ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – China proposed to Ethiopia to enhance bilateral relations through expanding joint cooperation and coordinate their positions on world affairs to safeguard their interests.
The offer was made during a visit by the speaker of the Chinese parliament Wu Bangguo to the country from November 8 to 10, the official Xinhua reported.
Wu, chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), called on in his meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi that the ruling parties, legislature and governments of the two nations to step up exchange and cooperation.
Wu also proposed the two nations to focus on three key projects that he believed would be vital to foster the bilateral cooperation, referring to an agriculture technology demonstration center, an all-packed economic and trade project including the construction of hydropower stations and the establishment of an oriental industrial zone to attract investment from Chinese companies.
“China encourage its companies to expand investment in Ethiopia and will adopt open policies on technology transfer and as well as training program for the Ethiopian personnel,” Wu told Meles.
Echoing on Wu’s proposal, Meles said the Ethiopia-China cooperation has become an important drive for the country’s development. The cooperation with China is of vital importance to push forward Ethiopia’s development and the Ethiopian government highly values it, Meles noted.
He said the Ethiopia would make its efforts to further implement the projects between the two sides and consolidate the cooperation in fields such as agriculture, infrastructure and human resource.
While the land may be green and crops are growing, there is not enough food to go around in Ethiopia. Though innovations in therapeutic feeding products keep people alive, Susan Braden of Save the Children points out that the underlying conditions of starvation still remain.
Two years ago, I visited northern Ethiopia’s historic trail, which included stops at Lake Tana, Gonder, Axum and Lalibela.
At the time, I was both entranced by Ethiopia’s history as one of the foremost kingdoms of the ancient world — and overwhelmed by its poverty. Wherever I went, I was encircled by visibly malnourished children.
Nothing to eat
Over the past month, I went back to Ethiopia, but this time to the Southern Nations Nationalities Peoples Region (SNNPR) in the Great Rift Valley below Addis Ababa.
Like most African countries, Ethiopia is also a net food importer, and the price of food on the global market has skyrocketed.
What I saw did not differ that much from what I had seen in the north two years earlier.
The area is green, raining at times and crops are growing. Yet, people don’t have enough food to eat. To cope, families are reducing their daily intake of food and selling off their livestock.
Children are migrating to surrounding towns and cities to find work and food. Out of a population of 82 million people, 6.4 million are in need of emergency assistance, and approximately 84,000 children will require therapeutic feeding between now and the end of the year.
Another 7.2 million people are already receiving food assistance from the government’s safety net program. What is going on? Why are so many people going hungry?
Global turmoil and drought
The reasons vary by region, but basically come down to bad weather and high food prices, coupled with high birth rates and poor land management.
The delayed onset and poor performance of the March to May rains, combined with drought conditions the previous two planting periods, have resulted in below normal harvests throughout most of the country.
In addition, although Ethiopia has an agriculturally based economy, like most African countries, Ethiopia is also a net food importer — and the price of food on the global market has skyrocketed.
The reason for the high price of imported food includes bad weather in major food-producing countries, high petroleum prices and therefore rising fertilizer and transportation costs, which are then transferred onto the consumers.
The diversion of grain into biofuels and livestock feed are also factors in the increasingly high food prices globally — as are the trade policies of some countries. The poor are, of course, the least able to bear the increased cost. The average annual income in Ethiopia is $108 U.S. dollars.
Feeding the hungry
Meanwhile, unlike in Ethiopia’s famine of 1984, the international community now has the ability to reverse malnutrition in severely malnourished children almost immediately with a product called “plumpy’nut.”
The area is green, raining at times and crops are growing. Yet, people don’t have enough food to eat.
This is a high protein, high energy food designed by a French scientist in the late 1990s. It comes in a small tinfoil package and is now used in relief operations all over the world.
It is an amazing product because it is easy to transport, use and digest, and it reverses malnutrition in the severely malnourished within two to four weeks.
A child’s future
In one health center I visited, there was a mother with twins, one of whom was healthy and the other starving. If the child in question survives, and the statistics on plumpy’nut suggest it will, the two children could well grow up to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of their overall health.
Yet, how will these children grow up? The overall situation in Ethiopia is not likely to change anytime soon. Families are large. According to the CIA World Factbook, most households have six children. Jobs are scarce. Unemployment among Ethiopia’s youth hovers around 60%.
The land does not produce enough food for everyone to live on, and farmers cannot sell it or use it as collateral to take out a loan because under the Constitution, all land belongs to the state, which provides long-term leases to the tenants. The price of imported food is also likely to remain high because the variables that make them high are not likely to change.
Without any options
So what is Ethiopia to do? What will become
The land does not produce enough food for everyone to live on — and farmers cannot sell it or use it as collateral to take out a loan.
I met a woman in another therapeutic care center who was herself fending off starvation with plumpy’nut.
She was 27 years old, but looked as though she was in her 40s. She worked as a maid in another family’s house and was HIV positive.
When asked about her children, she said she had two, one of whom had been at the center but was now fine.
She paused — and then added that she was looking to give up her children because she could not take care of them.
Insurgents in Somalia captured a town on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu, in at least the sixth incident this week in which the nation’s transitional government was unable to defend territory it controlled.
Elasha Biyaha, 17 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of Mogadishu, was seized late yesterday by members of al-Shabaab, the militant wing of the Islamic Courts Union, Faadumo Khali Siad, a resident, said by phone today. The town is strategically important because it is situated on a route that connects Mogadishu to Baidoa, seat of the nation’s parliament.
“Our forces took control of Elasha Biyaha last night after we received complaints from residents about insecurity there,” Sheikh Abdi Rihin Isse Adow, a spokesman for the Islamic Courts, said in a mobile-phone interview today. “We removed a checkpoint in the area from the regional administration.”
Yesterday, al-Shabaab captured the port of Marka, 90 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu. The town is used as an entry point for humanitarian agencies, such as the World Food Programme, that provide assistance in the country. The UN estimates as many as 3.25 million people, or 43 percent of the population, will need food aid until the end of 2008.
Towns Captured
On Nov. 11, the towns of Koryoley and Buulo Mareer, near Marka, were seized by al-Shabaab. Yesterday, the town of Janaale, 90 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, was captured by the militia, Salad Ibrahim Muhiden, a local elder, said by phone. Awdheegle, 80 kilometers south of Mogadishu, was captured by Jabha al-Islamia, a faction of the Islamic Courts, Elmi Shino Farey, a local elder, said by phone from the town.
“Clearly the transitional federal government doesn’t have the capacity to defend its territory on its own,” Roger Middleton, Africa researcher at Chatham House, a London-based research group, said by phone today.
The transitional government, or TFG, was created in 2004 with a mandate to create a central administration. Last month, it completed a peace agreement with a splinter group of the Islamic Courts, known as the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia. The accord, which calls for power sharing between the two sides and for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, has been rejected by al-Shabaab.
`Lack of Capacity’
The government “has exhibited, since its creation, a lack of capacity in terms of defending territory and ability to establish itself as a significant force in Somalia,” Middleton said. “The government hasn’t brought stability, it hasn’t brought development.”
Al-Shabaab will impose Shariah in Marka, Sheikh Abubakar, a spokesman for the group, said in remarks broadcast today on Radio Shabelle. Shariah is a system that operates under a code of Islamic principles first established in the Arab world by the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
“From now on, you have to close all business centers at prayer time,” Abubakar said. “We have to modify the behavior of the youth in the town.”
Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Ministry spokesman Wahde Belay said the withdrawal of troops from Somalia would be done in accordance with last month’s peace agreement, which was signed in neighboring Djibouti.
“We will stick to the Djibouti agreement,” Belay said by phone from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. “There is not any change of policy on our side.”
Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said in October his country would support any government that could bring stability to Somalia, as long as it didn’t include al-Shabaab.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Nokia said Ethiopian market is strategic and promising to the company. “As Ethiopia is one of the strategies and promising market of Nokia, we will continue to enhance our customer service and a 12 month warranty that is all part of Nokia’s strategy,” said Gerard Brandjes, Nokia’s General Manager for East Africa.
Brandjes indicated that his company is planning to negotiate with Ethiopian authorities on tax issues in order to connect as many people as possible with affordable prices. He was speaking to journalists Thursday at the Sheraton Addis in Ethiopia during the launching of three new products of Nokia, which are especially designed to meet the needs of African market.
Nokia 5000 with 1.3 mega pixel camera, Nokia 1680 Classic and Nokia 7070 Prism are the three products that the company introduced to Ethiopian market with e-mail, video and radio service features. Before subsidies and taxes currently the company is selling Nokia 5000 model for $95, Nokia 1680 Classic for $65 and Nokia 7070 Prism for $60.
Mentioning the zero tax rate of Ghana on mobile phones as a good indicator of the correlation between mobile connectivity level and business growth, Brandjes hopes that the fact that the more people connected through mobile phones, the more people get the opportunity to do business or enhance and grow their existing business will also applies in the case of Ethiopia.
Nokia, which recently increased the number of its products distribution agent in Ethiopia from one to two, is the only company to introduce mobile phone with national language of Ethiopia- Amharic, a year ago. Currently, the company is selling nine Amharic Nokia mobile phone models.
With the industry’s largest portfolio of mobile phones and support for more than 80 languages, more than one billion people worldwide currently use a Nokia device. Brandjes declined to reveal the exact share of Nokia mobile apparatus users in Ethiopia. He indicated that the majority of Ethiopians prefer Nokia mobiles over other brands because Nokia is the pioneer to introduce apparatuses with Amharic language, integrated video camera and flash light features.
Currently there are a total of around two million people in Ethiopia connected through mobile phones. But, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, which is the government monopoly telecommunication, is working on its plan of adding six million new mobile users within one year.
CHICAGO – Lake Countys Juvenile Probation and Detention Services will have foreign visitors later this week.
On Friday, two doctoral students from Ethiopia will be visiting and touring the juvenile facilities to learn more about how the systems operate, with the hopes of improving juvenile services in their home country.
The two students, who are enrolled at the Graduate School of Social Work at Addis Ababa University, are visiting Chicago as part of a one-month teaching and learning exchange, according to the 19th Judicial Circuit.
On Friday, the students, along with a professor from Addis Ababa, will be in Lake County to learn more about how juvenile courts and detention facilities operate and also develop an ongoing exchange of information and ideas in the area of children in conflict with the law.
Ethiopia has only one child detention facility and it is located in Addis Ababa, the capitol city, while children in other locations are incarcerated with adults.
A group of promising Kenyan athletes, Britain’s Mo Farah and Sweden’s Mustafa Mohammed will lead the foreign charge at next month’s Toyota Great Ethiopian Race.
Gilbert Yegon, who finished third in the half marathon race at the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon with 1:02:43, will team up with Raymond Tanui in the men’s race. Tanui won the Bath Half Marathon in 1:05:21 in March.
In the women’s race, Kenyans’ hopes rest on Valentine Kipketer and Joyce Kandia.
Kipketer finished fifth (17:50) over 5.35km in the Diekirch Eurocross, IAAF Cross Country Permit meeting in Luxemborg in February. She won the 15km women’s race during the Chepkoilel Cross-Country meeting a fortnight ago with 53:47.83 reading on the clock.
Kandia won the 2006 Belfast Marathon (2:43:11) and last month, she breezed to the tape in 34:30 to take the Baxters River Ness 10km in Scotland.
The Kenyan quartet will try to go one better than their compatriots Nathan Naibei and Lineth Chepkirui who recorded second-place finishes in the race in 2005 and 2006.
European Cup 5,000m champion, Farah, is training in Addis Ababa in preparation for the European Cross-Country Championships in Brussels.
Farah arrived in Addis at the end of October and plans to return to Britain at the end of November.
With Deriba Merga (fourth at the Beijing Olympics) and Tsegaye Kebede (Olympic Marathon bronze) as winners of the race in 2006 and last year, the event has become an important development race for upcoming Ethiopian athletes.
Medallist
More than 400 top club runners are expected to confirm their entry in the next 10 days, alongside the 32,000 entered.
Meanwhile, a busy season awaits athletes in the North Rift region as Athletics Kenya released a calendar of events for the branch, adds Joseph Ngure.
The branch meeting was chaired by national assistant secretary, Ibrahim Hussein. The season kicks off this weekend with the Tegla Loroupe 10km road race at Makutano Stadium, Kapenguria.
The Tuskys Wareng Cross-country will be held at Huruma open ground in Eldoret on November 30 and the Baringo Half-Marathon, sponsored by Safaricom, on December 6 in Kabarnet.
Shoe For Africa, a women’s exclusive event, will be held on December 20 in Iten with Eldoret hosting the sixth Kenya Commercial Bank/AK cross-country on January 10 at Kazi Mingi.
Other events: Discovery Kenya Cross-country on January 25 (Eldoret Sports Club), Discovery Kenya Half-marathon February 1 (Eldoret Town) and District Cross-country championships February 7.
