The World Bank has recently released an “updated” report (read here) on its activities in Ethiopia. The 2010 report, which seems to be a poorly edited rehash of the 2007 report, states that since 1991, the Bank has committed $7.6 billion in Ethiopia mainly for the “protection of basic services, health services, the fight against HIV/AIDS, productive safety nets, food security, and roads. Such massive assistance is allowing the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne) to use the money it collects from the people of Ethiopia in the form of taxes and tariffs to buy weapons of repression.
At the conclusion of its 2010 report, the Bank states that its project has helped improve the lives of 70 million rural Ethiopians, not least among them are children who now have access to services denied to them before. If that is true, why do over 80,000 Ethiopians, including children, in the capital city Addis Ababa alone eat trash to survive as the video below shows? Why do over 46% of Ethiopians (according to a recent survey) want to migrate to another country?
The $7.6 billion the Bank spent in Ethiopia has not contributed to improving lives. The only thing the Bank developed is the pockets of the ruling class and the bellies of its staff in Ethiopia who live a life of luxury and excess while tens of thousands of children sleep in the streets of Addis Ababa right outside their 20,000-birr-per-month rented villas. If the $7 billion has been properly used, there would be no child in Ethiopia who eats trash to survive. If there is a government that is elected by the people, Ethiopia does NOT need the World Bank’s money.