Ethiopia News

The president held talks with Deputy Prime Minister Addisu Legesse here on Sunday.

By Geoffrey York
On market day in the dusty town of Meki, the few cobs of corn sold by the hawkers are scrawny, pale, scabby and pockmarked. Yet the price of this meagre food has doubled since last year – because so many farmers have seen their corn harvests fail.
“We are between life and death,” says 50-year-old farmer Geda Shenu, who was forced to buy corn at Meki market after most of his crops failed in this year’s drought. He shows the empty weed-filled fields where he planted corn and beans, crops that never grew when the rains never came.
To survive, he is selling one of his two oxen and giving his family just two sparse meals a day. He and his neighbours have marched down to the local government office to sign a petition pleading for government help. “If we don’t get any aid, we will die,” he says. “How can we feed our children?”
It’s a story the Ethiopian government does not want told.
On the 25th anniversary of the famine that killed nearly a million Ethiopians in 1984, any talk of drought and hunger is still a highly sensitive issue in this impoverished country, subject to draconian controls by the government. Two regimes were toppled in the 1970s and 1990s because of discontent over famines, and the current regime is determined to avoid their fate.
Aid agencies that dare to speak out publicly, or even to allow a photo of a malnourished child at a feeding centre, can be punished or expelled from the country. Visas or work permits are often denied, projects can be delayed, and import approvals for vital equipment can be buried. Most relief agencies are prohibited from allowing visits by journalists or foreigners, except under strict government control.
After a disastrous series of crop failures, the number of Ethiopians needing emergency aid has jumped from 4.9 million to 6.2 million in the past 10 months. Yet most journalists are barred from travelling to the countryside to document the drought. Relief workers avoid any public comments about the rising malnutrition, and none will talk candidly to journalists except on condition of anonymity.

Ethiopian authorities have rejected accusation by four position groups that hundreds of their members are allegedly been jailed by the ruling party to prevent them from running in Next year's general electron.

Madagascar's political rivals struck a deal late Friday on the make-up of a unity government, paving the way for an end to a 10-month political crisis that has rocked the Indian Ocean island.

(Ethiopian News, Music, Video) - Maybe it is time for the rest of the world to follow Canada’s lead and pull out of Afghanistan. Then we can all invade some place equally needy like Eritrea. It only makes economic sense.

(Ethiopian Music, News, Video) - The impact of the worldwide financial crisis could include preventing Ethiopia from reaching its anti-poverty goals by 2015, a United Nations official says. U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday the international economic downturn may leave Ethiopia unable to successfully embrace the Millennium Development Goals, a U.N. release reported.

Africa's efforts to meet the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals by their 2015 deadline are threatened by the impact of the global financial crisis on the continent's economies, said Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.

The sound of the evening bell at a local boarding high-school in Wajir, in the northeast of Kenya, did not always signal the end of the day's classes.

(Ethiopian Music, News) - As an Ethiopian nothing drives me more bonkers than waking up every morning, just to learn that something tragic, or depressing had happened in Ethiopia (either on the political arena, or the economical-and-business front). In my entire existence, I have never felt any less of an Ethiopian through all this mayhem that Ethiopia seems to find itself in, time and again. In fact, I believe, Ethiopians have an undying patriotism about them. Patriotism oozes through our blood stream. We fight, and fight, and fight for one common goal – the betterment of Ethiopia.

As you all know, we have what we call – the Ignorant Ethiopian Diaspora. If you haven’t already felt like you have been attacked or disrespected, congrats, as you are not in that category. You are the average Ethiopian who wakes up every day, goes to work, support the family, and hope and pray for the best in Ethiopia.

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.

The Afar Triple Junction: A region in Ethiopia where the three sections of the earth's crust meet and cause volcanoes.

(Ethiopian Music, News) - Blame famine on trade restrictions, not on climate change or a lack of Western aid.

Today is World Food Day and, once again, millions of people in East Africa are starving. Some have sought to turn this tragedy into opportunity. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi blames Western-induced climate change, and demands that rich countries cut greenhouse gas emissions and provide more aid. These views are echoed by the World Bank, Oxfam, Christian Aid and that bellwether of bad ideas, Gordon Brown. But such top-down solutions are doomed to failure. If Africans are to to weather their existing and future climates, the solutions must come from the bottom up.

By Barry Malone Ethiopian opposition parties say nearly 450 of their members have been jailed to stop them running as candidates in national elections in May next year.

At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

(Ethiopian News, Music) - It is, perhaps, the first time that I have ever dared to face my blank computer screen, knowing that I might end up criticizing – heavily, I might add – a person that I have come to revere.In the end, I have decided against it, and I have resorted to – for whatever it is worth – advising her.

My adulation for Dr. Eleni Gebre-Medhin is not something that has come out of a thin air. I am hardly driven by cynicism, and the politics of division. It is fruitless. The recent back and forth, on the Internet, that Dr. Eleni has chosen to engage in is simply counterproductive. It is exactly what the critics of the ECX wanted her to do, and now they have achieved their objective, in my opinion. The fact is, any meaningful endeavor is bound to face its fierce caricaturist. And what Dr. Eleni failed, and still fails, to realize is that she can’t continue to serve as the mouth-piece for the ECX, defending every sideswipe against the ECX.

ADDIS ABABA, 2 November 2009 - Being a university freshman is an exciting time for any young person, but many students get carried away, partying too hard and taking sexual risks.

Ethiopia Makes Appeal for Emergency Aid Amid Drought U.S.-backed regime faces worsening crisis ahead of 2010 elections by Abayomi Azikiwe Editor, Pan-African News Wire News Analysis After months of food deficits, deepening political problems domestically and regionally, within the broader context of the world economic crisis, the Ethiopian ...

Eritrea said yesterday it would not be drawn into another war of words after neighbouring Djibouti became the latest nation to accuse the Red Sea state of supporting rebels and spreading chaos in the region.

Madagascar's leaders will meet next week for another attempt at sealing a power-sharing deal aimed at restoring constitutional order, the African Union said.

(Ethiopian Music, News) - After many years of struggling to leave his past in Ethiopia behind, Degefa Etana, 64, began working at Eastern as a security officer in 2000. Etana came to America from Ethiopia in December of 1998 to see his son graduate from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis. “I had a round-trip ticket when I came,” Etana said. He wasn’t planning on staying in the United States, but trouble in Ethiopia prevented him from returning home.