemane got weaker and weaker.
John Cederholm, a Charlotte heart surgeon visiting a missionary friend in the Addis Ababa slum, thought he could help. He and Brian Davidson, who runs a sports-based outreach program in Ethiopia, convinced authorities there to give Yemane a temporary visa, telling them they’d ensure her return. For the first time, Yemane had hope for living beyond her teenage years.
But nearly six years later, Yemane is dead – the 45th homicide victim this year in Charlotte, the city where she floundered for a foothold in America.
‘This is your opportunity’
In 2004, Yemane flew to Charlotte where Dr. Cederholm performed surgery at the Sanger Clinic, replacing one of the valves in her heart.
The Ethiopian teen stayed in the Cederholm’s Charlotte home and absorbed American culture as she healed and got stronger.
“She came over with a little bit of broken English,” Cederholm said. At first, “she didn’t know how to turn on a shower. She didn’t know how to turn on a stove.”
When she was better, Cederholm fulfilled his promise to Ethiopian authorities and put Yemane on a plane back to her native country. But her visa was still valid and people close to her in Ethiopia saw it as her ticket out of the slums.
“They told her, ‘This is your opportunity for a new life. This is your chance to escape,'” Cederholm said.
Family and friends collected money to pay for another flight to the U.S.
Cederholm and Davidson are unsure when Yemane returned to the United States.
They do know she arrived in Washington D.C. with little money and the phone number of a family she hoped to stay with.
“It’s only human and natural to want something better,” Davidson said. “Unfortunately, the reality of the fact is (the U.S.) is not what it looks like in the movies.
“Her life, it was a hardship.”
Back in the U.S., but alone
Yemane made the phone call but the family said they didn’t have the money or space to take her in, Cederholm said.
Yemane was homeless and alone.
For three years, she flitted from home to home, staying with Ethiopian families who took her in, sometimes sleeping on the streets or in shelters. She was married briefly to a man who friends said abused her, but she managed to get away.
Her compass always pointed to Charlotte, the only real home in the United States she knew. Around 2006, Cederholm said his family took her in once again for about a month.
In 2007, she met Loretta Caldwell, who runs a Charlotte ministry that takes in homeless women. The police were trying to take Yemane to a homeless shelter on the westside, but she’d been there before and didn’t want to go back.
“She started running up to my car saying ‘Lady, help me, help me, please help me,'” Caldwell said.
“And I pulled off looking back at her and said ‘She’s so beautiful. What happened to her?'”
Caldwell took her in.
Over the next two years, in a stable and permanent home, Yemane thrived. Caldwell helped her get a visa and a job. She used pink paint on the walls of her room, which was larger than the apartment she shared with her siblings in Ethiopia. She set up profiles on Facebook and MySpace, and her accent became fainter as she burned through calling cards talking to her siblings in Ethiopia.
One of her brothers just had a baby, and she was collecting baby clothes to send to him.
She called Caldwell “mother,” and the older woman began to think of Yemane as her daughter.
‘Are you OK? Are you safe?’
Caldwell says she was overprotective of her surrogate daughter. Even though Yemane was 23, Caldwell ran criminal background checks on the men she would date, and set a curfew.
She said she trusted Yemane’s latest boyfriend, Davon Thomas, because she knew his mother, and they seemed like “good, Christian people.”
Caldwell said she last spoke with Yemane on Friday night. Yemane had called to say she might break curfew.
“Are you OK?” Caldwell asked. “Are you safe?”
Yemane said “yes” to both, and Caldwell said she was going to bed.
The next morning, Yemane’s pink room was still empty.
“I started calling her. And I started calling him. And then I called around to find her,” Caldwell said.
“Within 30 minutes … the detectives were at my front door.”
Police say Thomas shot Yemane to death early Saturday morning inside his parents’ house in the Reedy Creek Community. Police called it a domestic homicide and searched for Thomas for two days before he turned himself in.
Thomas, 27, is in Mecklenburg jail, charged with Yemane’s murder. And the Charlotteans who helped bring a sick teenager over from Ethiopia six years ago were raising money to send her body back.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It seems the mental condition of Ethiopia’s khat addicted tyrant is deteriorating by the day. He doesn’t have food to feed 6 million people and yet he talks about giving the world clean energy.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister tribal warlord Meles Zenawi, who will represent Africa at next month’s Copenhagen climate change talks, said on Thursday it was unlikely the world was serious about tackling global warming.
[Meles Zenawi is too incompetent to feed his own province of Tigray, let alone contribute any thing on climate change. To invite him to Copenhagen must be a sick joke by European politicians.]
The United Nations summit in Denmark will try to agree on how to counter climate change and come up with a post-Kyoto treaty protocol to curb harmful emissions.
“It is highly improbable … the world is serious about climate change and (will decide) to take effective measures to tackle it,” Meles told an economic conference in Addis Ababa. “But no one can say such an outcome is completely impossible.”
Meles has become Africa’s most outspoken leader on climate change and has argued that European pollution may have caused his country’s ruinous 1984 famine.
Aid workers say a five-year drought, worsened by climate change, is afflicting some 23 million people in seven east African nations, with Ethiopia worst affected.
Meles has demanded the rich world compensate Africa for the impact of global warming, and says the funding would help develop the continent’s agro-industries.
“Such a revival of the bedrock of Africa’s economies would revitalise our strategy for managing chronic poverty in the short-term while laying the basis for overall economic transformation in the long-term,” the prime minister said.
“POTENTIAL ENERGY NICHE”
Poor nations want rich countries to cut emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst effects of climate change. But many industrialised nations fear such cuts are out of reach, especially in an economic downturn.
Some climate experts have called for rich countries to pay up to $100 billion annually to counter the impact of global warming in Africa.
Meles, who also represented Africa at G8 and G20 summits of rich nations this year, said investment could help the continent provide clean energy to the world.
“If the decision to tackle climate change effectively were to be made, then Africa with its vast resources of renewable energy — solar, wind, hydropower, bio-energy — would have an important niche in the global market,” Meles said.
Power shortages are common in African countries, costing economies billions of dollars and hindering investment, even though natural resources are abundant.
Africa contributes little to the pollution blamed for warming, but is forecast to be hardest hit by its impact.
The Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum says poor nations bear more than nine-tenths of the human and economic burden of climate change.
The 50 poorest countries, however, contribute less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that scientists say are threatening the planet, it says. (Editing by Daniel Wallis and Jon Hemming)
The events of the last two week in Ethiopia has been painful, but a great example of political betrayal and opportunism of the worst kind. I watched on video the depiction of an open platform of November 1, 2009 attended by Ministers, Dignitaries, Ambassadors from all over the World, and the throng of journalists, at a signing ceremony presided by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the public humiliation and the betrayal of the people of Ethiopia in the person of Hailu Shawel, Lidetu Ayalew, and Ayalew Chamiso, who claim to represent the opposition interest of the Ethiopian people. I ask myself what happened to common decency, sense of self-worth, and communal responsibility for those individuals in attendance of the staging of the signing of the Code of Conduct to stoop so low as complete pawns in the hands of a power-crazed puppet-master.
I cannot afford to lose all faith in my fellow Ethiopians, thus I conjectured the possibility of blackmail by the Government of Meles Zenawi of Hailu Shawel, and to a lesser extent Lidetu Ayalew and Ayalew Chamiso, with some hitherto unknown horrible corruption charges or some sordid video record in order to force them play their dubious role becoming gatekeepers to ward off other opposition parties and groups, such as the Medrek group. I tried also some other explanation to justify such action by the three gentlemen, namely the question of the national interest. But when I examined closely each of the above excuses I was willing to entertain on their behalf to avoid unfounded allegations, I realized that the record of those individuals, in the past several years, indicate deliberate opportunistic and predatory activities. The signing of the Code of Conduct is simply the fulfillment of long drawn processes of marriage with the EPRDF.
I recall Engineer Hailu Shawel coming to see me in 1992 at the new office complex built during the time of Mengistu’s administration at the Menilik’s Palace grounds. What he wanted was to inform me his desire to cooperate with EPRDF, and he gave me the impression that he was seeking some appointment. [In those days, I was perceived to be some kind of king-maker.] I tried to inform him that the time was not conducive for me to talk about such personal issues and I pointed to him the fact that I was moving to a new office. I talked with him in a temporary little office that I simply used for the moment in order to accommodate his insistence to see me. Trying to cooperate with ones government is not per se evil; however, it is the motive that indicates the character flaw or strength of an individual. My assessment of Hailu Shawel in that brief moment of encounter was that of a person of opportunistic character—I am vindicated and proven right several times over in the course of the last fifteen years.
During the same period in the 1990s, I watched the birth of the AAPO led by the highly principled Professor Asrat; I witnessed the establishment of the Human Rights Commission, and the infighting of the OLF for political parity with the EPRDF. I am contrasting those developments to point out the fact that Hailu Shawel’s interest right from the start was a highly personal one compared to the activities of the leaders of such different political and civic groups I had a chance to know about due to my proximity to the center of power and due to personal acquaintances with many of the players in those organizations. Hailu Shawel played a highly personal political game. He is the quintessential Mahel Sefari. He used the frustration and hatred a number of Addis Ababean feel for EPRDF to his personal advantage by projecting himself as a man-of-the-people to the leadership of EPRDF, and not to be trifled with. When he started his All Ethiopians Unity Party, Hailu Shawel was doing that with an approval wink from EPRDF leaders because Professor Asrat’s All Amhara organization was gaining tremendous support and was becoming a real threat to the very survival of EPRDF even when the Professor Asrat was in detention. The leaders of the EPRDF needed an organization that will divide and dilute such concentrated challenge to their power.
No matter how hard one may try to change an old donkey into a stallion, it is an impossible task to achieve such fete. Just like nature, society cannot be that easily fooled. Such silly effort to fool society was amply demonstrated to the entire world to see by the event of November 1, 2009 at the Sheraton Hotel. Almost six months ago, on June 4, 2009, I wrote predicting such situation.
As he has done countless times in the past, Meles Zenawi will try all kinds of trickery dividing the opposition and driving wedges in between opposition leaders. It is no secret that Meles and his group have effectively divided and weakened the opposition in the past; for example, AAPO, OLF, CUD et cetera were all victims of the divisive schemes of launching leaders against each other. Thus, it will not surprise me if Meles Zenawi would offer Hailu Shawel the Presidency of Ethiopia in exchange for Hailu’s docility and political betrayal of the opposition.
What is well camouflaged and effectively hidden from everyone else’s scrutiny is the ambition of Hailu Shawel to be Meles Zenawi’s Ye Elfign Askelkai—a power broker position that is most favored and desired by Mahel Sefaris. The political evolution of Kinijit and Hailu Shawel’s role in the final political skirmish after the aborted election of 2005 leading to the arrest and conviction of Kinijit leaders was a situation where activities went out of control and dragged many of the leaders including Hailu Shawel into such a situation. However, the moment the Leaders of Kinjit were released from prison the split started with Hailu Shawel disassociating himself and separating his own group from the rest of Kinjit Members.
In 1991 to 1993 when I was advising the Transitional Government of Ethiopia, Ledetu Ayalew was too junior a person for me to know at all, so was Ayalew Chamiso. In fact, I never met those two gentlemen, I only know of them from reports, newspaper articles, videos, and pictures since my second exile (after 1993 to date) in the United States. Based on such reports and documentation, I wrote in a couple of articles expressing my admiration for Lidetu Ayalew as an individual who came to prominence through his own native wits and smarts without the help of any ethnic based hegemonic structure or help from academia or anybody else for that matter. It is no little achievement in a society that is densely stratified in tight hierarchical structure based on ethnic exclusivity, family prominence, and wealth, for a simple born peasant man from Lasta to make such inroad into the power structure of Ethiopia, especially an Ethiopia being ruled by the most rigid and closed Government in the history of this ancient land.
I have pointed out above the diverse personalities and interests of the three leaders who signed the Code of Conduct. Often people have pointed out to me and others that one should not focus on individual personalities when dealing with the political life of a nation. I respectfully differ from such high standard, for Ethiopian politics is driven completely by focusing on the personality of the leaders of Ethiopian political parties. It would be unrealistic for anyone to try to do politics in Ethiopia without first focusing on Ethiopian political personalities.
The Game Plan
It is imperative to understand the mind of Meles Zenawi and his close associates in order to understand why the group decided to form close alliance with Hailu Shawel. It is no surprise to me that such scheme would come about at this point. Over ten years ago, in my book Demystifying Political Thought, Power, and Economic Development (1999), I predicted the breakup of AAPO, and that fractured group in time would join forces with the faction of the TPLF corrupt leadership and would continue the repressive Government of the EPRDF under the leadership of Meles Zenawi.
The Amharas will continue in their present status, disorganized and ineffective, incapable to counter or regain the political clout they presumably had lost if the present fracturing continuous… moreover recent development indicate that AAPO officials in Addis Ababa are working together with the EPRDF undermining the very Amhara movement they were elected to lead and promote. [Referring to Qegnazmatch Nekatibeb leading AAPO and the continued detention of Professor Asrat] It is only a matter of time before the national office of AAPO in Ethiopia fractures and joins the EPRDF corrupt structure. In keeping with such trend, a faction from the TPLF with a section from AAPO, and exofficials of Mengistu’s government and the camp started by One Ethiopia will metamorphosis into a support group for Meles. (84-5)
[Tecola W. Hagos, Demystifying Political Thought, Power, and Economic Development (1999), pages 84-5. (Emphasis added)]
Meles Zenawi has perfected the art of “divide and rule” and raised it to new heights. Recent books, articles, and book reviews by former members of the TPLF have given us a glimpse of the sordid and corrupt inner workings of the TPLF. We have now a clear picture of the organizations administration and finance, more importantly the names and roles played by the core leaders responsible for the day to day functioning of the TPLF. Meles Zenawi, Sebhat Nega, Seyoum Mesfine, Abay Tsehai, Abadi Zemu, Brehane Gebrekristos, Tewodros Hagos et cetera played major roles in all the corrupt schemes hoodwinking major international humanitarian organizations and their star fund raisers whereby millions of dollars was deposited in accounts established by such individuals allegedly for the starving people of Tigray and vicinity. There was neither public auditing nor proper accounting ever to this day of all the hundreds of millions of dollars donated and received through charitable fund raising from the West and others. The individuals who had intimate knowledge of the finance and administrative process at the time, such as Gebremedhin Araya, Aregawi Berhe et cetera, have exposed the diabolical secret of the TPLF leaders diversion of donated funds into private accounts that was never audited by the organization.
Those TPLF leaders distributed a minuscule amount to the starving Tigrayan refugees in the Sudan, and kept the rest for their own use in accounts controlled by them. Because of such meager assistance most Tigrayan refugees in the Sudan tried to return to their home base even though it was under the administration of the Military Regime. The attraction was that Regime was providing sustenance far in excess of what was provided by TPLF Leaders even though the donated fund the TPLF Leaders were in charge of was far in excess of the donations that the Ethiopian Government had acquired from international donors. Furthermore, Meles Zenawi as the leader of that pack outmaneuvered Western governmental security and spying agencies by portraying himself and his close supporters as democratic and honorable leaders. The fact is that by the time the EPRDF reached Addis Ababa overrunning the Military Regime, the leaders of the TPLF were already Millioners. They all have tasted the forbidden golden apple from the tree of wealth. By then they were infested like Gollum with obsessive and insatiable appetite for wealth.
The only agenda they had was how best they could use their guerrilla forces to establish and run a puppet government in order to control the resources of a defeated country, and how best to loot it blind. We all have been wrong to a great extent in believing that they were interested in the fracturing of Ethiopia because of their hatred of the very idea of an Ethiopia and the fact that they were against the military dictatorship then in power. Some of us also wrongly believed that they were partial in their love and commitment to see an independent Eritrea. They would not have cared an iota for Eritrea if it were not in their best interest to do so in order to exploit and loot Ethiopia by themselves. In that shameful criminal activity of looting and robbery, they found Al-Amoudi, an individual who taught them a thing or too how to move huge amount of money around the world. He also might have personally facilitated the international web of investment and banking of the hundreds of millions of dollars and other hard currency thus stolen effectively hiding such fabulous looted wealth from Ethiopia including gold mined in mines allegedly owned by Al-Amoudi. In short, we are dealing here with a different breed of men unseen in the history of Ethiopia or the World before who held a nation hostage for one purpose only—to loot its wealth.
The true nature of the activities of the Leaders of the TPLF has become far more clearer now than a decade ago, since former TPLF leaders such as Gebremedhin Araya (responsible for the finance of TPLF), Aregawi Berhe (former Leader and Commander of the TPLF guerilla forces) and others have finally started writing and publishing their memoire. It is absolutely clear from such accounts that the main goal of the TPLF Leadership had shifted since 1984 from fighting for the liberation of the people of Tigray/Ethiopia to the acquisition of wealth by using the guerrilla structure that was in place to control the state structure. Meles Zenawi and his select tiny support group having tested of the forbidden golden apple born out of the famine of 1984 and after were simply dedicated to make as much money as possible looting and confiscating the wealth of a nation. They were in fact a group of mercenaries similar in their operation like the Mafia.
They used as their foot soldiers naïve peasant boys and girls from Tigray and a few from adjoining Provinces, young men and women who believed in a nationalist cause, to fight the deadliest war against a brutal military regime for seventeen years. Setting aside those patriotic naïve fighters, the leaders of the TPLF were just common criminals then as they are now.
The bond that held tight Meles Zenawi and his group is not patriotism; it is not concern for the people of Tigray; it is not the desire to help Eritreans. The bond is made of gold chain called “Money.” The interest born of money and wealth creates the most enduring and highly exclusive bonding. That is literally what we see in the current leaders of the TPLF. Opposition supporters writing endlessly ascribing the current disastrous Ethiopian government administration to narrow ethnic interest are totally wrong. Any mention of “Woyane” as the target of dissent and derision is like barking up the wrong tree. The people of Tigray are primary victims of the TPLF even worse than the rest of Ethiopia. The affinity between Meles Zenawi and the Mahel Sefaris is obvious.
The losers in the current game of the signing of the Code of Conduct and realignment of the EPRDF with its newest Member Hailu Shawel (AEUP) are the people of Ethiopia, not Hailu Shawel and his Party, not Medrek or anybody else. Meles Zenawi has gained another day to prepare for far longer and devastating fight against all those who are concerned about the vital interest of Ethiopia, the Opposition et cetera. He has extended his life to do more damage to the state of Ethiopia entrenching his divisive Killel system, alienating Ethiopian territory, selling/leasing huge chunk of Ethiopian land to foreign investors and states while millions of Ethiopians starve to death. He will keep looting Ethiopia’s gold in collaboration with Al-Amoudi.
The incorporation of new Satellite organizations, such as AEUP replacing the old ones, such as ANDM, OPDO et cetera that have atrophied over the last ten years, due to serious marginalization of the leaders of such organizations by Meles Zenawi. Starting from the arrest and imprisonment of Tamrat Layne, all Satellite organizations of the EPRDF lost their political luster. In the guise of the signing of a Code of Conduct, which is a meaningless document in itself, Meles Zenawi is putting in place a blue print for his future. There is some other subterranean purpose in the game that was fully displayed for the World to see on November 1, 2009. The bottom-line is that Meles Zenawi is replacing his old cronies wholesale with the quintessential Mahel Sefaris, who had worked diligently as shadow advisors and yes men of incredibly loyalty to Meles Zenawi in the last eighteen years. The current political development of Meles Zenawi’s budding friendship with Hailu Shawel spells doom for the old comrades of Meles Zenawi, such as
Adissu Legesse, Teferra Walwa, Kassu Illala et cetera who will soon be retired and replaced by the technocrats that Hailu Shawel would organize after the election of 2010, such technocrats are salivating right now to join the new administration with “Emperor” Meles Zenawi on the Throne for the next twenty years. This is the likely and disgusting outcome of the game plan that could only be conjured up by a sick mind.
Echoing the Ethiopian government’s recent call for food aid, British diplomat, Paddy Ashdown, has requested the international community’s urgent assistance in preventing a looming humanitarian crisis. Reuters reports that 160,000 tons of food are required if the devastating effects of poor rainfall are to be avoided. According to the Economist magazine, this year has seen the worst drought in East Africa since possibly 1991. Production of Kenya’s staple crop, maize, is expected to fall by a third, with subsistence farmers suffering the most. In several parts of the country, villagers are already dependent on monthly government rations of maize-meal and cooking oil. Somalia, faced with attrition from an escalating civil war, is now also considering the daunting prospect of supplying emergency food supplies to about 3.6 million hungry people. Yet, it is Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, that is most susceptible to climate change, and, confronting the specter of famine, will have to ask itself why it is once again in this perilous situation. Paddy Ashdown, speaking to Reuters about the possibility of 6.2 million Ethiopians starving to death, said, “We can prevent this situation getting to much worse proportions.”
Although the government’s appeal for aid coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of over 1million Ethiopians, Ashdown claims such a doomsday scenario is less likely in the twenty-first century. “A number of factors are not in place that were in place then. There was a civil war, we didn’t have the institutions we have now to deal with problems, and we reacted late.” Although agriculture remains the mainstay of Ethiopia’s economy, and most farmers continue to employ outmoded practices, the country is better prepared to avert famine than it was 25 years ago. And, thanks to the well-publicized Band Aid and USA for Africa campaigns in the 1980s, the world is much more aware. According to the U.S. State Department, agriculture is responsible for more than 80 percent of Ethiopia’s exports and provides jobs for 85 percent of its population. Coffee production is the country’s largest source of foreign reserves, and, unsurprisingly, is closely monitored by the government. Other important agricultural exports include animal skins, pulses, and “khat”, a 6-12 foot flowering shrub whose leaves are chewed for their mind-altering effects. Ethiopian farmers who survived the last famine are wary of losing their livelihoods, and indeed their lives, to the vagaries of climate change. You might even say they are paranoid. “We did not work night and day before…but we do now,” said Mesele Adhena, a farmer supporting six children, in an interview with the BBC. The government, for its part, is stockpiling grain, though it’s been reported these emergency rations will run out before the rural poor are given their share. There is also a food-for-work program that, if properly implemented, will keep famine from rearing its ugly head.
Things that obviously have not changed since 1984 include Africa’s misplaced priorities and its predilection for strongmen. The 18-year tenure of Ethiopia’s khat addicted Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi is proof of this. Zenawi, who came to power in 1991, the year of the last major East African drought, has, through rain or shine, managed to keep a firm grip on power. And even though it’s been suggested that he’ll step down after next year’s elections, it is widely believed that, even if he does, he’ll stay on as chairman of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). According to the Economist, Zenawi isn’t concerned with such speculation, dismissing it as “boring.” However, a separate report by the Economist on the recent release from prison of popular reggae artist, Teddy Afro, shows the government is desperate to improve its image ahead of elections. Mr. Afro had been jailed on trumped-up charges, not, as might be expected, for possession of marijuana, but for a hit-and-run accident involving a homeless man in the capital, Addis Ababa. His fans believe he was locked away, like numerous other dissidents, including the young judge and opposition leader, Birtukan Mideksa, because he “compared Mr. Meles’s lot to a brutal junta.” Yet, securing Zenawi’s position as de facto emperor has called for more than a domestic clampdown; international concerns pose an equally destabilizing threat. Backed by the United States, with its anti al-Qaeda agenda, Ethiopia has, thus far, managed to keep intractable Eritrea and lawless Somalia at bay.
And still, food insecurity, like Zenawi’s reign, extends unchecked. It was the great famine of 1972, in fact, that led to Emperor Haile Selassie’s downfall. Selassie, a direct descendant of King Solomon of Israel, was as much renowned for fending off European occupation of Ethiopia as for his deification by Jamaican Rastafarians. He succumbed, some would say, to “the will of god” when, after 44 years in power, a global oil crisis coincided with climate change to turn his people against him.
Zenawi’s reign began with drought, and nearly two decades later, this same scourge dictates his country’s economic policy. The U.S. State Department believes Ethiopia has the potential to be both self-sufficient in grains and an exporter of numerous agricultural products, but “undeveloped water resources, and poor transport infrastructure”, among other things, have made it reliant on food aid. Far from restricted to withering crops, the current drought has caused whole herds of cattle and sheep, those “chewers of the cud” who’ve grazed East African plains for millennia, to drop dead. This, reports the Economist, will only increase tensions among feuding tribes in southern Ethiopia, while, in the east, secessionists of Somali ancestry are also expected to intensify their struggle. Within Somalia, where food aid is often used “to control the people”, Islamist militants will win even more recruits.
According to Oxfam, the international relief agency, drought doesn’t have to lead to famine. If a government invests in irrigation, grain warehouses, and wells, people will survive no matter how long the clouds withhold their precious supply of rain. But Ethiopia will not put to rest the threat of famine till it addresses its underlying causes. A report by Action Aid, entitled Who’s really fighting hunger?, states 1 billion people are unjustifiably going hungry in the world today. The report goes on to explain that hunger is a choice people make, and “not a force of nature.” Although hunger has its roots in inequalities between rich and poor, says the aid agency, it is exacerbated by policies that commoditize food instead of treating it as a right. “It is because of these policies that most developing countries no longer grow enough to feed themselves, and that their farmers are among the hungriest and poorest people in the world. Meanwhile, the rich world battles growing obesity.”
Meles Zenawi’s solution is to ask for more food aid, which, incidentally, is an industry in itself, one monopolized by Western companies. He also expects $40 billion a year in compensation to Africa for foreign-induced climate change, reports the Economist, and has openly blamed Europe for making the 1984 famine worse than it had to be. Zenawi will be representing Africa at the much-anticipated climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December, and one can only expect him to negotiate further concessions. His decision to appeal for aid on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine proves that he’s either a shameless opportunist, or that, after years of helping himself to the country’s dwindling supply of khat, is delusional enough to think the brokering of such deals with the West, without the consent of his people, can continue indefinitely. It will take more khat than he can chew to ever make that dream a reality, and more coffee than he can consume to keep him awake that long.
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s Ministry of Mines on Tuesday announced the discovery of a mine containing more than 40 tonnes of gold deposit worth 1.7 billion dollars (1.1 billion euros).
The state-run Ethiopian News Agency reported that the new find, announced by the ministry of mines and energy, will require some 200 million dollars to extract and process.
“Geological survey indicates that… an estimated 500 tonnes of gold deposit is found in the country,” the agency said, providing a figure for the whole of Ethiopia.
Some 44 companies are engaged in gold exploration, earning Ethiopia about 105 million dollars in export every year.
The recent article by Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin, founder and CEO of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), titled “Will The Real Poor Farmer Rise” is a praiseworthy contribution to a serious public dialogue on matters of national interest. It is also courageous for a prominent figure who supports the government of Ethiopia to opt to engage in civil dialogue about complex issues in the public domain. This being a new phenomenon in Ethiopia, inability to draw a line between a personal capacity and an official capacity is totally understandable; although, the bar might be higher for individuals who grew up in a society where public dialogues and opinions are at the central core of democracy and who are rather expected to be models of democratic and civil communication, the lack of which has left the whole Africa incapacitated. It is crucial for all of us to learn to involve in intellectual discussions setting aside personal feelings and egos and rather focusing on the substantive issues at stake, in this case the problems brewing in Ethiopia’s coffee sector.
The conversation about ECX and the problems in Ethiopia’s coffee sector – a topic that provoked Dr. Eleni to weigh in — has been running for weeks now, the recent development being the secretly planned event that was held in Addis Ababa, October 21 – 24, 2009, between ECX, the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), and others. Throughout, many questions have been raised, including the government’s use of ECX to secure its interests, the merits of the country’s property right laws, the government’s responsibilities in protecting farmers from exploitation, the risks of commoditizing the country’s finest coffee brands, ECX’s distraction from its initial noble mission, which is to help eliminate famine by creating an efficient domestic agricultural commodity market, and more. The reason why ECX is particularly scrutinized in relation to its coffee trade is because the stakes in that crop are high, too high to be left for a trial and error. Well informed industry observers warn that the government’s handling of the coffee sector could be destructive to the development of domestic private sector in general and the untapped coffee resources in particular. But, ECX seems to be maintaining its positions that all is well, as if nothing had happened. At best, the take away from reading the above article is that the problems at hand need to be spelled out in a clear and undistorted manner so that everyone who claims to have a stake in Ethiopia can have the same understanding and view from anywhere in the globe. Therefore, it will be necessary to pause the discussion about the gravity of the impending consequences of the sticky situation that ECX and the coffee sector found themselves in and first set the records straight. To that effect, the following paragraphs trail on Dr. Eleni’s main points cited in the above article for the sake of clarity and to fill the gap in ECX’s understanding of what had just happened in Ethiopia.
“Coffee trading in ECX was a hastily conceived, ill-prepared affair by people who knew nothing about the complexity of the coffee market”
The credentials of ECX’s officers has never been a point of contention throughout the discussions as there is no reason to believe that Ethiopia is short of able experts in the coffee sector. Doing so would amount to disrespecting the people who preserved the sector through three consecutive regimes. This, however, does not exempt the poor handling of the media frenzy that followed the interruption of the Specialty coffee trade because neither the government nor ECX displayed wisdom or competence in dealing with the situation. That being said, there are ample evidences to show that ECX was not prepared to trade coffee and that the project plans that led up to the realization of ECX anticipated a coffee exchange at this early stage. ECX was established as a domestic exchange for grain, not for coffee trade. The first evidence for this is found nowhere but in the Policy Working Paper prepared by Eleni Z. Gabre-Madhin and Ian Goggin, Chief Executive, Africa Commodity Exchange (Malawi) and former President, Zimbabwe Agricultural Commodity Exchange. The document dated November 2005 and titled “Does Ethiopia Need a Commodity Exchange?: An Integrated Approach to Market Development” does not mention the coffee crop anywhere in the 24 pages – not even once.
Also, ECX’s lack of experience and resources were central factors that have contributed to the coffee trade problem. The then eight-month old ECX had hardly established its own institutional capabilities, much less gaining the experience in trading agricultural commodities, when it was surprised by the government with the unexpected task of trading the global crop. Although Dr. Eleni now denies it, ECX’s understandable frustrations are documented in the PBS/Market Maker film that featured Dr. Eleni. Here is a portion of the transcript taken from pertinent segments of the film:
Narrator (Aeron Brown): “Eleni’s strategy for building the ECX is so to start to walk before you run; start with a few commodities, work out the kinks, take on more, slowly when you know the system works. … Coffee is to Ethiopia what oil is to Saudi Arabia. The coffee crash [summer of 2008] threatened the entire economy. At the highest levels of government, the question was raised: what if the ECX with its open market, efficient pricing, took up coffee now? Not years from now, but right now? Could the downturn be avoided? For Eleni, for her team, for the ECX, this is both an extraordinary opportunity and an extraordinary risk.”
Dr. Eleni: “We had a nine-hour meeting over two days with very senior people in the government, very intense, and finally the Deputy Prime Minister looked at me and said: if we said, let’s have all that come, [sic] can you handle it? And, I looked at him and said “yes.” … I was very scared. It was a very, very funny moment. I came out of that meeting and called my management team and said, ‘we are going to be trading all of Ethiopia’s coffee. This will change everything.’ ..Much better for us in the longer term but ‘can we do it?’ is what I don’t know. … Coffee is just an overwhelming situation; doing too much with too little staff, too little equipment, too little time.”
That’s it. That is what it took for the government to decide to route the coffee trading to the commodity exchange platform. The point is, the decision to trade coffee on ECX is completely a political decision driven by the government’s needs to control and enhance the flow of coffee exports.
“The inclusion of coffee in ECX was for the purpose of government control and to monopolize the coffee market”
The law that established ECX clearly states that ECX’s Board of Directors should be composed of six government and five privately appointed directors. Despite, the current Board is dominated by directors with vested interests in promoting the government’s business. Of the eleven directors, only three sits (27%) are occupied by the private sector. To argue that somehow Ethiopian Grain Trade Enterprise (EGTE) and Kality Food factory (whose managers are incumbent directors) are privately appointed is deceiving. Plain and simple. These enterprises are owned by the government and report to – through their respective Board of Directors – to the Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervisory Agency, a government body also with a sit on the ECX Board.
EGTE is now, for the first time in its history, the major player in the coffee trade as is GUNA Trading House PLC, an endowment which, according to Bloomberg, is owned by the ruling political party. GUNA has publicly announced its plans to tap into the coffee trade after five years of abandoning the sector. Independent institutions, such as the World Bank have voiced public concerns that these enterprises benefit from privileged access to policymakers and resources which gives them unfair leverage in the marketplace. If this is not a sign to monopolize the market, what is?
“ECX was an instrument to take action against private exporters”
This dimension of the problem is exhaustively discussed by many writers within the context of the country’s legal and political situation.
“The Exchange had simply not thought about specialty coffee trading until forced to by international coffee buyers in 2009”
Regardless of what ECX might have had privately thought about Specialty coffee trading, what is known for sure is that ECX’s system has effectively disrupted the export of Specialty coffee trade and all coffees are sold at commodity prices and market to this day, with the exception of some stocks sold by cooperatives and commercial farms. There is no “single origin” Specialty coffee leaving the country until ECX finds a solution because the system eliminates “traceability”. Two questions arise here: 1) If the legislation that was passed in November 2008 provided ECX the mandate to separately or concurrently handle Specialty coffee as it deemed necessary and ECX decided to trade the Specialty coffees as commodities until it finds a solution, doesn’t it also mean that ECX is solely responsible for the disruption of the trade? 2) Why didn’t ECX allow the Specialty coffee transactions to continue as is until a new system is put in place?
The bigger problem is that because ECX was of the notion that only about 3.7% of the country’s coffee production qualifies to be branded as a Specialty coffee, its focus has been on the bulk coffee trading. [3] It was only after the 2009 SCAA event in Atlanta that SCAA and ECX formed a joint working group to find a solution for the problems. The working group reported its proposal to SCAA at the ECX Specialty coffee event held late October in Ethiopia. Here is where we are now.
What’s next?
The coffee exchange strategy should look beyond the commodity market. The global coffee trade is controlled by a hand-full of multi-national corporations and international prices for commodity coffee are mostly determined by these multinationals. The daily fluctuations in price are mainly driven by the buyers’ bargaining power and speculations about coffee supply, which in turn is dependent on factors affecting coffee growing regions in the world. The competition between the biggest coffee producers, including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico, often helps multinationals as increases in supply result in a decline in prices. The compound effect on coffee dependent economies, such as Ethiopia, is that they have no say whatsoever in influencing commodity coffee export prices. Therefore, it is incumbent upon ECX to adopt cutting-edge marketing strategies that will enable Ethiopia beat the competition by making the best use of the wealth of coffee resources. The unique attributes of Ethiopia’s coffee are the strengths that the country can exploit as leverage in the fast growing Specialty coffee niche market. At this juncture, and in the short term, the best that ECX can do to help the country is to devise a system that will be conducive to the Specialty coffee trade and provide incentives to the farmers. To that end, there are impending issues and outstanding questions that need the immediate attention of the government and ECX. Hopefully, ECX will continue to lead a forward-looking dialogue by sharing the outcome(s) of the recent meetings with SCAA and the agreement the parties have reached.
(The writer, Wondwossen Mezlekia, can be reached at [email protected])
In the United States, the operation to fix her mitral stenosis is relatively simple and involves an overnight hospital stay. In her native Ethiopia, the operation was out of her reach.