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While a small number of government-connected oligarchs are accumulating more and more wealth, most Ethiopians are not experiencing the so-called economic miracle, with nearly six million people dependent on food aid.
Unrest has plagued Ethiopia for the past two years. So what’s going on? The reasons are complicated.
Journalist Martin Plaut considers this to be the beginning of the problems facing modern Ethiopia. “The TPLF and Meles Zenawi were never prepared to allow democracy and real federalism,” he told DW. But the focus on ethnic differences in the constitution has not been without consequence:“As soon as you increase the focus on ethnicity and make ethnicity the basis of the state, you basically stoke up ethnic tensions,” said Plaut.
Ethiopia’s economy is booming with car assemblies like this one (pictured above) but many still live below the poverty line
Unequal distribution of economic resources
For some observers, the deadly clashes over the past few weeks would appear to be harbingers of an ethnically-motivated civil war. It seems like ethnic tensions are being expressed with increasing intensity. But the causes are complex.
Over the past few years, one issue in particular has repeatedly exacerbated the ethnic tensions in Ethiopia: the side effects of rapid economic growth. Since 2000, gross domestic product has increased almost tenfold, raising questions over who actually benefits from this increase in prosperity.
For example, the violent expropriation of many Oromo people following the spread of the economic boom in the capital Addis Ababa is considered one of the triggers for the ongoing unrest. While a small number of government-connected oligarchs are accumulating more and more wealth, most Ethiopians are not experiencing the so-called economic miracle, with nearly six million people dependent on food aid.
Although the economic boom has led to the emergence of a small, but growing, middle class, this hardly diffuses the situation. On the contrary, economic success and access to better education only increase the desire for political participation, which so far has been denied to those who wish to work their way up in the authoritarian system.
The consequence of these upheavals is conflict at all levels: civil society pushes back against the authoritarianism of national, regional and local rulers; regional populations want more independence from Addis Ababa and at the center of power, reformers fight against those who wish to defend the status quo. The military and regional police forces are becoming increasingly involved in political decisions.
At the peak of protests, Ethiopians world over including those living in Germany called for political reforms back home
Pursing federalism as a solution
Is Ethiopia at risk of state collapse? Plaut thinks this kind of speculation is premature, because there is a clear solution available: “There is a way of solving it, which would be to genuinely allow a federal state.” For this to occur, however, the TPLF must be willing to give up their absolute hold on power and make way for a true multi-party system.
The vice-chairman of the Medrek coalition, Beyene Petros, also doesn’t think Ethiopia is likely to fall apart any time soon. “I am fully confident that Ethiopia will remain intact; this is by the desire and choice of the Ethiopian population,” he told DW. What is needed, however, is an overhaul of the political system: “The EPRDF regime is simply not compatible with the cultural and political situation in Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia’s new employment plan more politics than jobs
The Ethiopian government has been trumping the country’s recent economic success. But a new plan to employ young people appears to be more about quelling protests than providing employment. (21.02.2017)
Quest to extradite Ethiopia’s dictator Mengistu as Mugabe departs
Zimbabwe’s ex-President Robert Mugabe gave refuge to Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, convicted of genocide in Ethiopia. Mugabe’s departure has raised hopes that Haile Mariam could be extradited, but this is all uncertain. (11.12.2017)
‘Ethiopia needs to open up civic space’: UN rights chief
UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein tells DW that despite Ethiopia’s tremendous economic and sociocultural advances, the government there should allow the opposition, free media and rights council to thrive. (06.05.2017)
Ethiopia: East Africa’s new economic power
Ethiopia’s economy is growing so rapidly it may soon replace Kenya as the largest economic power in the region. But a large number of people in the country still live in poverty and many challenges remain. (26.06.2017)
Ethnic violence in Ethiopia leaves deep wounds
Ethiopia has experienced one of its worst population displacements due to violence in recent times. Now stuck in camps, displaced Ethiopians are trying to come to terms with what their future may hold. (05.12.2017)
Ethiopia lifted its state of emergency on 7 August.? It was first introduced on 9 October 2016, following protests mainly by the Oromo and Amhara populations, who together account for over half of Ethiopia’s population. Both ethnic groups were protesting against the Tigray-dominated government on issues including inequality, economic marginalisation, corruption, and lack of political space.?Defence, foreign ministry and other key government posts are held by Tigrayans, who account for 6% of the country’s population.?? Protests began in the Oromia region in November 2015, following a plan to expand Addis Ababa into surrounding land owned by Oromo farmers. In July 2016, the Amhara population began protesting.? Violence escalated in October 2016 when over 50 people were killed during an Oromo religious festival that turned into an anti-government protest.At the beginning of the state of emergency, the government promised deep reform. In July 2017, the government announced a bill that includes measures such as making Afan Oromo an official language, setting up Afan Oromo schools in Addis Ababa, and establishing a joint council with the federal government to administer the city. Many deemed the bill insufficient.? As of August, the government has not addressed fundamental issues such as demands to open up political space, and to allow dissent and tolerance of different perspectives.?In August, people in the Oromia region held a five-day strike to commemorate protesters killed during the 2016 protests. Some sources say the strike was also in protest of a tax increase for small business owners. ??
As of late September, clashes have been taking place among Oromo and Somali groups over border demarcations. The government announced they will place federal police at roads that cross both regions and that security forces of both regions will withdraw from border locations. They also stated they will disarm civilians living in the conflict areas.? There are diverging acounts of what is causing the clashes. Oromo officials have accused the Somali police force, the Liyu police, of staging attacks in an attempt to drive Oromos out of border areas. While the Somali regional government claim it is members within the Oromo government in conjunction with the Oromo Liberation Front, a group that have been branded as terrorists by the government of Ethiopia. Tensions have existed between the two sides for years over border demarcations and competition over resources. Another view expressed by some activists is that the situation has been orchestrated by the central government, who are using the Liyu police to divert attention away from the issue of suppression of the Oromo people, whose concerns remain unaddressed despite the removal of the state of emergency. ????
Media censorship is common in Ethiopia but was further reinforced following the state of emergency, with many journalists engaging in self-censorship to avoid harassment or arrests. Since 2010, at least 75 journalists have fled the country. Access to the internet is frequently blocked and international radio signals jammed. Social media was a key factor in mobilising protesters and is since carefully monitored by authorities.?
Humanitarian organisations are heavily regulated in Ethiopia and may be terminated at the government’s behest. The 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation severely limits the activities of independent nongovernment organisations. An NGO that receives over 10% of their funding from international sources is banned from advocacy activities, work on human rights or conflict resolution.? In April the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was denied access to Oromia and Amhara regions to investigate government abuse against protesters. ? Insecurity at the Somali and Oromia borders have hindered WFP activities for the dispatch and distribution of food aid in July.?
DISPLACEMENT OVERVIEW
Latest update: 03/10/2017
There are some 852,700 refugees and 1,056,700 IDPs in Ethiopia as of 20 September and 4 July respectively, more than half of whom are in the Somali region, the majority of which is in Emergency (IPC 4) levels of food insecurity.???
IDPS
Latest update: 09/10/2017
There are an estimated 1,056,738 IDPs in Ethiopia as of 4 July. 843,367 are displaced due to drought, and the remainder are displaced due to conflict. ??The distribution of the displaced is as follows:
Region
Number Displaced
AMHARA
8 921
TIGRAY
28 954
GAMBELLA
17 472
OROMIA
367 557
SOMALI
577 711
HARARI
3 600
AFAR
52 523
RECENT CONFLICT RELATED DISPLACEMENT:
Clashes on the border of the Oromia and the Somali regions have left some 45,000 households displaced, equating to some 225,000 people. ? Their needs are currently being met by the government and there is only limited information available. ?While parts of Oromia region have been affected by flooding, none coincide with the area experiencing this conflict-related displacement. ?
REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS
Latest update: 10/10/2017
Ethiopia hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. There are some 883,775 refugees. 58% of refugees are under 18. As of 30 September, Gambella hosts the largest refugee population, at 397,455 refugees. ?In other regions, as of 4 July there are 212,000 in Melkadida, Somali region, and 55,700 in Assosa, Benishangul-Gumuz region, 37,000 in Jijiga, northeastern Somali region, 34,900 in Samara, Afar region, 37,800 in Shire, Tigray region, 20,000 in Addis Ababa, and 3,800 in Borena. The majority of refugees are in camps. ? Trends show the highest numbers of monthly arrivals between September and December, meaning an increase in arrivals is expected in the coming months.?
South Sudan: There are 397,455 South Sudanese refugees as of 30 September.?There was a large influx in late 2016 following an escalation of violence in South Sudan: from September until December approximately 42,800 refugees arrived. ?
Somalia: As of 15 July, there are approximately 251,393 Somalian refugees, 6,256 of whom arrived this year as of 15 July. 88% of arrivals this year are women and children.?
Eritrea: As of 7 June, there were over 161,398 Eritrean refugees. ?17,000 Eritreans have arrived in Ethiopia so far this year, compared with just 7,000 in all of 2016.???
Sudan: As of 7 June, 41,588 Sudanese refugees were registered. ?
Yemen: As of 7 June, 1,670 Yemeni refugees were registered. ?
Other Nationalities: There were over 5,800 refugees from other countries in Ethiopia as of 7 June. ?
RETURNEES
Latest update: 12/09/2017
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has ordered undocumented migrants from Ethiopia to leave the countryin June. More than 500,000 Ethiopians are estimated to be affected by the order, over half of which could potentially return to Ethiopia. As of 31 July, 60,000 have returned. ? Human Rights Watch has warned that many are at risk of imprisonment if they are forced to return, as many fled following the anti government protests in 2015.?
FOOD SECURITY AND LIVELIHOODS OVERVIEW
Latest update: 03/10/2017
Some 8.5 million people are in need of food aid as a result of drought, a considerable increase from January estimates of 5.6 million. The areas most affected are the southern and southeastern pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of SNNPR, southern Oromia and southern Somali regions. In Somali region, 3.3 million people are food insecure. More than 50% of the caseload is in Korahe, Doolo, and the southern Afder zones.??? This is not expected to improve in the near future as the 2017 Belgharvest is expected to be below average in some areas.?The upcoming rains in October are also expected to be below average in some areas of the Somali region, according to Ethiopia’s National Meteorology Agency, with potentially late onset and an early finish. This would lead to a further deterioration of the food security situation.?
The prevailing drought conditions in southern and southeastern Ethiopia are due to failed Deyr/Hageya rains from October to September 2016, followed by poor Gu/Genna rains from March to June. Cumulative seasonal rainfall was up to 60% below average. This has resulted in a high animal mortality rate, a reduction in milk production, and a loss of livelihoods. Severe water and fodder shortages have negatively impacted crops and livestock. ?
Excessive livestock deaths and lack of other income earning opportunities mean that Emergency (IPC Phase 4) outcomes are expected to continue in the Somali region until January 2018. Areas of Amhara, Tigray, and northeastern SNNPR are expected to remain in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) until October when the Meher harvest begins.??
Food insecurity is driving negative coping mechanisms among the population. These include: reducing livestock herd sizes, selling remaining assets, skipping meals, begging, and increasingly, displacement in search of food. ?In Tigray region, 33% of the assessed woredas reportedwomen and girls trading sex for food. ?
Map
Food Security, IDPs and Refugees
Source:
ECHO 04/07/2017
FOOD AVAILABILITY AND ACCESS
Latest update: 10/10/2017
Late rains together with an armyworm infestation are expected to lead to a significantly reduced harvest in October. ?Once agropastoral and pastoral households exhaust current food stocks they will face poor access to food due to to high staple food prices, reduced livestock herd sizes, and low levels of milk production from livestock.? Staple food prices have remained high across markets in South Sudan. This is driven by economic condition such as the hyperinflaction, depreciation of local currency, as well as depleted stocks from previous poor harvests.? The Climate Prediction Center has warned of a La Nina phenomenon that could affect October, November, and December rainfall in eastern Ethiopia.? Another season of poor rainfall will limit water availability and reduce harvests. ?
Seasonal Calender, Source: Fewsnet 04/08/17
LIVELIHOODS
Latest update: 03/10/2017
More than 80% of Ethiopians rely on livestock and agriculture as a primary source of income and food. The recent drought has reduced production by up to 50-90% in some parts of the country, resulting in weakened purchasing power, diminished food security, and forcing many to abandon their livelihoods. In June, herd sizes were estimated to be 70% below average because of high mortality rates.? Over 2 million animals have already died due to shortages in fodder and water.?The remaining animals are producing increasingly less milk and there is also less meat production.?2.25 million households require livestock support.?The reduced livestock size may take three to five years to recover and this will greatly impact on household food access during this time.?
Improved rains in August have presented an opportunity for re-planting in areas where crops were failing. Emergency seeds need to be distributed to farmers before mid-September, when the timeframe for planting ends. ?
ARMYWORMS
As of 30 August, over 600,000 hectares of maize land has been affected by fall armyworms. This accounts for 22% of all maize planted.?Six regions have been affected; Amhara, Beninshangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Oromia, SNNPR, and Tigray.?This is a considerable increase from 19 May, when 49,000 hectares of cropland were impacted across two regions. ? Nine million small farms grow maize and tend to consume 75% as food for their family. The remainder is usually used as animal feed. Armyworms feed on maize and this outbreak threatens the livelihoods of these farmers. ? If not contained, armyworms could compromise up to 2 million hectares of Ethiopia’s crops, reducing maize production by 30% nationwide. ?? Chemical spraying and other traditional measures are underway to control the crop infestation, although the fall armyworm is highly invasive and has spread from Southern Africa to East Africa in 2017.?? There is growing concern that the outbreak will start to affect other crops such as sorghum in Afar, Amhara, Somali and Tigray Regions.?
In Ethiopia’s capital (and elsewhere in Ethiopia), homeless people are plentiful. Nobody really knows just how many Ethiopians spend most of their time on the streets, though the number of street children alone is well over 100,000. Wherever you go in Addis Ababa or in other towns in Ethiopia, you will never have any trouble at all finding an abundance of beggars, street children, even whole families, many spending their days and nights trying survive on the streets, and some begging or selling pitiful amounts of items by day and sleeping in what you can barely called homes at night.I lived in Ethiopia for four years, from 2012 to 2017. The brutal and oppressive regime shot thousands of peaceful protesters, and escalated control of it citizens by killing more protesters, torturing, jailing them, creating a state-of-emergency designed to stifle human rights more strictly, and sending tens of thousands of them to “education camps.”I left Ethiopia, reluctantly because I loved my job as a professor there, after I saw federal soldiers brutally beating unarmed peaceful students, and was almost shot myself by an out-of-control soldier who screamed at me as he was shaking and pointing his kalashnikov at me. When I criticized the brutality of the regime to my colleagues at Addis Ababa University, I was harassed and forced to resign. But that’s another story.Prior to that, every Sunday for many months in 2015 and 2016, I would get up early morning and deliver bread and candy to street-bound people in various areas of Addis Ababa. I got to know some of these homeless people almost as friends. Each one has a terribly tragic story to tell, often of neglect of their human rights. I will share some of these stories in future posts.
You will see in the news, and officials of the oppressive Ethiopian government will smile convincingly when they tell you, that Ethiopia is thriving with a “double-digit” economic growth.Yet many experts and scholars will explain to you why this is triple-digit nonsense and quadruple-digit propaganda.
Drought exacerbated by El Niño, combined with extensive flooding, disease outbreaks and the disruption of basic public services, continue to have a negative impact on the lives and livelihoods of 9.7 million Ethiopians. Urgent funding gaps for the response remain across multiple sectors to the end of 2016, notably for response to Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD), for interventions in animal health and food assistance. Major funding requirements are already anticipated for early 2017, as there are concerning indications that the current negative Indian Ocean Dipole, may affect water availability, livestock body condition and Meher harvest performance in southern and eastern Ethiopia.
Some 2,000,000 pastoralists and agro pastoralists need emergency food assistance; serious water shortage continues to affect the regions
The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, commonly known as Ethiopia, is the continent’s ninth poorest country. Its 100 million citizens make it the most populous landlocked nation in the world, and the second most populous on the continent after Nigeria.
Surprisingly, the economic situation in Ethiopia only worsened as recent as 2008, when the country’s inflation rose to double digits due to it’s a myriad of factors including its loose monetary policy, high food prices, and a huge civil service wage bill. Thus, the economic problems in the country are considered structural issues in governance, which are gradually being addressed by the government. The country’s best performing sector is agriculture.
Nevertheless, the country’s GDP remains to be one of the lowest on the continent, making it the 9th poorest nation.
The ten poorests countries are:
10. Guinea-Conakry
9. Ethiopia
8. The Gambia
7. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
6. Madagascar-
5. Liberia
4. Niger
3. Central African Republic (CAR)
2. Burundi
1. Malawi
9. Ethiopia- GDP per capita: $505.00.
Shoppers and vendors make their way down a flooded street in Merkato, one of Africa’s largest market areas, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Multidimensional Poverty Index: Ethiopia has the second highest percentage of people who are MPI poor in the world: of Ten Poorest Countries in The World (All in #Africa) – MPI 2015 Ranking
‘Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices—as they acquire more capabilities and enjoy more opportunities to use those capabilities. But human development is also the objective, so it is both a process and an outcome. Human development implies that people must influence the process that shapes their lives. In all this, economic growth is an important means to human development, but not the goal. Human development is development of the people through building human capabilities, for the people by improving their lives and by the people through active participation in the processes that shape their lives. It is broader than other approaches, such as the human resource approach, the basic needs approach and the human welfare approach.’ -UNDP 2015 Report
Ethiopia’s HDI value for 2014 is 0.442— which put the country in the low human development category— positioning it at 174 out of 188 countries and territories.
In Ethiopia 88.2 percent of the population (78,887 thousand people) are multidimensionally poor while an additional 6.7 percent live near multidimensional poverty (6,016 thousand people). The breadth of deprivation (intensity) in Ethiopia, which is the average of deprivation scores experienced by people in multidimensional poverty, is 60.9 percent. The MPI, which is the share of the population that is multidimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.537. Rwanda and Uganda have MPIs of 0.352 and 0.359 respectively.Ethiopia, UNDP country notes
(Sunday Adelaja’s Blog) — When Poverty and non-existent double digit growth met face-to-Face at a dumpster site called KORA in Ethiopia. As we speak, thousands of people in Addis Ababa survive from the leftover “food” dumped in such dumpsters. People, in fact, used to call them “Dumpster Dieters”. They are either the byproducts or victims of the cooked economic figures. You be the judge!
Yet the new measurement known as the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, that will replace the Human Poverty index in the United Nations’ annual Human Development Report says that Ethiopia has the second highest percentage of people who are MPI poor in the world, with only the west African nation of Niger fairing worse. You probably heard that Ethiopia has been a fast growing economy in the content recording very high growth rate not just in Africa but the world as well.
This comes as more international analysts have also began to question the accuracy of the Meles government’s double digit economic growth claims and similar disputed government statistics referred by institutions like the IMF. The list starts with the poorest.
Niger
Ethiopia
Mali
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Somalia
Central African Republic
Liberia
Guinea
Sierra Leone
What is the MPI?
People living in poverty are affected by more than just income. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) complements a traditional focus on income to reflect the deprivations that a poor person faces all at once with respect to education, health and living standard. It assesses poverty at the individual level, with poor persons being those who are multiply deprived, and the extent of their poverty being measured by therange of their deprivations.
Why is the MPI useful?
According to the UNDP report, the MPI is a high resolution lens on poverty – it shows the nature of poverty better than income alone. Knowing not just who is poor but how they are poor is essential for effective humandevelopment programs and policies. This straightforward yet rigorous index allows governments and other policymakers to understand the various sources of poverty for a region, population group, or nation and target their humandevelopment plans accordingly. The index can also be used to show shifts in the composition of poverty over time so that progress, or the lack of it, can be monitored.
The MPI goes beyond previous international measures of poverty to:
Show all the deprivations that impact someone’s life at the same time – so it can inform a holistic response.
Identify the poorest people. Such information is vital to target people living in poverty so they benefit from key interventions.
Show which deprivations are most common in different regions and among different groups, so that resources can be allocated and policies designed to address their particular needs.
Reflect the results of effective policy interventions quickly. Because the MPI measures outcomes directly, it will immediately reflect changes such as school enrolment, whereas it can take time for this to affect income.
Ethiopia’s fake economic growth borrows from ENRON’s accounting
J Bonsa analyses Ethiopia’s economic growth over the last ten years. Africa At LSE
More than 70 people have been killed and dozens wounded in an ongoing crackdown on peaceful protesters in Oromia. One of the underlying causes of the prevailing tense political situation is Ethiopia’s bogus claim about “miraculous” economic growth in the last decade.
The youth is not benefitting from the country’s supposed growth and doesn’t anticipate the fulfillment of those promises given the pervasive nepotism and crony capitalism that underpins Ethiopia’s developmentalism.
Courtesy: OPride
The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) came to power in 1991 and briefly experimented with democratic transition. However, a little over a decade into its rule, the party’s former strongman, the late Meles Zenawi, realized that their pretentious experiment with liberal democracy was not working. Zenawi then crafted a dubious concept called, “developmental state.”
Stripped of the accompanying jargon and undue sophistication, Zenawi was simply saying that he had abandoned the democratic route but would seek legitimacy through economic development guided by a strong hand of the state. This was a ploy, the last ditch attempt to extend EPRDF’s rule indefinitely.
Using fabricated economic data to seek legitimacy and attract foreign direct investments, the regime then advanced narratives about its double-digit economic growth, described with such catchphrases as Ethiopia rising, the fastest growing economy in the world and African lioness. The claims that EPRDF has delivered economic growth at miraculous scales has always been reported with a reminder that it takes several decades to build democratic governance. The underlining assumption was that, as long as they deliver economic growth, Ethiopia’s leaders could be excused on the lack of democracy and human rights abuses associated with the need for government intervention in the economy.
EPRDF spent millions to retain the services of expensive and well-connected Western lobbying firms to promote this narrative and create a positive image of the country. These investments were also accompanied with a tight grip on the local media, including depriving foreign reporters’ access if they cross the government line. Ethiopia’s communication apparatus was so successful that even serious reporters and analysts started to accept and promote EPRDF’s narrative on rapid economic growth.
However, a few recent events have tested the truthfulness of Ethiopia’s economic rise. Drought and the resulting famine remain the Achilles heels of the EPRDF government. The government can manipulate data on any other sector, including the aggregate Gross Domestic Product, and get away with it, but agriculture is a tricky sector whose output is not so easy to lie about. The proof lies in the availability of food in the market, providing the absolute minimum subsistence for the rural and urban population.
The sudden translation of drought into famine raises serious questions. For example, it is proving difficult to reconcile the country’s double-digit economic growth with the fact that about 15 million Ethiopians are currently in need of emergency food aid.
Rampant famine
Except for some gullible foreign reporters or parachute consultants, who visit Addis Ababa and depart within days, serious analysts and students of Ethiopian economy know that authorities have often fabricated economic statistics in order to generate fake GDP growth. To the trained eye, it does not take a lot to find inconsistencies in the data series. In fact, Ethiopia’s economic growth calculus is so reminiscent of Enron accounting. (See my recent pieces questioning EPRDF’s economic policies, including anomalies in the alleged achievements of millennium development goals, crony businesses, devaluation, external tradeand finance.)
The tacit understanding in using GDP as a measure of economic growth is that responsible governments generate such data by applying viable international standards and subjecting the data to scrutiny and consistency checks.
Unfortunately, these standards are not foolproof; irresponsible governments with mischievous motives can abuse them. There is credible evidence that shows Ethiopian authorities deliberately inflated economic statistics to promote feel-good, success stories.
Let’s take the agricultural data, which is timely and topical given the ongoing famine. This came to light recently as the European Union tried to understand anomalies in Ethiopia’s grain market, particularly persistent food inflation which the EU found incompatible with the agricultural output reported by the Central Statistical Authority (CSA) of Ethiopia.
The EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) then developed the technical specification for studying the scope of the Cereal Availability Study in order to account for the developments in the Ethiopian cereal markets. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) was selected to carry out the study.
Figure 1 (above) compares the EU-sponsored survey and the Ethiopian government’s survey produced by the CSA. I am using the data for 2007/08 for comparison. The negative numbers indicate that the IFPRI estimates were consistently lower than the CSA data. For instance, CSA overstated cereal production by 34 percent on average. This ranged from 29 percent for maize to 44 percent for sorghum. The actual amount of Teff produced is lower by a third of what’s reported by the CSA.
The research team sought to explain this “puzzle” by examining the sources of the confusion, the methodological flaws that might have led CSA to generate such exaggerated economic data. Toward that end, they compared CSA’s crop yield estimates with comparable data from three neighboring countries: Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda (see Figure 2).
From 2000 to 2007, the average increase in cereal yield for these countries, including Ethiopia, was 19 percent. Yet the CSA reported a whopping 66 percent for Ethiopia’s yield growth. The country was not experiencing an agricultural revolution to justify such phenomenal growth. It is unrealistic that Ethiopia’s yield growth would be greater than the neighboring East African countries, particularly Kenya, where the agricultural sector is at a much more advanced stage. If anything, the reality in Ethiopia is closer to Uganda, which did not report any yield increase during that period.
This reveals the extents of data manipulation by Ethiopian authorities to create an inexistent economic success story and seeks political legitimacy using a bogus record. We now know the widespread distortions in official statistics on cereal production thanks, in no small part, to EU’s intervention in sponsoring a study and explaining the disparities. Cereals represent only a sub-sector in the agricultural realm. It is likely that worse distortions would be revealed if similar studies were done on Ethiopia’s growth statistics in other sectors, including manufacturing and service divisions.
‘Poverty reduction’
The IMF has praised Ethiopia for achieving accelerated growth with a focus on equity and poverty reduction, a challenging dilemma for most countries. However, a closer look at three interconnected facts turns this claim on its head.
First, as noted above, Ethiopia’s agricultural output has been inflated by 34 percent on average. Second, a33 percent poverty reduction since 2000 is widely reported. Third, there is a consensus that poverty reduction has happened mostly in rural Ethiopia. Now we put these three facts together and apply a simple logic to establish that the 33 percent poverty reduction is explained by the 34 percent exaggerated agricultural outputs. Notice that it is not by accident that the two percentage points are almost identical. Therefore, the ups and downs cancel each other out. In the best-case scenario, poverty rate must remain at the same level as in 2000.
The World Bank, IMF and other donors have often anchored their conclusions on poverty reduction on alleged changes in the agricultural sector, where the bulk of the poor live and work. Little do they know that the data they used to compute the poverty index comes from agricultural statistics with hugely inflated yield assumptions as shown above.
This raises the question: where has the billions of dollars in bilateral and multilateral aid pumped into Ethiopia in the name of poverty reduction and the millennium development goals gone?
‘The enclave economy’
The ‘Ethiopia rising’ storyline is a standard set by foreign correspondents who often repurpose official government press releases, or reports based on the construction projects in the capital, Addis Ababa.
For example, Bloomberg Africa’s William Davison, often uses the proliferating high-rise buildings in Addis Ababa as tangible evidence of Ethiopia’s double-digit economic growth. In his latest whitewash, Davison writes, “such growth is already visible in parts of the capital, where shopping malls and luxury hotels are sprouting up.” That a veteran reporter for a business website unashamedly passes judgment on economic success by referring to heights and width of buildings underscores his shallow understanding of the country’s social and political fabric.
Here are some of the questions that reporters aren’t asking and seeking answers for: Who owns those building? Where did the investment money come from? Are there any firm linkages between these physical infrastructures and the rest of the Ethiopian economy? I have partially answered some of these questions in a previous piece and will soon provide additional insights.
For now, I would like to draw attention to the existence of an “enclave economy” within the mainstream Ethiopian economy. This enclave is made up of highly interconnected crony businesses, which are owned and operated by Tigrean elites, who also have a tight grip on the political and military command structures. Take, for example, the Endowment Fund for Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), a business conglomerate affiliated with the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). EFFORT has its humble origin in the relief and rehabilitation arm of the TPLF. However, it has undergone amorphous growth and now controls the commanding heights of the Ethiopian economy. By some estimates, EFFORT now controls more than 66 business entities.
The EFFORT controlled enclave and related military engineering complexes have created a semi-autonomous economy in Ethiopia. They made smart choices and specialized in engineering and construction businesses. This means they do not have to rely on the Ethiopian public for their products; instead, each specialize in separate industrial branches and buy from each other and also sell to the government, which is also in their hand. The huge government infrastructural projects necessitated by the “developmental state” model create business opportunities for these engineering companies.
The enclave economy is only loosely linked to the mainstream economy and it does not benefit the bulk of the Ethiopian people in any meaningful way. The luxury hotels and supermarkets that Davison refers to cater for the needs of the affluent business classes, their families, and the expatriate community.
In other words, Ethiopia’s miraculous economic growth, if it in fact exists, must have happened only in the enclave economy. Statistically, it is possible to generate a double-digit economic growth at the national level through a combination of some real astronomical growth in the enclave component and stagnation or declines hidden, through some accounting tricks, in the rest of the economy.
Lock-in style of reporting
Unfortunately, the unquestioned reporting on Ethiopia’s economic success has continued. Even the EU study appears to have been shelved, or deliberately ignored despite the significant findings. Even as a fifth of the population is in need of emergency aid, the World Bank is sticking with the outdated data and has recently released a sensationalized report entitled “Ethiopia’s Great Run: the growth acceleration and how to pace it.”
The ensuing famine has shaken the foundation of Ethiopia’s growth narrative, yet western NGOs and media outlets appear to suffer from the lock-in effect in adopting consistent storylines. They continue to link and refer to the World Bank, IMF and others reports and indexes by multilateral organizations.
That’s why we continue to see comical headlines such as “Ethiopian Drought Threatens Growth as Cattle Die, Crops Fail,” which assumes that Ethiopia’s growth is actually occurring. This acquiescence does not only display ignorance, but it also underscores an effort to evade accountability for previous mistakes and failure to report accurate information.
In a recent interview with The Ethiopian Reporter, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn made a rare and fateful admission: “if we crave for too much praise for our achievements, we might run the risk of undermining the challenges we are facing. These challenges could grow bigger and become irreversible and that would be detrimental.”
Over the past 25 years, the EPRDF worked tirelessly to create a distorted image of the country and began craving and lobbying foreigners for praises.
Enron’s success involved an elaborate scam, but the firm was named “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years. This fame did not stop Enron from crumbling. EPRDF’s fate will not be any different. The Oromo uprising has already started the unraveling of its elaborate scams devised to attain legitimacy on the back of non-existent economic and democratic advancement.
On Sept.13, the BBC World Service aired the first segment of a two-part documentary entitled: Africa Surprising. As part of the series, journalist Hugh Sykes reported thatEthiopia has achieved a number of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ahead of schedule.
Ethiopia has long been praised for being “on track to meet most of the MDGs by 2015 if progress continues or the pace increased.” Earlier this year, the Horn of Africa nation declared achieving a few of the targets even before the end of 2015. Sykes’ aim was to capture this “exceptional success story.”
Unfortunately, the report illustrates the Western media’s sloppy and superficial coverage of African success stories. At least in Ethiopia, the much-celebrated storyline does not actually exist on the ground.
The BBC documentary
The most central and relevant part of the broadcast is Sykes’ visit to a health center in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. It is unclear how the BBC chose to profile this particular site, but Ethiopians know that such matters are typically handled by the regime. Authorities pick a site, tidy up everything and then let unsuspecting visitors or journalists such as Sykes in at their own convenience. As Sykes walked around the clinic, he noticed that the doctors and nurses greeted him with “broad smiles.” Their exuberance looked too unreal that Sykes had to ask why they were smiling so much. “They were so happy for over achieving the MDGs ahead of time,” a health staffer murmured. Of course, they had to smile, how else could they keep their jobs and a straight face while talking about a barely existent achievement?
It is startling that an astute journalist like Sykes was not aware that the whole thing was a setup. Ethiopia’s success stories are often created by manufacturing data or instructing project managers on how to provide information to foreign journalists. (In the case of journalists at the state-run media, reporters are given instructions on how to tell such stories.) In the BBC documentary, the clinic’s staffers appear a bit overzealous to the point of making Sykes uncomfortable. He asks what exactly they did to reach their targets ahead of schedule. Among other things, they recounted their work educating families on the benefits of breastfeeding and family planning. Incidentally, one of Ethiopia’s MDG success stories is the reduction of birth rates through a “highly successful and exemplary family planning” scheme. Little do reporters like Sykes or novice Western researchers know that the decrease in birth rate has nothing to do with the government’s family planning but the excessive outmigration of large cohorts of young women to the Middle East and South Africa, among other places.
In 2012 alone, an estimated 500,000 migrants, mostly young women, migrated to the Middle East. At that rate, several millions of female in fertile age group have left the country in search of better opportunities over the past few years. (The 2012 estimate doesn’t include migration to destinations other than the Middle East.)
Importantly, the excessive outmigration of Ethiopia’s youth is a reflection of dire poverty, and failure to achieve the MDGs. This outflow has intensified since the MDGs were put in place. Despite this, Sykes seems to nod, admire and move on. “Over the last ten years we achieved more than what was achieved during the previous century,” Ethiopia’s Minister of Health, told Skyes, an audacious and superfluous claim that the journalist let stand.
The series wrapped up by paying lip service to the truth: Sykes showed high rise buildings within a few meters of slums with shabby dwellings, rusty tin roofs and muddy walls; executives with stylish modern suits walking on the same streets with bony beggars; SUVs shuffling along with donkeys and goats on the streets, etc. He then offered a faint reference to ruling party’s embarrassing declaration of 100 percent electoral victory in May, alluding to a familiar storyline — Ethiopia’s economic rise despite a few governance hiccups here and there.
The paradox of double-digit growth
Ethiopia’s so-called double-digit economic growth brings to mind German politician Joseph Goebbels’propaganda principles: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The regime in Addis Ababa has ridden Ethiopia of educated manpower so much that the capacity to put numbers together and generate sensible economic statistics and estimate reasonable economic growth rates has been grossly diminished over the years. This is not a place to delve into the niceties of GDP estimation and growth rate calculations. By government’s own admission, almost all of the last five-year Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP I) targets have not been achieved, with all large infrastructural projects stuck at their early phases. However, the GDP growth rates remained more or less at the level forecast at the plan’s preparation stage. If all economic activities have not reached their goals as planned (in fact most lagged behind anticipated targets), how did Ethiopia somehow manage toachieve only the MDG targets, before schedule at that?
From SAPs to MDGs
The distribution of income and wealth are aspects of economic progress that are most relevant to the MDGs. The widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in Ethiopia does not require a journalist or any analyst to leave Addis Ababa. The alarming increase in the number of beggars in the streets and the exodus of unemployed youth across deserts and high seas are sufficient to inform any observer interested in arriving at a balanced assessment. But such a story may not generate enough clicks in donor countries. It may also undercut the Western narrative of saviordom that’s driven by the aid-industrial complex.
Why are donor countries and their institutions so keen to tell the “Ethiopia rising” story to the extent of getting ordinary Ethiopians irritated and uncomfortable? It is appropriate to provide a broader background on the origins of the MDGs.
Back in the 1980s, African governments were told to adjust their economies to market rules through structural adjustment programs (SAPs). There was little to no concern with “poverty” in the West. Laissez-faire economics or economic policy based on market rules was the order of the day.
By mid-1990s, the failure of SAPs became apparent, primarily because they gave rise to widening gaps in income distribution and propagation of poverty, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, who promoted SAPs, were at one point even referred to as Lords of Poverty. However, rich western nations were behind these multilateral agencies, arm-twisting leaders of developing countries to adjust their economies to the needs to the “global economy,” a proxy for the economies of the industrialized countries.
Western powers and their multilateral agencies reluctantly acknowledged the failure of laissez-faire economic policies and replaced them with the MDGs amid pressure from their progressive constituents, presumably to redress the damage caused to the developing countries’ economies. MDGs were grouped into sets of eight targets and handed over to developing countries with a condition that development aid would be strictly linked to achievements of the MDGs.
Statistical lies
When the MDGs came into existence, Ethiopia’s current rulers had already been in power for more than ten years. The regime immediately became a darling of the West because of massive poverty, which led to the outpouring of a substantial amount of development aid over the last two decades. The coupling of development aid with the achievement of MDGs target has created a precondition and breeding ground for misreporting on achievements of those targets.In dictatorial regimes like Ethiopia, numbers related to achievements can easily get churned out and systematically built over the years.
It is often hoped that donor countries, and the United Nations, which is responsible for monitoring the progress on MDGs, would scrutinize data accuracy and ensure that the targets have genuinely been achieved. That is the ideal scenario, but we live in the real world, not in the ideal world. In the real world, the required level of scrutiny does not often come into existence simply because it is costly to setup and operationalize them. To begin with, donors often assign inexperienced and naïve staff with skills unfit for the purpose of managing large and complex programs and projects. Additionally, donor agencies and NGOs have a responsibility to report back to their governments or fund providers on implementations of programs they are entrusted with. Therefore, it is not in the interest of such agencies to report program or project failures.
The Ethiopian regime has often presented itself as a key partner with the Western powers. Geopolitical interest and the excessive weight assigned to security concerns mean authorities in Addis Ababa could do anything and get away with it. This has adversely affected scrutiny on MDGs progress. No analyst or reporter would dare to question records supplied by officials in Addis Ababa. A journalist or researcher, who tries to shed some doubt on the credibility of official statistics, would be harshly treated, including expulsion with short notice or even physical attacks.
It is also abundantly clear that there is a tacit understanding between the Ethiopian government and the donor agencies not to scrutinize Ethiopia’s record on MDGs to a required extent. Donors need a foreign aid success story. Besides, for fear of political backlash from the general public, Western leaders would not object to the success story lines. It is in this scheme of things that the Western media appear to be given the role of generating the “Ethiopia rising” or “Africa Rising” storylines to enhance the “feel good factor” in donor countries. The increasingly muzzled Ethiopian public can do little more than helplessly watching this drama being played out in the name of poverty reduction.
The Cause of Ethiopia’s Recurrent Famine Is Not Drought, It Is Authoritarianism
Dawit Ayele Haylemariam, The Huffington Post, 24 August 2015 A concerned Citizen and Graduate Student of Political Science at University of Passau, Germany
Twenty years ago one Ethiopian Diaspora in Washington asked the late Prime minister Meles Zenawi what his vision for the country was. A rather polite and amiable Meles outlined his vision in a very human centered way. He said he hopes that in ten years every Ethiopian will have enough to eat three times a day and after 20 years Ethiopians will not only have enough food but they will also have the luxury of choosing what they eat.
Here we are now. Three years have passed since Meles died in office after 21 years in power. Once again Ethiopia’s food crisis is topping the headline. As seasonal rain fails in Eastern and Southern parts of the country, famine is threatening millions of Ethiopians. The UN estimates over 10 million are in need of emergency food aid.
Why is famine and hunger so common in Ethiopia?
Many experts relate Ethiopia’s cyclical famine with the country’s dependence on Rainfed smallholder agriculture, drought, rapid population growth or agricultural market dysfunctions. Although these factors do have significant role in the matter, they tend to hide the critical cause of hunger in the country – lack of rights and accountable government.
Nobel Prize winner and economist Amartya Sen has extensively analyzed the relationship between democracy and famine in his book Development as Freedom. Sen argues democracies don’t have famines, only authoritarian systems do. Famine tend to happen in places where the victims are oppressed by dictators.
A historical investigation of famine also identified 30 major famines during the 20th century. All happened in countries led by autocratic rule or that were under armed conflict, four being in Ethiopia.
Why does autocracy lead to famine? The most fundamental reason is that autocrats often don’t care enough about the population to prevent famine. Autocrats maintain power through force, not popular approval. This argument has been proven true in the case of Ethiopia.
During 1983-1985 the worst famine in the country’s history had led to more than 400,000 deaths. Extensive investigation by Alexander De Waal in his book Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia has found “more than half this mortality can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case.” The military government is not only spent between $100 and $200 million to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the revolution while millions were starving, Mengistu’s regime also attempted to impose customs duties on aid shipments.
Similarly during the 1973-1974 Wollo famine, attempts to hide the reality of the situation by the Imperial Feudal System caused 300,000 deaths. This particular famine was not a problem of food shortage in the country but lack of ability to access food. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture Report of 1972 stated that output for 1972-1973 was only 7% lower than the previous year. Also,food price in Wollo were no higher-often substantially lower-than elsewhere in the country. The problem was the poor just couldn’t afford to buy. Meanwhile, Emperor Haile Selassie spend some $35 million to celebrate his eightieth birthday in 1973.
Unfortunately the trend of autocratic-led hunger has not changed under the current government either, if anything Meles’s regime took it to the next level.
In 2004 Humanitarian Exchange Magazine exposed that disregarding experts advise that the situation in the country was very severe and does qualifies as a famine, the government of Ethiopia and USAID conspired to downplay the 2002-2004 food crisis as “localized famine” in fear of global media attention and political dangers for the EPRDF. The report states “the lack of classic famine images….facilitates further disengagement by the media and Western publics, even as large numbers of vulnerable people face destitution, malnutrition, morbidity and mortality.”
Again 2010 in a report titled Development without Freedom: How Aid Underwrites Repression in Ethiopia, Human Right Watch extensively documented how the EPRDF is using development aid to suppress political dissent by conditioning access to essential safety net programs on support for the ruling party.
Today, once again the danger of another catastrophic famine is looming large on the horizon. Ongoing drought worsened by the El Niño global weather phenomenon has already caused deaths of many cattle and have put as many as 14 million people at risk.
The government also argues the country has already realized food security at a national level, that is to say we have enough food in the country to feed everyone. The inherent flaw in this argument is that the presence of food in the country doesn’t necessarily mean those affected by drought will have access to it. As it was the case during the 1973 Wollo famine, when a crop fails it not only affects the food supply, it also destroys the employment and livelihood of farmers, denying them the ability to buy food from the market.
Reports have also shown that the government was informed of the risk of seasonal rain failure forecast as early as two months ago but it chose to keep it to itself. Had the government shared the information with the media and local governments to inform pastoralists to move their cattle near rivers or highlands, much of the animal loss would have been avoided and relief supports would have been delivered on time.
Democracy can effectively prevent famine
Why is the Ethiopia government acting so irresponsibly? The answer is simple – because there is no incentive for the government to work hard to avert famine. Amartya Sen argument related to absence of political incentives generated by election, multiparty politics and investigative journalism is also true in the case of Ethiopia.
The EPRDF led government has successfully wiped out all groups that might pose any form of threat to its power. Fresh from its 100% “election” victory, with very fragmented opposition parties, no civil society and no scope for uncensored public criticism, Hailemariam’s regime doesn’t have to suffer the political consequences of its failure to prevent famine.
If there were a democratic system to keep the government accountable, the state’s response would have been much different. For instance, Botswana, like Ethiopia, is prone to drought but a democracy since its independence in 1966, Botswana never had a famine. Botswana’s democratic government immediately deploys relief efforts during every drought, and even improves them from one drought to the next. Had the government in Botswana failed to undertake timely action, there would have been severe criticism and pressure from the opposition and maybe even bigger political cost in future elections. In contrast, the Ethiopian governments did not have to worry with those prospects.
Another Sen’s key argument is information flow and free press – democracy contributes greatly to bring out information that can have an enormous impact on policies for famine prevention. If it weren’t for the foreign media reporting and social media activists outcry, the government might have kept the current problem a secret for long and caused much greater damage than it already has. In Sen’s words “free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early warning system a country threatened by famine can have”
If aid organizations comprehensively and immediately deploy humanitarian assistance, the current crisis could be impelled with minimal damage. However, the argument that famine in Ethiopia is caused by drought doesn’t hold water anymore. Unless the problem is addressed from its roots, another famine is just a matter of time. For Ethiopia to truly achieve food security and avoid any dangers of famine in the future, nothing but building a democratic, transparent and accountable system is the solution.
In Tyrannic fascist TPLF Ethiopia war, poverty and famine were not only in the past but also very true in this very moment, right now. It has spatial variations as rulers and time changes. In 1960’s and 1970’s (Hailse Sellasie Regime) Wollo and Afar regions were the mainly affected. As documented in Wikpedia:-
In 1973, a famine in Wollo killed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000, mostly of the marginalized Afar herders and Oromo tenant farmers, who suffered from the widespread confiscation of land by the wealthy classes and government of Emperor Haile Selassie. Despite attempts to suppress news of this famine, leaked reports contributed to the undermining of the government’s legitimacy and served as a rallying point for dissidents, who complained that the wealthy classes and the Ethiopian government had ignored both the famine and the people who had died.[12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia
In 1980’s Tigray was severely affected but not the only.
Five Ethiopian provinces—Gojjam, Eritrea, Hararghe, Tigray, and Wollo—all received record low rainfalls in the mid-1980s.[17] In the south, a separate and simultaneous cause was the government’s response to Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) insurgency. In 1984, President Mengistu Haile Mariam announced that 46% of the Ethiopian Gross National Product would be allocated to military spending, creating the largest standing army in sub-Saharan Africa; the allocation for health in the government budget fell from 6% in 1973–4 to 3% by 1990–1.[18]
Although a UN estimate of one million deaths is often quoted for the 1983–5 famine, this figure has been challenged by famine scholar Alex de Waal. In a major study, de Waal criticized the United Nations for being “remarkably cavalier” about the numbers of people who died, with the UN’s one-million figure having “absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever,” a fact which represents “a trivialization and dehumanization of human misery.”[19]
Nevertheless, the magnitude of the disaster has been well documented: in addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions were made destitute.[20] Media activity in the West, along with the size of the crisis, led to the Do They Know It’s Christmas? charity single and the July 1985 concert Live Aid, which elevated the international profile of the famine and helped secure international aid. In the early to mid-1980s there were famines in two distinct regions of the country, resulting in several studies of one famine that try to extrapolate to the other or less cautious writers referring to a single widespread famine. The famine in the southeast of the country was brought about by the Derg’s counterinsurgency efforts against the OLF. However, most media referring to “the Ethiopian famine” of the 1980s refers to the severe famine in 1983-5 centered on Tigray and northern Wollo, which further affected Eritrea, Begemder and northern Shewa.[21] Living standards had been declining in these government-held regions since 1977, a “direct consequence” of Derg agricultural policies.[22] A further major contributing factor to the famine were the Ethiopian government’s enforced resettlement programs, utilized as part of its counter-insurgency campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia
Since 1991 as rocky Tigray has been prospering through political favoritism, nepoltism and resource transfer from green Oromia and the south that have been subjected to underdevelopment, exploitation, land grabbing, evictions, genocidal mass killings and famine. It is not Ethiopia that has been growing fast and rising, it is rocky Tigray at the expenses of the suffering Oromia and the south. What the TPLF propaganda machine shows to the world is rosy pictures of its business empire that serves only the Tigray, genocidal cliques and new colonizer from the region. During the Obama visit, what the president was shown were Coffee ceremony in government office, Lucy’s skeleton, Fafa factory near Finfinnee, Ethiopian Air Line’s Boeing plane, Abyssinian women and their cultural dances and the Chinese built African Union building in Finfinnee.
Realities in Ethiopia that Obama have not seen:-
Systematic genocidal killings, mass eviction going on against Oromo people in Burrayyuu (Central Oromia, near Fifinnee) and in Bishoftuu (Central Oromia). Thousands have been become homeless and destitute as their homes have been destroyed by Agazi (TPLF) fascist forces that has targeted Oromo for land grabs in its genocidal (Addis Ababa) master plan:-
The following pictures are children, women and adults that has been exposed to famine in Eastern Oromia at the time Obama Africa/ Ethiopia visit. Thousands are exposed to famine and dying but help is reaching them. The pictures are on social media. The main stream media, TPLF and Obama are in Ethiopia’s fast growth hype, democratically elected government and war on terror. No one of them are talking war on politically caused famine.
Suuraaleen armaan gadii kun daa’imman dabalatee namoon kumaatamaan lakaawamani Godina Hargee Lixaa keessatti beelaaf saaxilaman jirachuu kan mul’isu dha. Ogeessonni fayyaa balaa beelaa hammaataa jiru kana dormannoof yoo waywaatanis haga ammaa dhageetti hin arganne. Gargaarsa tokko illee argachaa hin jiran.
The above is from World Bank source which is conventional (income based) method of poverty analysis
According to the Economist’s latest (25 June 2015) multidimensional poverty analysis, 9 countries that have registered 80% and above of their population as multidimensionally poor are all in Africa: Ethiopia, Somalia, Burundi, South Sudan, Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad.
MOST measures of poverty just focus on income. About 1 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. But a new report from Oxford University looks at poverty levels in 101 developing countries, covering 5.2 billion people, or 75% of the world’s population. The report understands poverty in a different way from how economists usually do.
The economists measure “multidimensional poverty”. This complements measures based on income and reflects the many different problems people can face all at the same time. These include bad health and a lack of education. In all, they identify ten indicators; if people are deprived in at least one-third them, they are multidimensionally poor. The authors estimate that 1.6 billion people fit this description.
In some countries the difference between the conventional and unconventional measures is stark. In Mexico, Pakistan and Egypt, for instance, there are twice as many multidimensionally poor as there are conventionally poor. –
British journalist Caroline Knowles writes that Addis Ababa’s city dump (aka Koshe) as the main source of survival for many poor Ethiopians. But, Why the Ethiopian government allow its people to live like this? Is it because they don’t know or because they don’t care?
MY first sight of Koshe, Addis Ababa’s giant 50-year-old landfill site, is from the highway. It runs alongside it, and away from the road as far as the eye can see: a giant, murky, grey-brown raised area of partially decomposed rubbish, with occasional bright specks of colour. As my hopes rise from having found it, my heart sinks as I try to take it in.
The interpreter I have engaged for this mission through my contacts, a junior academic at Addis Ababa University, is not keen on going ahead. Leaving the taxi and crossing the highway by the bridge, I try to absorb the panoramic view afforded by this elevated viewpoint over the highway.
This 36-hectare site – shrinking as the city attempts to regulate it – is patrolled from the air by large vultures, diving into the rubbish. Motley crews of wild dogs gambolling and snatching at the soft ground patrol it at ground level. Smoke rises in several places, adding a layer of haze to the murky colour scheme. Yellow bulldozers nose the heap and shift and level it; municipal rubbish trucks and flatbed trucks with skips arrive from all over the city and discharge their contents.
Between the dogs, the birds and the machines there was something else, something I could only slowly take in: 200 to 300 people, dressed in the same murky hues as the rubbish dump, backs bent, hooks in hand, were working on its surface.
Feeling queasy I walk towards the end of the bridge. In order to reach the steps and the rubbish, I must walk past three young men who are using the vantage point of the bridge for surveillance and information gathering. In an unspoken negotiation I don’t understand, they take in my camera, and my shoulder bag containing digital recorders and money, and let me pass. This silent confrontation, between the comforts of my world and the difficulties of theirs, only further develops my anxieties.
Descending the steps, I walk to the edge of the dump where I am met by the site supervisor and his aides. They want a stamped authorisation of my visit from the relevant municipal department. What looks like a vast area, open to the surrounding countryside, is as closed to me as a Korean petrochemical plant. I turn back and head into the city to secure the relevant authorisation.
TRASH TALKS
The city dump is an inventory, of a kind, of its material life. Addis in rubbish is not London or Moscow in rubbish. Rubbish provides a crude and deeply flawed account of cities and their social, political and economic contexts. Rubbish displays social, material and income differences.
Indeed, some people’s rubbish provides others with the fabric of their everyday life. Maybe this is the best way to think about Koshe – as a redistribution centre which indexes the differences between people’s life-journeys, refracted through material cultures at their point of disposal.
Not just the content, the handling of rubbish displays cities too. How cities deal with their rubbish reveals them. It is a major challenge for municipal authorities in Addis, who are only able to deal with two-thirds of the rubbish, distributed in collection points all over a city that is fast expanding – leaving the rest to private contractors and the age-old informal dumping practices on streets and in rivers. Thus rubbish provides a visual commentary on urban citizens’ behaviour as well as the efficacy of municipal governance.
SCRATCHING A LIVING
Getting myself into the rubbish is a story of municipal offices cluttered with old computers, fans, desks, officials and permissions. It is about writing a letter in Amharic explaining what I want to do and why. It is about waiting until the electricity comes back on and we can photocopy my university ID. There are phone calls to the landfill site and arrangements are made. Everybody is charming. I’ve come from London to take a look at the rubbish. Why? I am following a piece of plastic around the world. Really! First world problems!
I go back to Koshe – which means ‘dirty’ in Amharic – and hand over the necessary papers to the site supervisor, in his makeshift office at the roadside of the dump. Minutes later, I am scrambling after him, out on to the rubbish heap, navigating around the dogs which I fear, and the areas where it is soft underfoot and I sink up to my knees. My stomach is churning with fear. My interpreter and I are using Olbas oil to mask the smell.
– – – – – –
– – – – – –
We stop north of the main road, where it is firmer underfoot, in the area where the activity is concentrated. This is the place to which the municipal authorities and the site supervisor direct the trucks to dump their loads. A single white towelling slipper, with the Hilton Hotel logo on it, stands out in the grey-brown mush.
This area is a hive of activity that peaks to a frenetic pace with the arrival of new loads, and then falls away, leaving a more continuous stream of slower activity, and a legacy of dust and smoke that gets in everyone’s eyes.
As rubbish trucks turn off the main road on to the edge of the site, a group of five or six young men jump on the back and ride to the dumping area with it. This puts them at an advantage for grabbing the best items as the truck discharges its load onto the tip, but not without risk. The mechanism that crushes the rubbish occasionally catches a young man in its deadly and disfiguring grasp.
As the young men jump off with the rubbish and begin picking items that catch the eye, the line of men and women, that has formed along both sides of the truck, spring into action, grabbing items and stashing them in woven plastic sacks. These are held tightly in one hand; in the other a homemade metal hook with a white handle, used to grab and dig into the grey-brown surface of the heap, is held. This hooked instrument earns the pickers – sometimes referred to as scavengers – the name ‘scratchers’.
The moment of discharge unleashes a tense scramble for the most valuable items; a competition in which masculine physical strength prevails, and young, agile, women put up a good fight. Scratchers then go on searching, or rest until the next truck arrives, or regroup around the bulldozers unearthing new bounty. The social and material relationships of the dump demand skilled navigation.
From the vantage point of the dump, the scratchers rework the geographies and hierarchies of the city. The tensest flurries of competitive scratching accompany the arrival of trucks from the most affluent areas, with the best rubbish. The Bole area, with its upscale detached housing, mall, hotels and the international airport, sends the most prized items, the cast-offs of affluence, including waste airline food in large green plastic bags, to the dump. Scratchers collect the food discarded by airline passengers for themselves, leaving a large pool of bright green plastic bags, which attracts a herd of goats.
Rubbish from the central part of the city, from international hotels, the African Union HQ buildings and the embassies, is similarly sought after, and monopolised by the fittest young men. Scratchers recognise the sources of rubbish from the colours and types of trucks used by the different sub-cities and private contractors. And they recognise the drivers and their helpers, who regularly work the same areas. The discarded traces of the city’s more affluent lives, especially foreign residents and visitors, most animate the dump. Rubbish logs social inequalities in cities and provides a minimal redress.
The dump has temporal rhythms. Scratchers know what time the trucks arrive from different parts of the city. From 8am through the morning is the busiest time. The dump is geared to municipal collection and transportation. By 5pm things are dying down as the trucks stop for the night, and the scratching continues with fewer scratchers at a slower pace. Bulldozers moving stuff around and digging into the surface of the dump also provide new scratching opportunities, and a lively crowd gathers around them. Scratching is a 24-hour activity, with people arriving after their working day is over. Some scratchers work throughout the night wearing torches attached to headbands. Scratching it seems is a (stigmatised) way of life as much as a way of getting by.
Within the urban geographies of affluence, materials establish another set of hierarchies. Scratchers search for anything they can use for themselves, or resell. Materials have a value in recycling, providing an afterlife for discarded objects. Metals, including nails, are the most valuable booty, and men dominate this, although a few women have ventured into metals too. Wood has value as firewood. Tourist clothes and shoes can be cashed in at the Mercato salvage section. Some scratchers just come to eat.
But plastics are the most ubiquitous material on the dump, and among plastics, water bottles the scratchers refer to as ‘highland’, after a popular brand of bottled water, dominate, and in this niche women prevail.
Scratchers specialise in particular materials. Specialisms result from advice from experienced scratchers, from serendipity, or from knowledge of shifting recycling prices, gathered at the edge of the dump. Here materials are counted or weighed, and turned into cash, with the agents from factories using recycled materials.
A pile of white dusty material arrives from the leather factory. The dogs take up residence. They are ejected by a group of men, who have decided that this is a good place to sit, while waiting for the next truck.
In their working clothes – they scrub up outside of work and look completely different – scratchers are dressed similarly and grimily, making them the same colour as the rubbish heap. Men wear trousers, shirts and tee shirts, baseball caps and sometimes hoodies to protect their heads from the sun. Women wear scarves and baseball caps, skirts, trousers, t-shirts and blouses. Some carry infants on their backs. All wear sturdy shoes, often trainers.
The scratching population numbers 200–300, but expands after holidays with casual pickers. More women than men do it by a ratio of about three to one, and, while people in their 20s and 30s predominate, ages range from teens to seniors. Most live in the villages around the dump in simple, rusted, corrugated iron dwellings, sometimes with satellite dishes. Rubbish has provided a source of local employment and subsistence for generations over its 50-year history, and is firmly embedded in local calculations of subsistence and accumulation.
About 50 scratchers live in cardboard and plastic makeshift shelters off the edge of the dump, safely away from passing vehicles and next to a pen full of pigs. The rubbish sustains rural arrivals, for whom it works as a gateway to the city, as well as long-term residents, whose rural routes have settled into the past, making them locals.
The ministry and its field agents say that the rubbish dump is a source of dangerous working practices by people who, like the rubbish they sort, are consigned to live beyond the limits of civic life. A litany of accidents, deaths and disfigurements as scratchers take risks to recover value, are recited by the site supervisor:
“Food comes from some place and a guy is going into the truck and he is injured and they take him to hospital but he died. Also someone else lost their legs in an encounter with a bulldozer. Two months ago a man who jumped in the truck dropped off when it broke. In recent accidents, two were women. The bulldozer operator has a lot to do to push the garbage. If they see something they want when the bulldozer moves the garbage, they don’t think about their life.”
In living beyond formal systems of governance, this city suburb of rubbish is more like the Somali borderlands, patrolled by contrabandists and gunrunners, than a part of the city. There is a police station nearby, and policing and the justice system are slowly taking back the dump from a parallel system of authority, a mafia of five ‘big men’. The big men control access by scratchers in exchange for fees, making themselves wealthy in the process. But recently, some of them have been imprisoned, shifting the balance of power towards the authorities.
Once far away, a place outside of the city, outside systems of formal employment, taxation, law and municipal governance, Koshe is now on the edge of a city that has grown to meet it in what are fast becoming its upscale southern suburbs. A new development of large detached houses nearby anticipates this future – new housing for those in a position to benefit from rising prosperity, and a consequent shrinkage and rehabilitation of the landfill site. These changes have far-reaching consequences for the scratchers of Koshe.
– – – – – NOTE: The above article was first published on The Guardian Newspaper under the title “Inside Addis Ababa’s Koshe Rubbish Tip Where Hundreds Literally Scratch a Living”. It is an extract from the new book Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads by Caroline Knowles. (Pluto Press, £18.99).
OromianEconomist 
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