Ethiopia

Breaking New Ground

Beginnings 3
A bird's eye view 4
A land of plenty 6
Menelik the Moderniser 10
Haile Selassie, King of Kings 11
The Derg years 13
The nationalities question 16
Building the Second Republic 21
A life of exile 25
Living off the land 28
The environment 32
Farming and herding 35
Can Ethiopia feed itself? 39
The world's second-poorest economy 42
Education: a way out of poverty? 45
Women's lives: the 15-hour day 47
'May God grant you health' 49
Surviving in the city 51
A land of righteousness 53
The re-invention of Ethiopia 58
Dates and events 60
Up-date: events in Ethiopia since 1995 61
Facts and figures 70
Further reading 71
Oxfam in Ethiopia 72

First published by Oxfam (UK and Ireland), 1995

(0 85598 270 5)
Revised edition published by Oxfam GB, 2003
(0 85598 484 8) Ben Parker
Oxfam GB 1995, 2003
All rights reserved. A catalogue record for this with Abraham Woldegiorgis
publication is available from the British Library.
Published by Oxfam GB, 274 Banbury Road,
Oxford 0X2 7DZ www.oxfam.org.uk/publications
Printed by Information Press, Eynsham
Oxfam GB is registered as a charity (no. 202918)
and is a member of Oxfam International.

This book converted to digital file in 2010

 Map of Ethiopia, showing places featured in this book

Dire Dawa / X Awbare Camp

' OX u . Somaliland
Hargeisa
,. Harar X
Jijiga OHartisheikCamps

Kafa Wollavra
Beginnings

The cradle of humanity

We all come from Ethiopia. Four million
years ago, this land was the home of the
ancestors of homo sapiens. In 1974, near the
Gona river in the Afar desert, archaeo-
logists discovered a partial female
skeleton which added dramatic new
evidence to the story of human evolution.
She was called Dinqenesh ('You Are
Amazing') by Ethiopians, and Lucy by Dr
Donald Johanson, who discovered her.
Her Latin name is Australopithecus
afarensis.
More discoveries in 1994 supported the
theory that our earliest ancestors - the
first hominids to walk on two legs and
evolve away from the apes - were born
along the African Rift Valley, which
passes through Ethiopia, and continues
southwards to Mozambique.
Fragments of bone and teeth in the Afar
desert of Ethiopia give a glimpse into the
dimmest distant past, long before our
ancestors used stone tools or fire, and
migrated out into Asia and Europe.
History is alive in Ethiopia.

Breaking new ground

For the last 3,000 years, a rich and unique
culture has been evolving in Ethiopia. In
the last 30 years, the land has had to
contend with war, famine, and utter
destitution. Medieval churches, hewn out
of the rock, served as shelters from MiG
fighter-bombers. At least half a million
people died of hunger. Now an
impoverished and battered nation is
emerging into an uncertain future with
new borders, young leaders, and a radical
new political strategy. An uneasy peace
prevails, as a new social and economic
order takes shape. The stakes are high.
Keeping body and soul together is still
the challenge for most Ethiopians.
A bird's eye view

A s big as France and Spain combined,

Ethiopia is home to about 54 million
people. In the heart of the Horn of Africa,
watered by great rivers. The Blue Nile
starts its long journey to the
Mediterranean at Lake Tana, just below
it is on the borders between the Arab and the Simien mountains, where the highest
the African worlds. About half the peaks are topped by Ras Dashen (4,620
population is Christian and half Muslim. metres), Ethiopia's highest mountain. The
The landscape varies from barren, salty great waterfalls of Tissisat ('water that
desert to lush, dripping forest. Some parts smokes') at the source of the Blue Nile
of the Afar desert, in the north-east, are were described as 'one of the most
100 metres below sea level. They seethe magnificent, stupendous sights in the
with volcanic activity, a moonscape of creation' by the eighteenth-century
Highland areas are sulphurous salt pans and rocky lava fields. Scottish traveller James Bruce. Dividing
intensively cultivated. the highlands from north-east to south-
Rising westwards beyond the Afar
Crops are grown
wherever possible, on desert, the land becomes higher, greener, west is the Rift Valley: a vast geological
terraced slopes and and cooler, up to the craggy highlands, phenomenon that stretches from Syria to
plateau-tops. where plateaux are riven by gorges and Mozambique.

#J|3f
 To the west of the highlands are Ethiopia's ecosystems support Above: a lowland
forests; to the south-east, rangelands on thousands of species of plants, birds, and landscape in the
Ogaden region
the border with Somalia; in the far west mammals; some are found nowhere else
are fertile arable plains on the border in the world, and nine of the mammal
with Sudan. To the north and east is species are classified as threatened.
Eritrea, with its 1,000 km coastline along Ethiopia is among the most important
the Red Sea. To the south is Kenya. reservoirs of biological diversity in
At the centre of Ethiopia the capital, Africa, and many crops cultivated Below: Addis Ababa,
Addis Ababa, is the national crossroads. elsewhere, like millet, are thought to have a city of four million
Major roads fan out to the four points of their genetic origins here. people
the compass. A 781 km railway leads
from Addis Ababa to the Red Sea port of
Djibouti.
Ethiopia's million square kilometres
include a rich variety of climatic and
ecological conditions. Population density
ranges from fewer than five people per
square kilometre in the herding
rangelands of the Ogaden to 200 or more
in the central and south-western areas.
Most of the population, human and
animal, is concentrated in the cool central
highlands, settled for more than 5,000
years. Here pressure on land and other
natural resources is increasing.
A land of plenty

E thiopia was settled by peoples from

two of the main lineages of human
ancestry: the Hamitic peoples and the
- became a metaphor for remoteness, or
plenty, or simply a land of unknown
dark-skinned peoples. The name
Semitic peoples (named after Ham and 'Ethiopia' derives from the Greek for
Shem, sons of Noah). A third line, the 'burnt faces'. 'Abyssinia', as Ethiopia was
Cushitic ethnic groups, is found commonly known by outsiders until the
particularly in the south and south-west. mid-twentieth century, probably derives
There are now at least 64 languages from the word which Ethiopians use to
spoken in Ethiopia, and perhaps 80 describe themselves: habesha.
different ethnic groups. The two largest The Ethiopians' national literary epic,
are the Oromo and the Amhara peoples. the Kebra Negast, tells the story of the
Other large ethnic groups include ethnic Queen of Sheba travelling from Ethiopia
Somalis, Tigrayans, and Gurages. Some to meet King Solomon of the Jews in
of them are spread over national borders, Israel almost 1,000 years before Christ.
so not all are Ethiopian citizens. She then returned to Ethiopia and bore a
Ethiopia, Cush, Nubia, and other son, Menelik I, from whom Ethiopian
ancient African civilisations merge into Emperors used to claim descent. This rich
each other in translations of Old brew of myth and fable makes the actual
Mural at Axum: the
meeting of the Queen Testament scripture, travellers' tales, and early history of present-day Ethiopia
ofSheba('Makeda') myths. 'Ethiopia' - mentioned several almost impossible to trace. But from the
and King Solomon times in the Bible and in Greek literature last 2,000 years, parts of Ethiopia can
offer a history, with artifacts, recorded
events, and travellers' accounts.
When did 'Ethiopia' come into
existence, and where was it? Can it be
called one of the most ancient states in
the world, or is it just an ancient name?
Many Ethiopians are proud that the name
of their country and its settlements are
scattered in the most ancient of historical
documents. Others suspect that history
has been manipulated to serve the
interests of those in power, and that most
of the territories of today's Ethiopia bear
little, if any, relation to the ancient
civilisations of the Red Sea.

The empire of Axum

Ethiopia's natural wealth and strategic
location led at the time of Christ to the
rise of an important Red Sea trading and
military empire, with its capital at Axum
in present-day Tigray. The ancient
civilisations of northern Ethiopia
dominated the Red Sea region for almost
a thousand years from 200 BC. A naval
power developed, and Axum's traders
and travellers, using the port of Adulis
on the Red Sea, reached as far abroad as
Egypt, India, and China. Exporting ivory,
rhinoceros horn, and spices, and
importing metal and cloth, Axum grew
wealthy and powerful through trade and
conquest.
Today, Axum is most famous for its
archaeological ruins: obelisks, tombs, and
palaces, and the claim by the Orthodox
Church that Axum is the resting place of
the Ark of the Covenant - the chest
containing the ten commandments
engraved on stone and handed to Moses
by God.
Axum's tallest standing obelisk, 23 Lalibela: built by angels Axum's tallest
metres high, probably a huge gravestone, Christianity was introduced into Ethiopia standing obelisk,
probably marking a
is carved from a single piece of rock. With in AD 341. In the Middle Ages the grave: 23 metres
windows and doors on ten 'storeys', it Orthodox Church built hundreds of rock- high, it has windows
looks like the world's first skyscraper. hewn churches. The greatest are found and doors on ten
With half a dozen others, it has remained near the village of Roha in the Wollo 'storeys'
standing through the centuries and region of the central highlands.
withstood the rumbling of tanks and Beginning in the twelfth century,
shelling during the Italian invasion of workmen and priest-kings constructed a
1935 and the civil war of the 1970s and fantastical complex of churches,
1980s. monasteries, baptismal pools, and secret
 tunnels. Ethiopian legend says that the and surrounding villages kneel to kiss the
whole massive undertaking was inspired rock itself and, wrapped against the cold
by a dream of King Lalibela, and built in traditional thick, white, gabi blankets,
with the help of angels. murmur prayers to the walls.
The churches are almost invisible until Skeletons of famous monks are still
one stumbles upon them through an stored in crevices in the rocks. Inside the
ordinary-looking Ethiopian town. Carved gloom of the churches, frayed
into the hillside, each of the ten churches embroideries shroud the inner sanctum
is interconnected by a series of from prying eyes and tourists' cameras.
labyrinthine passages, stairways, and Sunlight pierces the open windows in
openings carved in the red rock. shafts, and pigeons flutter noisily in the
On a cool Sunday morning, the austere courtyards. Indian swastikas and Jewish
chants of some of the 450 priests of Stars of David are carved side by side on
Lalibela: a twelfth- Lalibela rise echoing from the the walls, striking evidence of Ethiopia's
century complex of
subterranean places of worship. Deep position at the crossroads of human
Christian churches,
carved out drum beats resonate from the recesses of beliefs.
of red rock the churches. Worshippers from the town
The movable monarchy
After the almost monastic period of King
Lalibela, dynasties came and went,
capitals rose and fell, and power shifted
from the northern Tigrayans to the
central Amharas and back. Society
oscillated between anarchy and feudal
monarchy, closely associated with the
Orthodox Church. Literature and
philosophy flourished. There was no
fixed capital, but the seat of power was
effectively wherever the king and his
army happened to be camped.
Islam had filtered into Ethiopia from
Arabia since the time of the Prophet
Mohammed, and its strongholds were
naturally towards the east of Ethiopia.
From the mercantile city of Harar,
Ahmed Ibn Ibrahim El Ghazi, nicknamed
Gragn (The Left-Handed'), rose up
against the Christian emperor Lebna
Dengel in 1527. Gragn launched a jihad
against the Christians, and over-ran
much of the country, burning churches
and looting gold wherever he went. His
armies, demanding conversion to Islam
or death, reached as far north as Axum.
But travellers' tales of Ethiopia's
Christian Empire had filtered out to
Europe. In response to Lebna Dengel's
appeal, the Portuguese sent a group of
musketeers, who contributed to the
defeat and death of Gragn in 1543.
Hie coming of the Oromo to a British military expedition, which
At about the same time as the Christian stormed his mountain stronghold at
Empire was under attack from the east, Magdala in 1868, where Tewodros, crying
the south was being overtaken by the 'I shall never fall into the hands of the
Oromo people. They spread north, east, enemy', shot himself in the mouth with
and west throughout the sixteenth his pistol. The British force then
century, and penetrated the Amhara proceeded to loot the libraries of the
areas as far north as Wollo and Gojjam. palace and church nearby, taking
Gragn's former power base, Harar itself, hundreds of manuscripts back to
was attacked until a peace agreement England. Few have been returned from
was signed in 1568. The Oromo region the British Museum to this day.
today makes up the heart of Ethiopia. Yohannes IV, a chief from Tigray,
The conquests and subsequent settlement succeeded in holding the expansionist Imperial monument in
of Oromos all over Ethiopia have been forces of both Egypt and Italy at bay, but Addis Ababa: the
described by one sociologist as 'the was killed in battle against the Sudanese black-maned lion is
making of modern Ethiopian society'. the symbol of
Mahdist armies in 1889. Power then
Ethiopia's dynasty of
Rather than ruling the people of the areas reverted to the Amhara line, from the emperors, who
they invaded, the Oromo tended to central region of Shoa, and Emperor claimed descent from
integrate and intermarry. Today, they are Menelik II was crowned. King Solomon
the most numerous ethnic group in
Ethiopia, and one of the largest tribes in
Africa.

The rise and fall of the

Empire of Gonder
As Ethiopia recovered, reduced in power
and territory after 16 years of civil war,
the Emperors moved farther north and
west, close to Lake Tana. A new capital
was formed at Gonder in 1636, which
became the first fixed capital of Ethiopia
since Lalibela. A series of rulers built
solid palaces and castles in the city, and
some finely decorated churches still stand
testimony to the zenith of Ethiopia's
renaissance.
The Gonderine empire itself began to
collapse in the late 1700s, and Ethiopia
disintegrated into an amalgamation of
principalities controlled by warlords.
From the mid-nineteenth century, two
unifying leaders, Tewodros II and
Yohannes IV, started to pull Ethiopia
together again.

Enter the British

Tewodros II tried to gain support for his
reforms and technical schemes by writing
to Queen Victoria. When his letters went
unanswered, he imprisoned a British
consul and several missionaries. This led
Menelik
the Moderniser

E mperor Menelik II was a moderniser

and an expansionist. In a series of
brutal raids on neighbouring peoples, he
During Menelik's reign, Ethiopia saw
the advent of motor cars, Ethiopic
typewriters, piped water, the telegraph
tripled the territory of the empire. But he and the telephone, and diplomatic
also managed to withstand the European relations with foreign powers. With the
'Scramble for Africa', through a support of his wife Empress Taytu, a
combination of cunning and brute force. leader in her own right, he established
He imported modern firearms in large the foundations of a modern state: a
numbers, and understood the rivalries bank, a post office, a railway line to the
that motivated the Western powers as port of Djibouti, and schools and
they used Africa as a playing field for hospitals.
their power struggles. While modernising the centre, Menelik
The Italian government had its eye on terrorised the periphery. The bitter
Ethiopia, from the vantage point of its experiences of peoples such as the
colony in Eritrea. In 1895, the Italians Gurage, the Wollayta, the Kafa, the Beni
invaded Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, and Shangul and the Gimira, who suffered
occupied the town of Adigrat. terrible and brutal conquest, still rankle
Menelik assembled an today. Tens of thousands of people from
army of 100,000 newly conquered regions in the south-
troops and moved west were sold to be slaves of the
north to highlanders. Only in September 1923 did
challenge them. Ethiopia ban the slave trade.
When the Menelik II is the most controversial
decisive battle figure in modern Ethiopian history.
took place, near Ethiopia owes its borders to his
Adwa, on 1 conquests, and also perhaps owes him its
March 1896, the instability and ethnic disharmony. In
Italians were trying to cement together a huge mosaic
outnumbered by of peoples, he was storing up trouble for
about five to one, his own successors. He left behind a
and outmanoeuvred. chaotic struggle for succession, and a
This humiliating defeat of a country that had expanded but not
white army in Africa, according to consolidated its new territories.
Ethiopian historian Bahru Zewde, Kingdoms and principalities, especially
'stemmed the tide of colonialism'. It also among the Oromo lands, on the verge of
led to treaties that established Ethiopia's statehood themselves, were
newly-expanded borders, which have unceremoniously annexed, and forced to
more or less survived until the present. pay tribute to the Ethiopian Emperor.
The symbolic and historical Menelik's successes in technological
significance of the battle of Adwa, which progress have to be set against the
preserved Ethiopia's independence until turbulent legacy which his 'African
the 1930s, is one of the most potent colonialism' left behind.
ingredients of Ethiopia's special status in
African and black history.

10
 Haile Selassie,
King of Kings

A s Emperor Menelik's health

declined, there was a bitter struggle
for power, from which Ras Tafari
natural extension of the coastal colony
they had established in 1885 and named
Eritrea. Haile Selassie saw that the
Mekonnen emerged as the King of Kings invasion was inevitable. Although he
in 1928. His coronation in November managed to buy arms from Western
1930 was a spectacular pageant, designed powers, he obtained no promises of
to reinforce Tafari's legitimacy as the heir support from them.
to the Solomonic line, and to put Ethiopia The Italian invasion from Eritrea
on the map internationally. Ras Tafari began on 3 October 1935, at the same
Mekonnen took the name Haile Selassie, time as an attack from the south-east,
which means Power of the Trinity. His from Italian Somaliland. The Ethiopian
full title was His Imperial Majesty barefoot army was no match for the
Emperor Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Italians' modern forces, supported by
Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. armour and air power. The Italians were
Kings, diplomats, and journalists were ruthless in their suppression of civilians.
invited from all over the world to take Mustard gas was sprayed on rural
part in the festivities, so beginning an era communities, in
in which unprecedented numbers of contravention of the
foreigners were to visit Ethiopia, and Geneva Convention,
Ethiopians of the elite were to travel causing terror and
abroad for education and entertainment. agonising death.
Haile Selassie, during a fifty-year reign, The Emperor
tried to reform and modernise Ethiopia, fled to England
but, at home, was finally overtaken by the days before the
expectations which his limited reforms fall of Addis
generated. His foreign policy, at least, Ababa, on 5
inspired Africans and people of African May 1936. He
descent all over the world. spent the rest of
Ethiopia was among the first of the the war in Bath,
developing countries to join the League agitating for the
of Nations (formed after the First World liberation of Ethiopia.
War to ensure peace and collective But Britain and France,
security). Admitted to the club in 1923, some historians believe, initially
on condition of the abolition of slavery, allowed Mussolini a free rein in Ethiopia,
Ethiopia was soon to find that all nations in a vain attempt to appease his African
were not equal in the League, and that a ambitions, and keep him out of an
weak country without friends or alliance with Hitler.
influence abroad could be abandoned The Italian invasion and occupation of
without so much as a murmur. Ethiopia was brutal and totalitarian.
Laws tantamount to apartheid were
The Italian invasion enacted, and brutal retribution was
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the inflicted on civilians after any act of
Italian army, still bitter about the defeat resistance. Mussolini's military
at Adwa in 1896, saw Ethiopia as the commander is reported to have promised

11
 to deliver Ethiopia 'with or without the controlled before the Italian invasion.
Ethiopians', and was as ruthless as he Unwilling to be left without a
promised. At Debre Libanos monastery, powerful military ally again, and
several hundred monks were executed on ambivalent about the British, Haile
suspicion of helping the resistance. A row Selassie entered into a close post-war
of skulls and boxes of bones near a cave alliance with the United States. By the
in the cliffs are still on show. time of the 1974 revolution, Ethiopia was
Having routed the Axis forces in receiving about 60 per cent of all US
North Africa, the British army supported military aid to Africa, and large amounts
the Ethiopian resistance fighters, who of development aid.
defeated the Italians in 1941. After an Haile Selassie used the post-war
uneasy period of cohabitation between period as a chance to develop his armed
the Emperor and the British authorities, forces, but also to invest in education,
who seemed unwilling to restore power social reform, commerce, and agriculture.
to Haile Selassie, eventually the Emperor His downfall came about because he
gained an unconditional return to power, never dealt decisively with the
and the inclusion of Eritrea and the underlying problems of landlessness,
Ogaden within Ethiopia's territory. political monopolies, and regional
The remains of the Italian occupation alienation.
can be seen most impressively in the The Emperor ruled autocratically (his
Ethiopian road system: stunning divine right to rule ratified by the 1931
switchback passes in the mountains and and 1955 constitutions), but encouraged
long straight highways driven through the development of an intelligentsia. He
the Ogaden desert. The coffee bars of the promulgated constitutions and created a
capital and the Italian jargon of car parliament, but gave it no real power. He
mechanics are reminders of the brief but made token appointments of Oromos and
influential Italian period. other classes usually not included in the
ruling elite, but did little to encourage
Post-war Ethiopia genuine equality. Women's legal rights as
It is hard to say when the Second World parents were not established until the
War ended for Ethiopia. Only in 1954 did 1955 constitution.
it regain all the territories that it had

Haile Selassie I
University, later
renamed Addis
Ababa University,
was established as
an African centre of
learning for students
from the entire
continent

12
 The Derg years

The 1974 revolution

Political change has rarely, probably 'In Ethiopia they have established
never, come about by peaceful means in very radical measures. In a feudal
Ethiopia. As early as 1943, a rebellion in country, where the peasants were
Tigray had been put down with the help slaves, they have nationalised the
of British aircraft from Aden. Army land and distributed it among the
officers challenged Haile Selassie in a peasants. They carried out an urban
military coup that failed in 1960. There reform, prohibiting any family's
was an Oromo uprising in Bale in the having more than one house. ... They
1960s. War with Eritrean rebels fighting organised the families living in poor
for independence had been going on for urban areas. They nationalised the
12 years already, when in late 1973 principal industries of the country,
student demonstrations and strikes broke revolutionised the armed forces,
out in Addis Ababa. Struggling against a politicised the soldiers, and set up
severe drought and impending famine, Political Committees.'
farmers in the countryside refused to pay
(Fidel Castro, March 1977)
their feudal landlords' tax demands. A
BBC documentary film of a famine in the
northern Wollo region during 1974, took part in the Zamacha ('campaign' in
edited together with shots of Haile Amharic), teaching literacy and building
Selassie feeding titbits to his favourite lap schools and clinics in the countryside.
dog, caused outrage in Addis Ababa. Land, foreign businesses, and church
The Imperial Navy mutinied in properties were nationalised in the early
February 1974, and the 'creeping coup' stages of the Derg regime. A series of
continued until a council of military sweeping reforms affected every part of
officers, calling themselves the Derg, or Ethiopian life and destroyed the feudal
'Committee', elected from the ranks of system completely.
the armed forces, arrested Haile Selassie But by 1977 the politicisation of the
on 12 September 1974. The self- army had turned the Ethiopian
proclaimed 225th descendant of King revolution into just another military
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was coup. Idealistic dreams faded as purges,
taken away in a Volkswagen Beetle. The torture, and witch-hunts against political
Emperor, by then a frail 82 years old, was opponents in the cities turned into a
imprisoned in the old Gibbi palace in meaningless bloodbath. This 'Red Terror'
Addis Ababa, where he died of lasted throughout the late 1970s, and
suffocation nearly a year later. conservative estimates from the human
rights group Africa Watch say that up to
The Red Terror 30,000 people were killed.
The early years of the Ethiopian Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile
revolution were heady ones. University Mariam, the son of a night-watchman,
and high school students who had rallied clawed his way to the top of the Derg in a
against the failures of the old regime series of brutal power struggles. He
were eager to convert the rural masses to became Chairman in 1977, at the height
scientific socialism. 40,000 young people of the Red Terror.
13
 Above: Images of The Derg never managed to reach a Ethiopia became the People's Demo-
Mengistu the peace agreement with the Eritrean rebels. cratic Republic of Ethiopia, controlled by
dictator loom over a It also failed to tackle demands for a single party, the Workers' Party of
May Day Parade,
greater regional autonomy for Tigray, Ethiopia. Open political dissent was
Addis Ababa 1988
Oromo, and Somali areas. Several armed dangerous, and rare. Large numbers of
resistance movements were formed, the political prisoners were detained, and a
most important of which were the Tigray powerful security apparatus silenced all
People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the but a few critics. Tight control was main-
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). tained over the media: among the banned
The Somali Republic, which had books were the Gospel of St Mark and
always wanted to unite the ethnic Somali Shakespeare's Hamlet.
people within its own borders, launched
its army against Ethiopia in 1977 in
support of the Western Somali Liberation
Front, the Ethiopian Somalis' armed
faction. The Ethiopian army was pushed
back to the highlands, but Somali forces
finally retreated in the face of Ethiopian
reinforcements, spearheaded by Cuban
soldiers, and supplied by the USSR.
Saved by the USSR and Cuba from
defeat in 1978, Ethiopia remained firmly
in the communist camp for the rest of the
Right: Monument to Cold War. Socialist central planning of
the Revolution, Addis the economy was introduced, and a
Ababa. The stylised restrictive agricultural policy gave little
presentation of incentive to Ethiopian farmers. Price
Ethiopian peasants controls and interference in marketing
reveals the
influence of
led to mediocre production of food and
Soviet Socialist art. cash crops.

14
The famine of 1984/85 still reluctant to release full details of
The terrible famine of 1984 and 1985 was deaths on their side, but, in Eritrea and
the result of a combination of war and Ethiopia combined, their losses were
drought. Early warnings were ignored or possibly almost as high.
mistrusted, and by the time the outside Civilians suffered on both sides of the
world and the Ethiopian government had front lines. In the government-held areas,
been shocked into action by TV reports, it forced conscription and arbitrary taxation
would be too late to save the lives of at devastated communities, and in liberated
least half a million people. The famine areas the Ethiopian Air Force bombed and
marked a turning point for Ethiopia, and burnt schools, clinics, and villages in an
for the international community. Ethiopia attempt to terrify people into resisting the
may never shake off the association with rebels. Napalm and cluster bombs were
hunger, and the aid organisations and used on civilian targets. Hundreds of
donor governments may never again thousands of Tigrayans and Eritreans fled
underestimate the power of public from war and drought and became
concern to raise money for disaster relief. refugees in Sudan. Ethiopians with money
Goaded by the singer Bob Geldof, the or education managed to get refugee
British public alone raised 100 million in status in Northern countries: a brain drain
response to the famine. from which the nation is still recovering.
In the most notorious atrocity of the
The civil war war, a key market town in Tigray,
Brutalised by a ferocious but incompetent Hawzien, was bombed by Mengistu's air January 1985:
The long trek
leadership, 100,000 soldiers of the force in June 1988. As MiG bombers
to Sudan begins for
Revolutionary Army died in the civil war pounded the town, helicopter gunships people from Abi Adi,
that ravaged Ethiopia throughout the strafed thousands of fleeing civilians. At fleeing drought and
1980s. The former rebel movements are least 1,800 people died in a single day. war in Tigray

15
The nationalities
question

E thiopia has changed shape many

times during its long history. The
convulsive years of the Derg widened the
During this period, Eritrea became
(compared with Ethiopia) industrialised.
A skilled workforce produced goods and
cracks in the State's relationship with foodstuffs for export to Europe and the
Eritrea until ultimately the northern Middle East. While glad to be free of
region broke away completely. Two other fascist rule, the Eritreans, accustomed to
regions and peoples - the Oromo and the a separate identity, had mixed feelings
Somali - threaten to detach themselves about joining Haile Selassie's Ethiopia. At
from 'Greater Ethiopia'. Their grievances, the end of the war, the Allies passed the
and the way they are represented polit- problem over to the United Nations,
ically in future, will have far-reaching which decided in December 1950 to
implications for the future shape of recommend federation with Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, and even for its very survival. This compromise pleased no one. The
Emperor eventually dissolved the
Independence for Eritrea federation, and Eritrea came under direct
Eritrea was part of the area known to control from Addis Ababa in 1962.
Ethiopians as Mareb Melash, until Italy Ethiopia's repressive measures in
named it Eritrea, from the ancient Greek Eritrea strengthened rather than
for 'Red Sea'. Parts of today's Eritrea suppressed national feeling. Political
were first occupied by the Ottoman Turks activity was banned; trade unions were
in 1572, and then by the Egyptians. The abolished; local languages were
Italians ruled Eritrea from 1885 until their suppressed. Resentment against Addis
defeat in 1941 during World War II. Ababa developed into a full-scale war.

Asmara, the capital

of Eritrea, benefited
from investment in
industry and public
services during
55 years of Italian
colonisation

16
 Some Ethiopians bitterly resent they have been devalued by rulers of
Eritrean nationalism, claiming that Eritrea every complexion, and their aspirations
is part of Ethiopia's historic heartland, have been ignored ever since their
and its people are so closely related to incorporation into the empire. Their sheer
northern Ethiopians as to be identical. strength of numbers, and the areas they
This may be true, and Eritrea's sense of live in, mean that if Oromia were to
national identity was perhaps born of secede from the rest of the country, the
occupation by other countries and map of Ethiopia would look like a series
cultures. But Eritreans feel different, and of ink spots on the page.
thirty years of war only reinforced this. The Oromo, then mainly nomadic
The Eritrean liberation fronts were for herders, began to migrate into today's
many years plagued by religious and Ethiopia in the fifteenth century. Some
ethnic division and rivalry, but one group Oromo nationalists claim that they have
rose to become the dominant force and roots in their current territory going
finally claimed victory and indepen- much further back than that. In general,
dence. The Eritrean People's Liberation Oromos, despite the ferocity of their
Front (EPLF), officially formed in 1973, initial campaigns, were settlers, rather
became a disciplined and formidable than tyrants. Some studies suggest there
organisation, with military, political, and may now be as many as 19 distinguish-
social sections administering the majority able 'clans' of the Oromo, each of which
of the territory which they had gained. has adopted customs, languages, or
Asmara, the main town in Eritrea, agricultural techniques from the original
finally fell to the EPLF in May 1991. The inhabitants of the area where they now
Provisional Government of Eritrea, live. In religion too, Oromos are divided
established by the EPLF, held a referen- into Christians, Muslims, and adherents
dum on independence in April 1993, of the traditional worship of natural
which produced a 98 per cent vote in spirits whose God is known as Waq.
favour of leaving Ethiopia. The EPLF Oromos had never been excluded from
dissolved itself in 1994, and within the holding token positions of power: some
government of Eritrea it is now the dom- of Haile Selassie's most faithful lieu-
inant political party, renamed the tenants were Oromo. But the Emperor, as
People's Front for Democracy and Justice. in Eritrea, tried to enforce his language,
A new constitution is being written. culture, and religion in every region,
Ethiopia and Eritrea will always be thereby storing up resentment and
closely linked, and economic and cultural allowing no expression of ethnic pride
ties are as strong as ever. But the legacy except violence. Children were forced to
of bitterness will take generations to fade. learn a foreign language (Amharic) at
And Eritrea's independence has school and often had to change their
weakened Ethiopia strategically, since Oromo names for something which the
Ethiopia is now a land-locked country. Amhara teachers could remember easily.
The Oromo Liberation Front, like the
A share of power for the Tigray People's Liberation Front, was
Oromo formed soon after the 1974 revolution. It
Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, the has now withdrawn from the govern-
Oromo, live in territory that spreads ment, and the Oromo people are
across central Ethiopia between Sudan to represented by a new party, the Oromo
the west, Kenya to the south, and People's Democratic Organisation
Somalia in the east. The Oromo areas, (OPDO). If the OPDO cannot meet the
especially in the west of Ethiopia, are aspirations of the Oromo for greater
among the richest and greenest in the recognition and better representation in
country. Their agricultural land is the politics and society, Ethiopia's present
backbone of the Ethiopian economy, yet fragile peace is unlikely to hold.
17
 Secession for the The economy of the Somali regions, in
Somalis? whichever country, depends on grazing
About 2.5 million ethnic Somalis form the and water for livestock. When the rains
second-largest region, after Oromia, in have been good, water in seasonal rivers
the new federal Ethiopia. The area and wells is plentiful, and resources are
identifies with Somalia, to which it looks shared among the different clans of the
for all of its needs in business, trade, and Somali people freely. When resources are
culture. The region's historical links to scarce, tensions rise.
Ethiopia are tenuous at best, and the The clans are families which can trace
impetus towards secession - either as an their ancestry to one of the original
independent state, or through unification immigrants from Arabia who settled in
with the Somali Republic - is strong. The present-day Somalia. Children are taught
discovery of natural gas in the area the litany of their ancestors' names,
makes it strategically important for the reaching back a dozen generations into
Ethiopian central government. history, at their mother's knee. This
Most Somalis are herders; their nom- organisation of society on the basis of
adic way of life depends on the seasonal ancestry is mixed with a unique form of
migration routes which follow the natural Sunni Islam - liberal, poetic, and
cycles. Invisible borders mean nothing in mystical. Decisions are traditionally
the desert. The Somalis are now divided made by a shir, or council of 'elders'. In
among five countries, as a result of the fact, age has little to do with membership
colonial period and Menelik's Ethiopian of the council, but gender does. Any
Empire. The flag of the Somali Republic grown man can take part in discussion,
A Somali family on but women are usually excluded.
the move: all their has a five-pointed star to represent them:
possessions are Somaliland, Djibouti, Ethiopia, north- Ethiopian Somalis have gained little
packed on the camel eastern Kenya, and the Somali Republic. from being part of Ethiopia, and, if the
Somali Republic had not been in turmoil people fear them like plagues of locusts,
at the overthrow of Mengistu in 1991, they concentrated on winning hearts and
moves towards separation from Ethiopia minds in the areas they began to control.
might have gathered more momentum. Decision-making involved public
Government forces and secessionist meetings, which all were encouraged
groups in the Ogaden have clashed (and sometimes compelled) to attend.
sporadically for years. Self-reliance and equality between men
Ethiopia needs to offer Somalis and women were the new values, and,
something to make staying within the after centuries of feudalism, Tigrayans
nation worthwhile. With hardly a road, a supported a movement that listened to
telephone, a school, or a clinic to show them and, literally, spoke their language.
for fifty years in the 'great Ethiopian As in Eritrea, the harder Mengistu Lete Birhan, 34, was
family', it will be a key challenge for tried to batter Tigray into submission, the a fighter with the
Ethiopia's new breed of politicians to more determined the people became, and TPLF. Her leg was
amputated after she
convince Somalis of the benefits of young men and women volunteered to
was hit by a tank
staying with Ethiopia. fight in the TPLF in their thousands. shell in a battle for
Morale was high; discipline and political the town of Axum,
A new voice for Tigray control were rigid, beneath a relaxed in 1988.
Just as the Derg failed to resolve the
Eritrean question, it could not solve
Ethiopia's internal problems. The
struggle of regions with different
cultures, languages, and customs for
greater autonomy was intensified by the
overthrow of Haile Selassie. To some, the
Derg represented the continuation of
repressive central control by one ethnic
group, the Amhara. Power had passed
between the Amhara and the Tigrayans
for generations, but the Amhara seemed
to have become entrenched.
The victory of the Tigray People's
Liberation Front (TPLF) in 1991 was the
culmination of decades of northern resis-
tance to the authorities in Addis Ababa.
A rebel group formed in 1975 with just 11
rifles went from strength to strength,
fighting until 1991 - not for independ-
ence, but for the overthrow of Mengistu's
Derg and a new political system.
The TPLF, the EPLF, and the Derg they
both fought against were all, officially,
Marxist-Leninist. For Western powers,
taking sides in a contest between
communists was an unappealing
prospect, so they remained on the
sidelines. But the faultlines of the
Ethiopian conflict were much older and
deeper than political ideology.
The TPLF made a break with the past
in their strategy. Instead of living off the
land, as armies had always done, making
19
 0 300 km exterior. The TPLF hid in caves and could
^ 0 200 miles melt into the rugged scenery during the
day, when the MiG fighter-bombers came
Sudan on patrol. The former rebels claim not to
I ERITREA ^ ^ ^ ^ | have received external support for their
war, and to have captured their weapons
from the enemy; but certainly the
/ .. TIGRAY ...
Eritrean rebels gave the Tigrayans a
/* GONDER ;' '"- helping hand to open another front
\ WOLLO against the Derg.
Life in the war zones, which by the
GOJJAM '"-'. , V" end of 1990 included most of the north of
the country, was terrifying and bizarre.
V'SHOA ;."
/ iA/n \ ^ Markets were held at night, to avoid
. .;'Ababa# ...-'., bombing raids by day. Farmers even
HARARGHE ^**v--
ploughed by moonlight. People passed
^XILUBAEvr\on ;' I ;' ARSI .
through military checkpoints with secret
..'KAFA V /...-'
/ .. ;
-. \ BALE
messages folded under their tongues,
" GAMO ' ready to swallow if challenged. And the
: GOFA : -,. ,.-..
sounds of war became as familiar as a
\V {"""' SIDAMO cock crowing.

^ \ " / Somalia
A federal system for
/
Uganda] Ethiopia
On its advance on Addis Ababa, the
Above: Traditional regional boundaries of Ethiopia TPLF was joined by sister movements
Below: New regional boundaries drawn up by the Transitional Government representing other Ethiopian ethnic
groups: Amharas from Gonder, Gojjam,
0 300 km
and Wollo had their own movement, the
0 200 miles
Ethiopian People's Democratic
Movement (EPDM). In 1989, a multi-
Sudan / ^^^^^^^H 1 ethnic coalition was formed: the
J Eritrea ^^^^^H
i Ethiopian People's Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF). The outlines
\ ^ TIGRAY '. > v ^ of the EPRDF's future political strategy
began to emerge. The 'nationalities
Sj: '-, (' AFARy question' - how to bring harmony to a

BENISHANGUL': ;
f ;
:
AMHARA

;
j

(
( A multi-ethnic country with a history of
oppression and discrimination - was to
be settled by a federal system. Most
/ -. '" ' '/: . ' b i r e radical of all, regions were to be allowed
H^rar
/-' Addis ."' " D a w a to leave Ethiopia if they wanted to,
V\ OROMIA Ababa ; . , . ; . /
without bloodshed.
GAMBELLAV'" 1 .... '" ) OROMIA :. In a manifesto printed just before the
SOMALI /
fall of Mengistu, the EPRDF noted that

1/
:
v...- "' .'-.-..
>-v SOUTHERN \ ..--
) PEOPLES' .-.;.. the break-up of Ethiopia through
( REGION ..' ' peaceful regional secession would be 'a
lesser evil compared with the present
condition of fratricidal war and
Somalia unmitigated destruction'.
Uganda \ ^ Kenya [

20
 Building the
Second Republic
The enigma of the EPRDF invited, with the exception of some
Meles Zenawi, leader of the EPRDF and political organisations based abroad. The
the TPLF, claimed in an interview with conference established an 87-seat Council The monument to
The Independent in November 1989 that of Representatives, in which the EPRDF Karl Marx outside
'the nearest any country comes to being coalition itself held 32 seats. A national the university in
socialist as far as we are concerned is charter guaranteeing the establishment of Addis Ababa:
human rights and democracy was one of the few
Albania'. This caused incredulity among communist symbols
many educated Ethiopians and foreign adopted to serve as a temporary
not to have been
observers. Just as the Berlin Wall was constitution, and a programme was laid demolished since the
falling, the party which was poised to out for regional and national elections. end of the civil war
take over Ethiopia was seeking inspira-
tion from one of the most notoriously
repressive and unproductive Stalinist
states in Eastern Europe.
But when the rebels arrived in Addis
Ababa, the EPRDF, pressurised by
Western powers, especially the USA,
committed itself to political reform and
economic structural adjustment on lines
applauded by the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. The story
of the EPRDF's military progress on the
road to Addis Ababa is relatively simple.
But the development of their ideas, the
pressures they were under to adapt their
philosophy as the Communist bloc
crumbled, and the final U-turn in political
orientation are harder to decipher. While
retaining the zeal of 'revolutionary
democracy' that sustained them as a
liberation front, the EPRDF as a political
party have shown themselves to be
supremely pragmatic - or opportunistic.

The Transitional
Government
The EPRDF moved into Addis Ababa on
28 May 1991, re-established order in the
cities, and disarmed and dispersed the
defeated revolutionary army, with the
help of the Red Cross.
A national conference on Peace and
Democracy was held in July 1991, to
which most opposition groups were

21
 Elections in June 1992 established The adoption of a new Constitution of
councils to manage the affairs of the Ethiopia in December 1994, and elections
regional 'states'. The elections were scheduled for May 1995 for the national
marred by inadequate preparation, legislature - the Council of People's
intimidation, and boycotts. The EPRDF Representatives - mark the end of the
and its affiliates swept the board. transitional period. Meanwhile, the new
The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the Constitution has enshrined the right of
second-largest party in the national self-determination for individual peoples,
Council of Representatives, withdrew and a series of sweeping proclamations
just before the poll; alleging violence, has established new regional boundaries
intimidation, and vote-rigging, the OLF along ethnic lines, and relative autonomy
returned to military struggle. There was for the regional administrations.
sporadic warfare between forces of the However, the law on rural land
EPRDF and OLF through the rest of 1992, holding is one of the most far-reaching
especially in the east. About 20,000 constitutional provisions, as Ethiopia's
alleged OLF members and supporters second republic approaches. The law
were detained by the Transitional provides for State and communal
Government, only released after months ownership of land and natural resources,
of 're-education' in military-style camps. with individual ownership limited to the
Skirmishes still continue between the fruits of the individual's labour. This law
OLF and EPRDF, but in military terms is not unlike the Derg's policy on land,
the OLF appears critically weakened, and both in language and content.
many of its political leaders are in exile. A comprehensive census of population
It was an unusual first step for a and housing, undertaken in October
victorious army to volunteer to share 1994, will provide much-needed baseline
power, but in fact expulsions and statistics for planning infrastructure and
boycotts by other parties left the EPRDF services. The importance of the census for
in effective control of the government for economic planning cannot be over-stated.
the transitional period. The currently estimated national

A poster showing the

voting process for
local elections,
Amhara region, 1994

22
population of 54 million is derived from
the 1984 census, excluding Eritrea, and
assuming an annual growth rate of 2.9
per cent. The 1984 census, the first in
Ethiopia's history, must be treated with
caution, because it was conducted during
the civil war, when large areas of the
country were inaccessible to
enumerators.

The aftermath of conflict

Three decades of war and famine in
Ethiopia have left millions of broken lives,
maimed bodies, and mass graves. Many
people are still picking up the pieces of
their lives, and the future is uncertain.
Lete Birhan, 34, was a fighter with the
TPLF, the spearhead of the victorious
EPRDF forces. She was hit in the leg by a
tank shell in Axum in 1988 during a
battle for the town. 'I could still feel it
when they took me to the hospital,' she
says, but in the end the doctors had to
amputate. She's now a seamstress,
retrained with about 1,000 others, mostly
younger than her, at a centre run by a
government commission for rehab-
ilitating ex-soldiers. 'All of them are
youngsters,' says Tadesse Berhe, General
Manager of the centre. A graph on the
wall in his office shows the terrible toll of
injuries to young people in the war: his
trainees are grouped according to their lodged in his head. The Red Cross Tailoring workshop
disability: blind, one eye, partially brought him back to Wollayta, and kept for disabled war
sighted, one leg (261 people), spinal veterans, Adigrat,
him going with food distributions for a Tigray region
injuries, head injuries. few months. Now he is destitute. He has
Lete is proud of her contribution to the a house, but not even a few pots and
struggle: at least she can console herself pans to cook with. His wife recently died
with victory. She chose to join the TPLF, of tuberculosis, when five months
with the blessing of her family, and spent pregnant, and he and his tiny daughter
nine years in the field. She doesn't know Mimi, who is severely malnourished, are
where she will end up: it depends on living in a nutrition centre.
where the commission will send her. The flotsam and jetsam of the war turn
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers up all over the country. The largest army
fought against Lete Birhan's forces after in Sub-Saharan Africa, 350,000 men, was
only one month's training. Imru He was demobilised in a matter of months;
woken up in his bed in 1988, beaten with soldiers were sent home with only a few
sticks and taken off to join Mengistu's months' rations to tide them over.
revolutionary army. For three years he Women and children who lived at the
was stationed in besieged Asmara, now barracks were evicted. Three years on,
capital of independent Eritrea. Ever since groups of unemployed ex-soldiers still
the battle for Asmara, he has had a bullet stand around in tattered uniforms all day

23
All over Ethiopia, the
rusting debris of war
lies scattered along
the roads

outside churches in Addis Ababa, In December 1994, 66 former Derg

playing flutes and begging. officials, including Colonel Mengistu
The war at its peak cost US$500,000 a Haile Mariam and 20 officials in absentia,
day. Weapons poured into the country, were put on trial, facing a charge of
mainly from the Soviet Union. Lives were genocide, in addition to crimes against
cheap because guns were cheap, and humanity. In all, 3,400 Derg officials will
minor local disputes became more be charged with human-rights violations
dangerous. in a process which will probably take
Peace has never lasted long in years.
Ethiopia's recent history. Fifty million The grim irony of the trials is that the
people, mobilised for war, and subjected systematic genocide of the Derg years
to a barrage of propaganda from all sides, was well documented in minutes of
will not settle down quietly into a model meetings, taped interrogations, video
nation-state. Almost any Ethiopian you film, and official orders, all filed by
meet has memories: someone in the meticulous bureaucrats. The archives also
family was sacked, imprisoned, killed, or cover the murders of Emperor Haile
became a refugee during the civil war. As Selassie and the patriarch of the Ethiop-
a result, optimism is a scarce commodity, ian Orthodox Church, His Holiness
and people lead their lives in Ethiopia Abuna Theophulos.
looking over their shoulders. The Ethiopian trials are the first
instance of an African government
Crimes against humanity holding a former regime accountable for
The architects of the reign of terror and its crimes. It is hoped that the 'due
oppression which led to the death or dis- process of the law' will help to heal the
appearance of tens of thousands of bitterness of the recent past, and in turn
people during the Red Terror in the late engender faith in a truly democratic
1970s are now being held to account for second republic in Ethiopia.
their crimes against humanity.

24
 A life of exile

Refugees capital, Hargeisa. She came with her

In the 1980s, when Ethiopia was a husband and five children. Two children
watchword for suffering and starvation died in Ethiopia; her husband was
to the outside world, for over half a wounded in the leg during the bombing
million refugees from Somalia and of north-western Somalia, and has not
southern Sudan it was a safe haven. been able to work since. They live in a
President Mengistu of Ethiopia buhl, a large igloo-shaped house typical
supported the rebels of the Sudan of the nomadic areas, but in Hartisheik
People's Liberation Army against the the structure is patched with food-aid
Sudanese government, and Sudan bags and bits of cardboard from old
supported Mengistu's rebels, the TPLF boxes of nutritional biscuits. The war
and the EPLF. President Siad Barre of with Siad Barre is over, but she still has
Somalia attacked Ethiopia, and Ethiopia not gone back. 'We plan to go back: we
fought back by supporting four different have some land in Somaliland,' she says.
rebel movements during the civil war in 'The rations here are not enough.'
Somalia. The terrible symmetry of Cold Hartisheik camp could once have
War alliances produced a zone of refugee qualified as the second-biggest city in
camps in the Horn of Africa, some of Ethiopia, housing about 250,000 people.
which are now permanent towns. The water consumption alone was about
Hawa Ahmed arrived in Hartisheik, 1.2 million litres a day. Water, food, and
Ethiopia's refugee metropolis, in 1988 medicine had to be trucked into the area
from her village west of the Somaliland in an immense relief operation. The

Displaced Somalis
building a buhl at
Awbare (Teferi Ber)
camp, eastern
Ethiopia, 1994

25
Happy Video satellite answer. The wrong answer to the wrong
dish, Hartisheik
person might end her entitlement to
camp, 1994
rations. Where would she like to be?
'Here.' And if the rations stop? 'Wlierever
the rations are.' In the long run, the
international refugee industry may have
bequeathed only one lasting thing to the
Somali people: the word ration has
entered the Somali vocabulary.

Resettlement
The refugees and returnees are not the
only people to have been uprooted in
Ethiopia. Thousands of others have been
displaced during the last twenty years.
Some moved because of drought or war;
others were forcibly moved under the
Mengistu government's two most
ambitious programmes of social engin-
eering: resettlement and villagisation.
About 600,000 people were moved to
new areas under the massive resettlement
programme of the 1980s. Resettlement
was promoted as a long-term solution to
population pressure and environmental
degradation in the highlands. It seemed
logical: people would be moved from
market in Hartisheik is now one of the overcrowded and unproductive areas into
most important in eastern Ethiopia, virgin lands elsewhere in the country,
selling everything from Chinese thermos where they could start a new life.
flasks to biscuits from the last food But most of the people in the
distribution. In the centre of the market, overcrowded regions of the north were
Beshir Yusuf runs the Happy Video. A unwilling to take the risk of settling in
large satellite dish sits on the roof of his unknown regions of Ethiopia under any
corrugated iron building, and 40 or 50 circumstances. The authorities ended up
people pay five Birr every night to watch forcing people off to 'a better future' at
cable TV. The wrestling is popular. gun-point. The supposedly 'virgin' lands
to which they were transported were
Returnees often occupied by local people of a
Ethiopia's civil war created hundreds of different ethnic group, who resented the
thousands of refugees, who fled for safety invasion. Some resettlers died on the road
to surrounding countries. to their promised land, and thousands
Many Ethiopia-born Somalis escaped to perished from disease and malnutrition
Somalia, fearing reprisals after the after arrival. The land which seemed so
Ethiopian victory in the 1977/78 war with green and promising to the planners lost
the Somali Republic. But the anarchy in its fertility after a few seasons, and
southern Somalia after the fall of President couldn't sustain regular cultivation. One
Siad Barre drove them home again, human rights organisation estimates that
creating another wave of human misery. 50,000 people died during the operation.
Awbare is a camp for such 'returnees'. Resettlement was in some ways a form
Asked 'Where is home?', a woman in the of warfare. The head of the Workers'
camp warily and silently weighs the Party of Ethiopia for Tigray region,
26
Legesse Asfaw, was famous for repeating
the saying: 'To kill the fish, you must
drain the pond'. By forcibly removing ^ ^ r o s s i n g a pass in an icy
people from rebellious regions in the ^^wind near Akesta in
north, the central government hoped, in Wollo, six men are trans-
vain, to terrorise the local populations porting big water pots on the
into resisting the rebels. backs of donkeys. The legs of
Resettlement reached a peak in the one exhausted donkey
mid-1980s, but the effects are still being buckle, and five jars strapped
felt. Thousands of unwilling resettlers on its back topple and fall to
have been unable to return home, and the ground. One of the pots
others, having made the return journey, breaks. The men, some of
are finding life harder than ever. Land, them recently returned from
work, and housing are all in short supply. resettlement areas, are taking
them from Were Ilu, a nearby
'Villagisation' district blessed with good red
In 1986, Qameru Ahmed, her husband pot-making earth, to sell in
and seven children were forced to move their villages just west of
house. As part of a grandiose scheme Dessie. A little petty trading
typical of Mengistu's cruellest follies, she is a lot of hard work. The after five years in a
was to be uprooted so that, for the gov- profit on each jar will be resettlement zone. He recalls
ernment, she would be easier to 'develop'. about 50 pence. Three days' the day in 1986 when officials
Villagisation, which in some ways walk and sleeping rough for came to his house and told
complemented the resettlement pro- a total profit of 2.00. Ayalew him he had to move to
gramme, was planned to bring Ethiopia's Yimer takes his pots off the Metekel, hundreds of kilo-
traditionally scattered homesteads into donkey's back and puts them metres to the west. When he
'modern' villages, with rectangular on his head. 'Look at the life refused, the party activists
houses arranged in straight lines. we lead/ murmurs one of his returned with soldiers and
companions. forced him and his family on
In fact, Qameru was expected to move
Ayalew, resettling again, to a bus. When they got to
so that the government could more
effectively tax and terrorise her family. this time back home in Wollo, Metekel, he recalls, 'There
is trying to augment his wasn't much there, except
When they came to her home area in
income from a tiny patch of malaria'. People could not
eastern Harerghe region, all those who
were reluctant to move were beaten or land allocated to him by the move back to Wollo without
shot. The 'committee', composed of local local Peasants' Association. the right travel documents,
people in the ruling party, had desig- He came back with his wife and so were effectively
and family to the area in 1991 imprisoned.
nated an area half an hour's walk away
as the site of the new village. All the
people who lived scattered among their
fields, with enough space for some
privacy and quiet, were now to be moved But Ethiopia today has so many
into a village in which the eaves of the displaced, uprooted, and exiled
houses overlapped. But the newhouses populations that the upheavals are unlike
weren't even ready. If you didn't bribe anything previously experienced. From
the committee, they would burn your old the destitute shanty-towns of Addis
house before you had taken all your Ababa to the fly-blown returnee camps,
possessions out. there are many families who haven't been
People are normally on the move in back to their place of origin for years,
much of Ethiopia: nomads in search of even decades, and are still waiting for the
grazing, seasonal labourers following the chance to feel once again the satisfaction
harvests, or traders travelling to market. of being back home.

27
Living off the land

L and is the backbone of Ethiopia's

economy. In a country with almost no
industry, land has been the only source of
marginal land is coming under the
plough in the overcrowded highlands,
but experiments in exploiting virgin
wealth for generations. There is hardly territory in the lowlands have had mixed
any aspect of national life which is not results.
intimately related to questions of land
ownership. It is one of the most critical Scenes from the highlands
political and economic issues for the Dawn in Ajibar, a highland village in
future, and the most explosive of the past. Wollo region, 2,700 metres high in the
Until 1975, land in Ethiopia was tropics, and it's cold. Cocks are crowing
organised on a feudal basis, with land- and the sun is only a promise behind
lords, including the Orthodox Church, banks of cloud in the east. The dew is
owning almost all the land and letting it heavy. Lammergeiers - menacing birds of
out to peasant farmers, who had to pay a prey - swoop overhead. Above them a jet
large proportion of their harvest as rent. passes on its way to Addis Ababa, 500
The complex web of family obligation, km to the south. A cow is being
servitude, taxation, and feudal tribute slaughtered on the edge of town, and a
payments developed into an intricate group of men stand around advising the
pattern of exploitation. In Wollo region, butcher, and feeding on the liver. Raw
in 1974, it was estimated that over 100 meat is a delicacy in Ethiopia, and fresh
different land-tenure systems were in liver is a special treat.
place. On a steep and rocky slope above a
One of the most popular slogans of the canyon, a man is ploughing in
Ethiopian Students' Movement, which preparation for the short rains. There has
provided some of the impetus for the been a little rain overnight and the
revolution of 1974, was 'Land to the ground is now soft enough to plough, in
Tiller'. Only a year after the revolution, the hope of a crop of peas and beans. The
the Land Reform of 1975 nationalised all ploughman shouts hoarsely to his two
land, including that of the aristocracy and stumbling oxen, pulling a wooden
the church. This was perhaps the most plough tipped with iron. The cracks of
popular thing the Derg ever did, and it his long whip echo across the gorge.
has been retained in the new Ethiopian Suspicious of outsiders, he'd rather not
constitution of December 1994. give his name. Other farmers walk by,
The problem is that cultivable land is carrying ploughs on their shoulders. The
scarce. Land holdings are small (on sun shines on the far side of the canyon.
average, half a hectare per household in There has been revolutionary change in
the highlands), and getting smaller, as the Ethiopia, but scenes such as these have
population increases and the soil is ever changed little in hundreds of years.
more degraded. One and a half million Two young men walk by, with the
tonnes of soil are washed into the Blue determined long-distance gait of the
Nile and other major rivers every year. In Ethiopian on the road. They are returning
many areas the soil is only 35 cm deep. home to Wollo, after a year working on a
Rivers, loaded with topsoil, are the colour relative's farm far away in Jimma. They
of milky instant coffee. More and more are on the fourth day of the walk from

28
Dessie, the regional capital. From his On the road
labours in Jimma, one of them has Trudging along the road are the nagadis:
acquired a cassette radio: a meagre profit the traders moving coffee, sugar, and salt
for a year's work, but he says his family by donkey and mule train from the city to
will be pleased with the luxury, plus a the villages. With a herd of about 20 pack
little cash he has saved. animals, they make the trip once every
Wegedi, another town at the end of the two months during the dry season, when
road in Wollo, is linked to the rest of the there is little work to do on the farm.
region by a finger of rock bridging a Most of Ethiopia's produce is traded on
mighty gorge. To the west is the great four legs, not four wheels.
curve of the Blue Nile. Asked what they For truck drivers it is a bone-rattling,
want to be when they grow up, children teeth-jarring ride up from northern Wollo
in Wegedi say manager, or driver, or to Makelle, the capital of Tigray. Hairpin
doctor. Only one says he wants to be a bends in the mountain passes slow a
farmer; he expects to get just half a food-aid convoy to walking pace. Hardly
hectare to plough, and half a hectare in any of Ethiopia's 20,000 km of roads have
the highlands is half a hectare of steep, any tarmac - and even they are full of
rocky slope, which may have been pot-holes. It's a severe test of truck
farmed continuously for 5,000 years. engineering and drivers' mettle. The
The rain, when it comes, is a massive threat of nocturnal bandit-raids breaks up
force that takes away almost as much as it the monotony of slogging up and down Deforested and
gives. The brown water foams over the roads built by the Italian invaders in the degraded slopes in
landscape, scouring through gullies, tak- 1930s. the highlands: heavy
ing the best soil with it. Hailstones batter rains wash thousands
The great Alamata plain opens up of tonnes of soil from
crops in the fields. Settling on the hill-tops, below: the scene of the first widely- agricultural land
the hail looks like a dusting of snow. broadcast TV footage of the 1984-85 every year

29
 famine. This is perhaps the only mental wide arid plains, dotted with herds of
image of Ethiopia for many people in the goats and camels.
outside world: the towering mountains in Hauled into the Ethiopian state against
the background and the arena of death in their will during Menelik's reign, some
the plain. Most of the year, the Alamata people in the peripheral areas of Ethiopia
plain is green: thousands of hectares of have yet to accept the idea of belonging
sorghum and maize grow there. But only to the state called Ethiopia at all.
a few gnarled trees are dotted among the
fields. Children climb up them and scare Herders or farmers?
away the birds. A lone Oxfam water-tank Keeping animals, and following the best
stands sentinel by the roadside, the only grazing, is the only way to live in the arid
sign of the largest feeding-camp during lands of lowland Ethiopia. Governments
the famine period. have tried to 'educate' the semi-nomadic
peoples into settling down and farming,
Scenes from the lowlands but it has been proved time and again
The central highlands of Ethiopia - that the nomads know how best to eke a
approximately the Abyssinia of old - living from an unforgiving environment,
contain most of the population, but are and that governments have ulterior
encircled and dwarfed in size by the motives. Nomads are difficult to tax or
lowlands, often the areas most recently recruit for war, and they tend to take the
added to the Ethiopian Empire. The law into their own hands when
edges of Ethiopia are hot, dry, neglected, provoked. Placid sedentary peoples have
and frequently unstable. always been the most useful for
The landscape is dusty scrub, laced governments looking for soldiers, and
with dry river beds, and blessed with raiders looking for slaves.
occasional springs and wells. A few Cow's blood and milk are the staple
towns on the main roads are separated by food of any society in an arid area. It's a

impossible to buy new clothes

H adji Adam, digging his
land by hand to plant
sorghum, used to be well-off:
for the feast of Eid; we just have
to wash our old ones.
he has made his pilgrimage to 'Once things were better.
Mecca. Now his land is reduced During Haile Selassie's time, I
to one fifth of a hectare. had a lot of land: enough to
'I have this small piece of feed my family and live a good
land here on this rocky hillside life. When the Derg replaced
to provide food for my family. Haile Selassie, my land was
We've got another small plot in redistributed among the
the valley for growing qat. I sell members of the Peasant
that in the market, and then we Association. I was left with a
have a little money to buy extra very small plot. I couldn't feed
food that we can't grow. My us. Now, after the Derg, there's
older children work as daily no visible difference. The land
labourers. 1 have three sons and is getting degraded, and the
nine daughters. At home we government isn't doing
have maize, sorghum, and anything for poor farmers. The
wheat to eat, which my wife only difference is that now I can
grinds. Maybe once every three talk freely; but we don't have
The story of or four months I can go to a any more to eat.'
Hadji Ahmed Adam Muslim hotel to eat meat. It's

30
nutritious diet, and it can be sustained as
long as there is enough for the animals to
eat. In fact, if there is a drought, the cows
are too feeble to cope with the blood
letting, and they are left alone to feed as
best they can. To find enough for the
animals to graze on, boys and young men
go away from the homestead for months,
taking the animals hundreds of kilometres,
often across ethnic and political borders.
But the traditional diet has changed, as
other foods have become available. Roads
have penetrated into the remotest corners
of Ethiopia, and lowland people have
started trading animals for grain to vary
their diet, or selling animals for cash in
order to buy 'luxuries' like tea, sugar, and
exported on the hoof through Somalia Owning livestock is a
clothes. In a drought, or during an sign of wealth, but as
and loaded on to ships for export.
epidemic of cattle disease, the problems more and more land
Incense trees - gnarled dead-looking
mount up. Prices for animals drop, comes under the
bushes - are tapped to produce crystals plough, grazing land
because everyone is trying to sell before
of sticky gum, also for export. Salt, mined in the highlands is
their livestock wastes away. If there is a
in the wilderness of the Ogaden and the increasingly scarce
drought throughout a whole region,
Danakil depression, is traded over
farmers who did manage to produce
hundreds of kilometres. But perhaps the
something on their land will be able to
most tantalising aspect of the lowlands'
charge high prices for crops, and traders
wealth is natural gas in the Ogaden, and
from outside the area can make big
oil in Gambella.
profits by trucking grain in.
South-eastern Ethiopia lies on a
Ethiopia has the largest population of
geological fault-line which also passes
livestock in Africa, but it has dwindled
through the oil-producing states of
after a series of droughts all over the
Arabia. Prospectors - first Americans,
country, and especially in the south-east.
then Russians - have drilled in the region
While this gives the land a chance to
for 20 years. Finally, sufficient deposits of
recover, it threatens the security of many
natural gas have been found to justify
people. So more and more pastoralists are
commercial exploitation, and the World
growing maize, sorghum, and vegetables
Bank has invested about $150 million to
in areas which were previously used only
develop the Calub gas field. The more
for grazing. Popular myth would say that
romantic supporters of Ogadeni
nomads are too proud and set in their
independence look forward to their
ways to turn voluntarily to farming,
region becoming the Kuwait of the Horn
which they regard as a lowly occupation.
of Africa. At the moment, however, there
But there is a Somali proverb which says,
is little to show except heaps of
'When you fall down, it's only the land
machinery in the middle of nowhere.
that can support you.'
None the less, it is one reason why
Ethiopian governments have clung on to
The wealth of the desert the Somali areas through thick and thin.
Often described as a wilderness or a
desert, the lowlands produce livestock,
gums and resins, and hides and skins. A
certain type of black-headed sheep, raised
in the Ogaden and the Afar areas, is a
delicacy in the Gulf states. Livestock is
31
The environment:
a broken covenant

Stone check-dams
F orests once covered most of Ethiopia,
and even in the 1950s there was six
times more than there is now. Now only
Elsewhere, tree felling, without
replanting and without time for natural
regeneration, has left Ethiopia's skin
help to 'heal' a gully
the west of the country is well wooded. open to the elements. Only three per cent
formed by the
erosion that follows Mighty broad-leaved trees spread a solid of Ethiopia's land is now forested. In
heavy rains. Top soil forest canopy as far as the horizon. schools and offices around the country,
is trapped behind Colobus monkeys and thousands of promotional posters present pictures of
the dam, and over baboons and leopards live in the great idealised villages, where every house has
time the eroded
western forests. Near the villages, coffee a little stand of eucalyptus trees and the
land can be used
for cultivation bushes are planted beneath the shade of elders gossip under a great fig tree.
once more. other trees. The reality, however, in most of the
country, is a scarred landscape, covered
in open sores. When trees are cut down,
the loose soil is washed away down to
the bare rock, and bald patches pock the
landscape.
At the market in Axum, Tigray, child-
ren squat in front of tiny piles of wood.
One Birr (10 pence) buys about two kilos
of roots and twigs. Wood is so scarce that
armed soldiers at checkpoints on the
roads search lorries and cars for it. Camel
drivers from the lowlands, loaded with
logs, travel at night to avoid the police
and bring the wood to highland markets.

Eucalyptus is not the only

tree
The eucalyptus, known in Ethiopia as the
bahir zaf, 'the tree from overseas', was
imported from Australia during the reign
of Emperor Menelik. Ethiopian kings
travelled on campaigns with huge
retinues and, wherever they camped,
they plundered the natural environment.
By the time Menelik arrived in Addis
Ababa, he had already abandoned one
capital at Ankober, because the trees were
all used up. The only reason why Addis
Ababa survived to become today's
metropolis was that the fast-growing
eucalyptus was just about able to keep up
with the city's voracious appetite for
wood for fuel, construction, and cooking.

32
 The eucalyptus has since become a Akeza Tirumesh
distinctive part of the landscape. It's helping to build a
stone terrace on a
useful for many things. Private farmers hillside in Tigray
grow it to sell poles for building. Some
eucalyptus plantations at the Forestry
Institute in Wondo Genet are even used
for making perfume. But the price of fast
growth is the eucalyptus' thirst for water.
It copes with drought by sucking water
away from a wide area around its trunk.
Crops rarely grow well around a
eucalyptus grove.
Tree nurseries are becoming a common
sight, as development agencies and the
government try to fix the soil and avert
complete sterility. Seedlings are planted
in rows of plastic cylinders, and are then
distributed, usually free to all comers.
The survival rate is regarded as good
when half of them survive. As many as
40 million seedlings have been planted in
Tigray in one year alone. Ethiopia's soil-
conservation programmes are among the
largest in the world. But it is a race
against time, to save the soil and plant Save our soils
other varieties of tree seedling, especially On a bleak hillside in Tigray it's
indigenous species that (unlike beginning to spit with rain. Wrapped
eucalyptus) will provide forage for against the morning cold in a cotton
animals. shawl as grey as the clouds above, Akeza
Tirumesh humps rocks from one low dry-
stone wall to another a few metres down
the hillside. She and the other 15 men
and women in her team have to pile up
and repair three metres of terracing
before they can go back home to a little
warmth, and the reassurance that they
will be eligible for food distributions
from the Relief Society of Tigray (REST)
next time round.
The ground is rocky and unyielding.
Terracing is a series of miniature stone
walls following the slope of the hill like
the lines on a contour map. No crops
grow there, so why are she and most of
her village doing this seemingly futile
job? 'To get food,' says Akeza, 'and help
rebuild the country.' Akeza's three metres
this Thursday form part of 200,000 km of
terracing constructed in Tigray alone. The Left: Bark is stripped
off eucalyptus trees
walls interrupt the flow of rainwater for use as fuel. The 5-
down the hill during the rainy season, year-old trees will be
stopping it from rushing torrentially into sold in the market.

33
 Firewood on sale at
Axum market

the rivers, and carrying with it heaps of sell charcoal to truck drivers along the
valuable topsoil. Akeza's rations (a few roads when times were hard was too
kilos of wheat a week) are provided by much to resist.
REST in return for work. No work, no Unscientific it may be and not the
food. Any highlander can appreciate the whole story, but many people believe
Amharic proverb that says 'Only the their present troubles are due to a change
locust can eat without working.' in the weather. An older Somali woman
(80 years old by her own reckoning,
It's not like the old days counting years by rainy seasons) says
Wherever you travel in Ethiopia, older that things were much better in her
people can always remember a time parents' time: you could support yourself
when things were not so hard, despite with livestock rearing and farming. Now
memories of war, famine, and oppression. she is carrying a young baby on her back
Whether it's the price of eggs, or the in the forlorn surroundings of Awbare
quality of food, or the behaviour of the (Teferi Ber) camp, where she arrived
government, nostalgia is rife. In Tigray, three years ago from a similar camp less
up on the chilly hillside, women than a day's walk away. She and many
remember when they were young, and other people at Awbare have been
everything was plentiful: a time of butter, refugees for at least ten years.
milk, and honey. Far away to the south in The covenant between humankind
Wollayta, an Ethiopian nun, contem- and nature has been broken throughout
plating the latest drought, comments, Ethiopia. When nature has failed to
'The change of weather is confusing provide, humans have failed to preserve.
every farmer. Before, they could plan. Up
to 1984 we always had rain in January'
Something has happened in Ethiopia.
A precarious environment has been
devastated by desperate people. Poor
farmers knew very well that they would
have to pay the price for cutting down
trees sooner or later. But the temptation to

34
 Farming and herding:
the national lottery
Agriculture sophisticated. The stakes are high:
Ethiopia lives off the land. Over three- children are likely to sicken or die from
quarters of the population depend on malnutrition if parents make the wrong
agriculture for their living, and over decision. They must balance high-
three-quarters of Ethiopia's export yielding crops against drought-resistant
earnings come from agriculture and types, and quick-maturing crops against
livestock. Most peasant farmers have to slow-maturing crops. It is an art which is
eke a living for their extended family taught to the younger members of the
from a plot of land not much larger than family: boys go out ploughing with their
Wooden paddles are
a suburban English garden. Only about fathers, girls look after the chickens, and
used to winnow teff,
13 per cent of the land area can be used all learn to watch the warning signs in Ethiopia's indigenous
for crop production. The rest is forest, nature from an early age. staple grain
mountain, savannah, and pasture land.
Farming in Ethiopia is rather like
playing roulette or the stock exchange.
The rains, on which most people have to
depend for their crops or livestock, often
come too little or late - or sometimes too
heavily. Only one per cent of land is
irrigated. Farmers' only insurance is to
hedge their bets by planting a variety of
different crops that mature at different
times, and to keep some seed in reserve
to sow when the first attempts become
dried up or waterlogged.
On the highlands and central plateaux,
teff, barley, wheat, maize, beans, peas,
and lentils are grown. At intermediate
altitudes, farmers grow sorghum and
millet. Teff (eragrostis tef) is the most
valued food crop in Ethiopia, but you
have to plough the land eight or nine
times before planting it - and as many as
one third of the subsistence farmers own
no traction animals. In the southern
highlands the 'false banana' tree (enset) is
the main staple crop, with tubers,
vegetables, and grains as secondary
crops. Livestock husbandry, common as a
subsidiary activity in all regions, is
almost exclusively the only source of
food production in the nomadic and
semi-nomadic pastoralist lowland areas.
Farmers' survival strategies are highly
35
 T he pungent smells of frankincense
and roasted coffee beans fill the room.
A basket of popcorn or some injem (the
national food, resembling a giant
pancake) is passed around. The coffee
ceremony is under way. Almost every
day, a social ritual which transcends
ethnic differences is played out all over
Ethiopia. The family gathers and invites
friends, relatives, or neighbours. All perch
on stools while a woman - always a
woman - heats water, sorts and roasts the
A jebena is the
traditional clay-fired green beans, and then pounds the roasted
coffee pot, used for Stimulants to the beans in a pestle and mortar. As they
the coffee ceremony economy: coffee... wait, people talk and work: spinning,
basket weaving, and sewing often get
done during the coffee ceremony.
Ethiopians claim that coffee originated
in their country. (The Yemenis make the
same claim.) There is a coffee-growing
region called Kafa, which, according to
the legend, gave coffee its name. About
three-quarters of coffee grown in Ethiopia
are consumed in the country. People brew
up three times a day in the areas where it
is grown.
"You have to work underneath it to get
a good harvest,' says Gedi Turku,
working in his plantation near Gazer in
south-western Ethiopia. He has 100 or so
trees, which produce a couple of sacks of
coffee beans in a season. With 12 children
and two wives to support, his cash crop is
not making him rich. Most of the crop is
sold on the local market: it's of indifferent
quality.
The fragile coffee tree has had to
support Ethiopia's foreign-exchange
needs for decades. Coffee represents
about two-thirds of the nation's export
earnings. Ethiopia is the second-biggest
producer of coffee in Africa, and the
blends from Harar are regarded as among
the best in the world. But a disease of the
trees in the Harerghe region and unstable
world prices have led many farmers to
abandon coffee-growing, in favour of the
stimulant qat.

36
 I at, chat, khat, miraa: it's all the
same. The plant, catha edulis,
loolcs like a privet hedge. Its leaves
produce a stimulant around which
much of the culture of eastern Ethiopia,
Djibouti, Yemen, and Somalia revolves.
First mentioned in the Ethiopian Royal
Chronicles of the thirteenth century, it
has a long lineage.
Consuming qat involves picking the
young leaves and chewing them
slowly in the corner of your mouth.
Eventually the leaves disintegrate and
the juices penetrate into the
bloodstream. A mild amphetamine, it
keeps you awake and rather jittery for
hours, if you chew enough. Soft drinks,
sugar, and sweet tea are offered during
a qat session to help wash down the
bitter taste. The leaves of qat are
Qat is grown in highland areas,
and qat chewed for their
where it is often the dominant cash stimulant properties
crop. The market is lucrative, since
much of the crop goes for export, to part of the export economy. The qat
Djibouti and Somalia, generating Exporters' Association fills up
valuable foreign exchange. In the Ethiopian Airlines jets at Dire Dawa
highlands around Harar, qat grows in airport every day for export to
orderly rows for valley after valley. Djibouti, and is a major economic force
Qat is popular with long-distance in the eastern region. The exchange
truck drivers and short-distance taxi rate between the Ethiopian Birr and the
drivers; a local joke says that it's not Somali shilling can fluctuate wildly
the qat which makes their driving when deliveries of qat arrive in a
erratic, it's the connoisseur's remote town.
examination of every leaf which takes Farmers have increasingly turned to
the driver's eyes off the road. qat as a relatively reliable, high-profit
As with coffee, qat has its own crop, which is often intercropped with
ceremonies. In Somali areas, the men vegetables like sweet potato. Prices for
will gather in the heat of the afternoon qat vary widely, according to the
on matting in the shade, and drink tea season. A good bunch can cost 80 Birr
and chew over the burning issues of in the dry season, but only 10-20 in the
the day. Incense is burnt and cheap wet season. Those who can irrigate
perfume is passed around to stimulate their qat get rich. But when there is a
the senses. drought, the qat growers suffer as
Some qat addicts end up as much as the producers of other crops.
desperate beggars in the cities. Because 'Our bellies are like an empty road,'
it suppresses the appetite, qat is says one qat farmer. 'No one knows
chewed by people who do not have what happened to the rain - except
enough to eat. But the crop is a critical God.'

37
 Livestock highland farming areas. At least one third
Ethiopia has the largest livestock of farmers don't own even one ox. The ox
population in Africa. About 40 per cent of is needed to pull the plough, which
agricultural production is made up of breaks up the soil, mixes up the moisture
animal produce: meat, dairy products, and the nutrients, and gives the tiny
and skins. Nearly every family, if they can seeds of teffa chance. If you have one ox,
afford it, will keep a few animals. Owner- you may be able to come to an
ship and management of cattle and arrangement with another farmer in the
camels has often evolved into a form of same position. If you have none, you
social organisation in nomadic areas. borrow the ox for ploughing, but the
Oxen for ploughing are a critical resource owner will claim a portion - perhaps half
in the highlands. Sheep are kept in the - of your crop.
mountains for wool and everywhere are Goats, said Gandhi, are 'the poor
reared for meat. Chickens and eggs are man's cow'. Hardy but tasty, they are
reared for market, or for eating as a deli- often tended by women and children in
cacy at holiday times. Dairy products are Ethiopia. There are about 15 different var-
an important part of children's diet, and ieties in the country, and new breeds,
tending smaller animals provides some mixed with the biggest and hardiest of
women with their own small income. the locals, are making a big contribution
Most of the camels in the world are in to some families' incomes. Abdurazak
the Horn of Africa. About a million are in Mohammed, from the eastern Harerghe
Ethiopia. Somalis and Afars alike keep region, says 'It's like having something in
camels for every purpose: as transport for hand, just in case you have an unexpect-
their portable houses, for milk, for meat, ed problem.' A goat can produce as much
and for insurance in times of war or milk as a cow, if fed properly.
drought. Camels are the glory of the Traditionally, goats have been left to
Ogaden desert. Proverbs are written fend for themselves, but the state of the
about them, blood feuds are settled by environment in Ethiopia is such that
payment with them, and celebrations are owners have to grow and collect greenery
enjoyed with their meat. and forage for their animals: the land
Owning oxen is one of the key dis- can't provide enough browse naturally.
tinctions between rich and poor in the

As many as one third

of farmers in Ethiopia
own no traction
animals for ploughing

38
 Can Ethiopia
feed itself?

W hen a guest is welcomed in an

Ethiopian home, whether it is in
the mountains or the desert, the custom is
designed to provide. The daily per capita
calorie supply is the lowest in Africa, just
71 per cent of requirements.
to offer everything possible, however Meat is a rare luxury, and eating three
poor the home. Coffee cups are filled to times a day is the exception, not the rule.
overflowing, and any less than three This is not a cultural matter, although
rounds would be considered rude. The fasting plays a major role in the lives of Take-away food:
generosity of Ethiopians is sometimes both Orthodox and Muslim Ethiopians. It injera for sale at
hard to believe. But more than half of the is a matter of permanent hunger. Nearly Jinka market
population are undernourished all the
time.
Food unites Ethiopia like nothing else.
There are few things that are found all
over Ethiopia, but one of them is injera,
the national food. Made from a variety of
grains, with different sauces, the huge
pancakes (as big as car tyres) are
everywhere: red and crunchy injera made
from sorghum in Humera on the north-
west tip of Ethiopia; sticky grey and
white versions made with maize in the
Somali south-east; and everywhere the
sour brown version made from teff, a tiny
grain grown only in Ethiopia (and, in
small quantities for homesick exiles, in
North America). Rich in iron and high in
gluten, teff is both the food on which the
nation marches, and a key economic
barometer. At one point during the war
in Eritrea, the terms of barter were
between sacks of teff'and small Fiat cars,
useless because of the lack of fuel. Teff is
the most valued food crop in Ethiopia,
and the agricultural cycle of its
production is rooted deep in the
country's culture.

Counting the calories

People eat little and not very often in
Ethiopia. The average daily calorie intake
is about 1,621 calories, about half that of
North Americans (who eat on average
138 per cent of their actual requirements)
and less than a standard relief ration is

39
 two-thirds of those children who manage on the land from over-grazing and
to survive their first five years are incessant cultivation has reduced soil
physically stunted, and their mental fertility in many areas. Per capita food
development is inhibited by production has been declining by about
malnourishment. two per cent a year. If this trend
The food 'emergencies' that frequently continues, people will go hungrier and
swallow up large amounts of food aid in hungrier; or food imports will have to
Ethiopia occur with regularity because grow by about ten per cent every year,
the normal state of the nation's belly is just to keep the Ethiopians at their
half-empty. It doesn't take much to tip present inadequate level of nutrition.
the balance from underfeeding to famine. Even the most optimistic forecasts for
Easily-treated problems caused by Ethiopia's food production predict a
vitamin deficiencies, such as goitre and perennial shortfall of at least half a
night blindness, are also common. million tons every year for the next
twenty years. In today's money,
More mouths to feed importing that amount of food and
Ethiopia can nearly feed itself: it even delivering it where it is needed costs
produced 80 per cent of its food in the about $200 million each year: more than
famine years of 1984-85. Statistically, the Ethiopia ever earned from coffee exports.
gap between needs and production is
small, but in human terms it is a margin Food aid
of misery and death. Closing the gap is There is a joke circulating in Ethiopia,
possible, if only the population remains probably coined by a cynical aid worker:
static. But it has already quadrupled since 'When there's a drought, we pray for rain
1900 and, with a current total of around in Canada.' Canada, the USA, and the
54 million people, Ethiopia is the second- European Union have provided huge
most populous nation in Africa after quantities of food aid over the last
Nigeria. The remorseless arithmetic of an decade. Since 1985, well over half a
annual growth rate of 2.9 per cent means million tons of food have been delivered
that in 25 years the population may have to Ethiopia every year. In the next five
doubled. years, imports will probably need to rise
More than half of all Ethiopians are to one million tons a year to keep
under sixteen. On average, 7,000 children Ethiopia on an even keel.
are born in Ethiopia every day, of whom But imported wheat, which makes up
one in five will die before his or her fifth most of Ethiopia's food aid, is not to local
birthday. Life-expectancy at birth is only people's taste. Most highlanders would
46 years, while family planning is used prefer teff, the staple grain which grows
by only two per cent of couples, mainly in only very small quantities outside
in urban areas. Ethiopia; lowlanders are more
Progress has been made since 1960, accustomed to maize. Locally-made
however, when an Ethiopian could butter {kibe) is part of the distinctive
expect to live only until the age of 36, and flavour of Ethiopian ivat sauces, and
under-five mortality was close to one imported edible oil is no substitute.
third of all births. The natural resources The paraphernalia of food aid has
of Ethiopia could support a larger developed into a market all of its own:
population, but economic development the tin cans, plastic jerry cans, barrels,
will have to be dramatic to catch up with and sacks of imported food are now
the demands of the population. ubiquitous all over the country. When the
The problem that stares farmers and US military donated millions of army
economic planners in the face is that rations left over from the Gulf War, the
weather patterns are becoming brown plastic wrapping was made into
increasingly unpredictable, and pressure hats, bags, school satchels, and shoes.

40
 Drought-cracked soil
and food-aid
packages: reminders
of Ethiopia's
vulnerability to food
shortages

Donated oil containers make tea kettles, differ widely from place to place. Some
and USAID bags, emblazoned 'Not to Be food is given in return for work, some is
Sold or Exchanged', are furiously traded not; some is given as a balanced food
in Dire Dawa to carry locally produced basket - grains, oil, and pulses - but
food. elsewhere people receive just grains.
Food aid is calculated in a methodical None of this indicates mismanagement:
way. Its scientists are nutritionists, feeding millions of people in Ethiopian
agronomists, and logisticians. In order to circumstances is a logistical nightmare;
determine Ethiopia's food-aid needs, a but it does make it almost impossible to
notional number of kilos is decided as the trace the impact of food aid.
average annual consumption per head. There is no doubt that Ethiopia needs
This, multiplied by the number of needy help with food. And the European Union
people, becomes the food requirement. and North America usually have stocks
Then the harvest is estimated, and the to spare. Very roughly, it costs less than
difference becomes the basis of an appeal 10.00 a month to save an Ethiopian from
to international donors. In famines, starvation. The real debate is not about
children are weighed and their height the cost of food aid, but about whether it
measured against global standards will be a permanent feature of the
devised in the USA decades ago. If over Ethiopian economy. It is hard to imagine
20 per cent of children fall below 80 per that there will be enough money and
cent of normal, a 'nutritional emergency' goodwill among the donor countries to
can be declared. develop long-term solutions that really
But this systematic calculation of need work, and gradually enable a few more
is followed by a haphazard system of people to become self-sufficient in food
distribution. Any of about 100 voluntary every year - when just keeping the
agencies may undertake to distribute country on its knees is costing billions.
food; when deliveries falter, rations often

41
The world's second-
poorest economy
Too poor to buy money Ethiopian Birr, is in tatters, both
Ethiopia can't afford new banknotes as physically and economically.
often as richer countries, and every note Ethiopia has embarked on a Structural
is passed around until it has the Adjustment Programme which is meant
consistency of tissue paper encrusted to stimulate economic growth and benefit
with grease. Sometimes stapled together, the agricultural sector. Relaxation of the
Gebremeskal Gebre
damaged notes are hard to get rid of in rigid economic policies of the Derg era
Aregawi earns his
living making sandals areas far from a bank, and forgeries are has encouraged farmers to plant more,
from used car tyres not uncommon. The currency, the and traders' business is expanding. But
despite superficial signs of economic life,
urban unemployment is rampant, and
the ranks of the poor grow larger all the
time.
Ethiopia was often called 'the poorest
country in the world', ranking last in the
World Bank's statistics of gross national
product (GNP) per head. The miserable
honour now belongs to Mozambique,
and Ethiopia is 'only' the second-poorest
nation. Switzerland is the richest country
in the world by this indicator, with an
annual GNP per capita of $33,610,
compared with Ethiopia's $120. UNICEF
estimates that about 62 per cent of the
population live below the absolute
poverty level, which means they are
unable to afford an adequate diet and
other basic necessities.

An economy addicted to
coffee
Agriculture is the foundation of the
Ethiopian economy. To pay for imports of
petroleum and machinery, the country
exports hides and skins, oil-seeds, and
pulses. But coffee is the main export item,
generating 60 per cent of Ethiopia's
foreign-exchange earnings. This is a
dangerous dependency: when coffee
prices drop on international markets,
Ethiopia loses millions of dollars in
revenue. The coffee-producing countries
used to be organised into a cartel, to try
to maintain higher prices by holding back

42
 Pepsi Cola factory,
Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia cannot rely
on exporting primary
commodities; it must
develop a broader
manufacturing base.

excess produce from the market. But Ethiopians have been getting poorer
when competitive pressure forced the for the last 25 years. Growth in gross
agreement to collapse in 1989, the domestic product has averaged 1.5 per
resulting free-for-all meant that cent each year: not enough to keep up
consumers in rich countries enjoyed the with the high rates of population growth.
cheapest coffee in years. Coffee prices hit The civil war consumed up to half of the
rock bottom in 1993; in 1994 they shot up government's budget at its height. The
after the Brazilian harvest failed - only to black-market exchange rate rose until it
fall again by the end of the year. At best, was three times the official rate, and
coffee-production offers only a precarious public-service wages were frozen. Out of
living. If a health scare in the USA and its meagre resources, Ethiopia paid
Europe were to lead to a drop in coffee nearly $100 million in interest alone on
consumption, the Ethiopian economy debt in the financial year 1991/92.
would be ruined. Arrears have accumulated, because debt-
Ethiopia's trade deficit, US$822 million servicing obligations were not met. In
in 1992 on a balance-of-payments basis, 1991 the Transitional Government
reflects the fact that international terms of inherited an economy on its knees. The
trade have successively moved against next year, the total external debt was 66
the country since 1970. Ethiopia must per cent of the country's gross national
find alternatives to the export of product, and the debt-service ratio was
agricultural products on which it has 14 per cent of export earnings.
always relied. The exploitation of mineral Although the bulk of Ethiopia's long-
resources offers some hope of eventually term debt is owed to bilateral creditors,
reducing the nation's trade deficit. In the half of this is owed to former Eastern Bloc
south-west, at Kenticha, a significant allies of the Mengistu regime. The largest
deposit of tantalite, a mineral used in the single creditor is the former USSR.
electrical components industry, has been Repayment of the rouble debt accrued for
identified for mining. Exploration is in the purchase of arms during the civil war
progress to locate natural gas and oil is repugnant to Ethiopians.
fields in the Ogaden, and an oil concess- Cancellations of external debt are
ion has been granted in the Afar region. critical for the recovery of Ethiopia's
43
 1994/95. This policy was well received by
donors, and has produced pledges of
over $1 billion of new aid money. The
reform programme foresees growth of 5.5
per cent over the next few years. '
The economic reforms will hit some
people hard. Redundancies in the public
sector and privatised industries, and
anticipated inflation due to lack of
control over producer prices, will
increase urban poverty. Some of the
options to catch these poor people in a
safety net include public-sector wage
rises (the first was simultaneous with the
devaluation of the Birr in October 1992);
severance pay and retraining for sacked
government workers; and food and
kerosene vouchers and labour-based
public works to help the urban poor.
As such, Ethiopia's Structural
Adjustment Programme is fairly typical
of the kind of policy which the World
Bank and IMF have recommended for
many poor countries. It has begun
without dramatic increases in costs for
public services like education and health,
which are often the bitterest pill to
swallow. But neither has it produced
anything tangible to help the poor, other
than the faint hope of a 'trickle-down'
effect. There is a long way for a very little
money to trickle down in Ethiopia, and a
special poverty-alleviation package was
discussed at great length at the start of
the economic reforms, in order to tackle
Trading home-grown economy, so that the foundations can be the problem more directly. So far, nothing
cotton in Axum. laid for its sustained growth. Ethiopia's has been decided. Ethiopians may have
Ethiopia's internal
bilateral creditors in the Paris Club to wait a long time before they see any
market has begun to
expand since the end agreed to cancel half their debt at the end benefits from the Structural Adjustment
of the civil war, of 1992, with the balance rescheduled Programme.
but the country needs over 25 years. But it is the multilateral
to earn creditors, principally the World Bank,
foreign exchange
which have the power to make the most
with a strong and
sustainable
significant concessions on debt-relief.
export trade. Their goodwill depends on Ethiopia's
commitment to economic reform and a
structural adjustment programme.

Economic reform
A Policy Framework Paper, devised by
the government with the IMF and World
Bank, presented an economic plan up to
44
 Education: a way
out of poverty?
A school with no desks paid by each student. The central
At the Obelisk School in Axum, 854 government pays the teachers' salaries,
students attend in two shifts, morning but everything else has to come from the
and afternoon. Many children, from the parents - who have little to spare.
age of 6 upwards, come from 10 km Nationally, only about 22 per cent of
away. The school is not unusual by children are enrolled in primary school,
Ethiopian standards: it has no desks, no and only about 10 per cent make it to
chairs, and not even a football. There is secondary school. These rates are among
no water tap and no toilet. Perched on the lowest in Africa. The UN Develop-
little heaps of stones for four hours under ment Programme estimates that the
a canopy of dried branches, the children average member of the workforce in
are learning mathematics. Visitors are Ethiopia has only one year of schooling.
greeted with a loud 'Good morning, Despite major campaigns during the
Teacher' and a few giggles. The school Mengistu years, only about half of
director, Tekle Gebre Egziabher, sits in a Ethiopians can read and write.
small room, floored with red earth, and Many schools work on a shift system,
roofed with corrugated iron. 'We have no opening three times a day to handle the
budget,' he explains, 'to buy a football or overwhelming number of students.
volleyball.' Two posts in the dusty field Classes of 100 pupils are not uncommon.
behind the tiny buildings might once When high schools break for lunch in
have had a net strung between them, a Addis Ababa, traffic grinds to a halt, and
long time ago. The only source of cash for hundreds of children spill on to the
the school is the fee of 50 pence a year streets.

An elementary school
in Tigray: no desks,
chairs, water, or
toilets. 843 pupils
walk up to 10 km to
get there.

45
 An alphabet with 256
letters
Progress in education in Ethiopia is not
simply a question of increased enrol-
ments. The curriculum has been radically
revised. In the past, all schools in
Ethiopia taught and tested in Amharic.
(The universities used English.) Children
who spoke other languages had to learn
Amharic before being able to understand
anything at school. It was a major hurdle
to overcome: learning a foreign language,
with its 256-letter alphabet and ferocious-
ly difficult grammar, made academic
progress hard. As part of the regional
decentralisation policy, new curricula and
school books have been drawn up, and
children can now be educated in their
mother tongue in over a dozen Ethiopian
languages. Most of the languages are
written with the Latin alphabet.
So many adults have had their
education disrupted by the war that it is
common to see grown-ups sitting at the
back of the class in primary schools. The
fighters of the EPRDF are also catching
up with their education, and groups of
them walk back from classes, satchel in
one hand, Kalashnikov in the other.

XHHMlll. f.<CA.->A

>>

-tttr
Literacy class for If Ethiopia is to diversify its economy,
workers at Hayhaile
and be less dependent on agriculture, it
tree nursery, Tigray
will need a skilled work force to develop ifi'TA-fm- y
light industry, tourism, and other M M "He nr-
revenue-generating economic sectors. A
(\"i*CT
well-educated generation of young
-nt-i- .<:
people who can find worthwhile work
may be the best insurance against
drought for Ethiopia. Girls and boys at
present are unlikely to complete even
primary school, which leaves them only
limited 'career' options. More children in
school, especially more girls, will help to
widen the scope of the potentially
employable.

46
 Women's lives:
the 15-hour day

D espite all the rhetoric during the

Mengistu era about the noble role of
women in 'socialist Ethiopia', women
the baby unattended until the placenta is
delivered, cause extra problems. And
when things go wrong, the traditional
continue to be ignored, exploited, and midwife can only do so much. Goats are
undervalued. About 14 per cent of rural slaughtered, massage is performed, but
households in Ethiopia are headed by often it is too late. Women sometimes
women, and the figure rises to 22 per cent arrive in a hospital or clinic after 48 hours
in urban areas. Like most women all over of exhausting labour.
Kahsa Girmay
the world, rural women work at home Some estimates suggest that as many carrying her baby in a
without pay. Collecting fuel-wood and as 90 per cent of Ethiopian women are goatskin pouch
water, raising children, and working in
the fields and with livestock all add up to
a staggering burden. A woman's average
working day is 15 hours long. Men
produce about the same amount as
women, but men have far fewer tasks in
the running of the household. In paid
employment, women are under-
represented: fewer than one quarter of
government workers are women.
Only one in four girls ever goes to
school at all. Girls drop out of school
because they are needed at home to
work. And they marry young: ten per
cent of girls between 10 and 14 are
married. Women have less access to land,
labour, capital, information, credit, and
government assistance than men. Their
subordination to men in terms of money
and property was even included in the
Civil Code of 1960. Women did not win
the right to vote until 1956.

Marriage and motherhood

Each Ethiopian woman bears, on
average, five children, but nearly ten per
cent of women give birth to ten live
babies in their lifetimes. At least 10,000
women die in child-birth every year.
Almost every child is born at home, in
unhygienic conditions, with a local
untrained midwife in attendance. Some
traditional practices, like coating the
umbilical cord with cow dung or leaving

47
 circumcised. Frequently described as the AIDS-control programme in their
'female genital mutilation', the removal hundreds of thousands, but few people
of parts of the outer sex organs is a outside the cities use them.
cultural practice common throughout the
Horn of Africa. The risk of infection from New challenges for women
unsterilised razor blades or knives, and It would be foolish to expect traditions
the risk of excessive bleeding, are high. which dictate women's lives to be broken
The operation is often performed on girls in the space of a generation or two,
when they are as old as ten, and medical whatever the government's stated
and social problems develop later in life. development priorities. Domestic
Sexual intercourse can be painful and violence and rape are rarely even
childbirth dangerous. Infections are discussed in public. However, some of
common. the dislocations in the recent history of
In many countries it has been shown the Horn of Africa have produced
that women with more education have opportunities for women as an
fewer children, because they appreciate unexpected benefit. Some refugee
that spacing children is better for the women, for example, have found more
health of the mother, and gives a child a responsibility and respect in camp life
greater chance of surviving past the age than in their previous nomadic existence.
of five. Without education, an ideal But many others have fallen prey to
family size might be 'whatever God gives rapists in the same camps. Women were
us'. Most women have little control over fighters and even tank-commanders in
how many children they have, and the civil war, but find themselves
modern contraception services are simply unemployed in peace time. Many have
not available. Some recent studies been widowed. But the break-up of
indicate that nearly half of Ethiopian families by war and poverty has created
couples would like to be able to plan more women-headed households with
their families, but are unable to. some degree of recognition in the
Condoms are being distributed as part of community.

Grinding mill at
Adwa. Women value
their local community
mill, because
grinding grain by
traditional methods
at home is their
heaviest task.

48
 'May God grant
you health'
Four-year-old
W alking through groves of banana,
coffee, avocado, and papaya,
women carry huge bunches of bananas to
Teshona Tona, badly
malnourished, is
carried by his brother
market. In the other direction, stretchers to a clinic in
made of sticks and woven banana leaves Wollayta. Teshona's
bring the sick to the clinic at the end of yellow card records
the road. A mother-and-child health details of his history
and treatment.
session is held at the clinic once a month.
Mothers assemble under the shade of a
tree deep in the Wollayta hills and are
given some health-education talks while
they wait their turn. Christian and
traditional prayers are offered. Some
fathers come carrying children too.
Children are weighed in a red washing-
up bowl hanging from a tree.
The most common greeting in
Amharic, Ethiopia's lingua franca, is
Tenasystillin; loosely translated, it means
'May God grant you health'. The
greeting, far too often, is in vain.
Ethiopians die young: one fifth of all
children die before their fifth birthday, Infections prey on malnourishment, and
and the average life expectancy is 29 disease makes eating almost impossible.
years less than in the UK. This is the vicious cycle of disease and
Teshona Tona has been brought by his malnutrition. The ravages of a simple,
older brother to the clinic in Wollayta. preventable disease are appalling: half a
Aged four, he weighs only seven kilos, million children die under the age of five
and is just starting to walk. Every child every year. This is only slightly less than
attending a clinic like this one is given a the number of people who died in the
yellow health card. It records the name famine of 1984-1985. In the UK, with a
and date of birth (when known), similar population, the annual figure for
vaccinations, and weight. The weight under-five mortality is 7,000.
graph covers the first five years of the At the clinic in the Wollayta hills, hard-
child's life, and shows a gently rising pressed health workers see a stream of
curve of normal weights for the age. patients all morning. The most common
Teshona has never been charted in the diseases are malnutrition, malaria,
'normal' area of the graph. His growth tuberculosis, and infections of the chest
chart is a nearly horizontal line. or eyes. Sister Martha keeps a little
Diseases on the point of extinction in square of paper on her desk and puts a
many other countries - tuberculosis, mark against the types of illness which
polio, and leprosy, for example - are still people are presenting. 'One died', she
rampant in the Ethiopian countryside. writes: another small statistic in
But the greatest killer is diarrhoea. Ethiopia's health records.

49
 AIDS
HIV infection and AIDS have yet to take
hold in Ethiopia on the scale seen in
many African countries. Thanks to
political, geographical, and economic
isolation, Ethiopia has been to some
extent insulated from the pandemic.
While other countries count cases of HIV
infection in millions, and AIDS deaths in
hundreds of thousands, by November
1994 the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia
had recorded only 15,565 cases of full-
blown AIDS since 1986.There is, however,
no reason for complacency. Official
statistics are, as usual, likely to show only
the tip of the iceberg. Ethiopia is opening
up politically, and the slow-burn nature
of the disease means that, in some cases
emerging now, patients were infected
before any public education began in the
mid-1980s. The steep upward curve of
AIDS cases is reflecting, in miniature, the
rampage of the disease in other countries.
Addis Ababa is by far the worst-
affected place, but the disease is
spreading into the remotest countryside,
helped in particular by the
demobilisation of the Mengistu army.
There could be few more effective ways
of spreading the disease than sending
half a million soldiers back from garrison
towns to their villages. Transmission by
heterosexual intercourse is the most
common route of infection now, but some
traditional practices are likely to increase
Hiwot, meaning Life, is the name of the brand the incidence of the disease. Circum-
of condom being sold in Ethiopia as part of an cision, tattooing, and decorative
AIDS-prevention campaign scarification are all common in Ethiopia.
Unless performed with sterile blades,
they pose an additional risk. Ethiopia's
AIDS Control Programme has launched a
'Life' brand condom which is selling in
the cities, but it would be naive to
suggest that it is widely available or
popular in the rural areas.

50
 Surviving in
the city
mystics and foreign evangelists stir up
I ercedes cars and donkeys vie for
space on Addis Ababa's potholed
streets. What began as a temporary
their respective congregations. Not quite
harmonious enough to be called a melt-
encampment of Emperor Menelik and his ing pot, Addis Ababa is a series of
retinue, on the site of Oromo hot springs, villages, loosely interconnected but often
has turned into a metropolis of four ethnically defined.
million people. Still the diplomatic centre More and more people are leaving the
of Africa, hosting the Organisation of countryside to seek their fortune in Addis
African Unity and the UN's Economic Ababa. And the more people who arrive,
Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa is the less the city's facilities can cope.
also the meeting point for all of Ethiopia has had one of the lowest rates
Ethiopia's many peoples. of urbanisation in Africa, but Addis
Barefoot shepherds lope along past Ababa and other centres like Dessie, Dire Addis Ababa is the
Dawa, and Makelle have grown meeting point of old
prostitutes in black leather mini-skirts;
dramatically since the end of the civil and new, town and
beggars implore ambassadors for change; country. Here, goats
Nuers from the West talk pidgin Amharic war. Soldiers have returned home, travel drowse outside a
with Somalis from the East; Orthodox and residence regulations have been garage.

51
 relaxed, and petty business is flourishing. Savings associations for funerals are
Sadly, the city's streets are often not generally called eddir. These networks are
paved at all, let alone paved with gold. dominated by women. It has been
As less than half the population have a estimated that tens of millions of Birr
latrine, the streets are often open sewers. pass through the ekubs every month in
Poverty and squalor are rife. Children Addis Ababa.
collect pine needles from trees over- Local churches and mosques do more
hanging the presidential palace to use for to save the poor from beggary or
cooking fires; a group of homeless people prostitution - the two last-ditch options
sleep under plastic sheeting just below for Ethiopian men and women - than any
Mengistu's Stalinist monument to the other organisation. Missions and church
revolution; and children compete with groups run soup kitchens, health and
birds of prey and dogs to scavenge sanitation programmes, small savings
among the bins outside expatriate and credit schemes, and construction
apartment blocks. Many people rarely programmes to provide some sort of
touch cash, surviving on a system of safety net for poor neighbourhoods in the
barter and work, in return for room and cities. The best programmes may lend a
board. The minimum wage of 100 Birr in few hundred Birr to a family to pay for
the cities is a legal fiction: some domestic the equipment needed to make beer or
servants earn less than 5.00 a month. take-away food; the loan is repaid in a
This is not far from slavery. series of small instalments, then recycled
In cities and villages, a form of social as a loan to another mini-entrepreneur.
security is provided by traditional
institutions such as mutual savings
groups, called ekub, which take a monthly
contribution from members and then pay
out when someone is in trouble or needs
a lump sum for a wedding, for example.

The streets of Addis

Ababa are not paved
with gold. An old
man survives by
sleeping rough and
scavenging.

52
 A land of
righteousness
Religious belief plays a central part in Arriving in Israel at the same time as
Lthe day-to-day life of Ethiopians. hundreds of thousands of Russian
Whether in the home or in a place or immigrants, most of the Ethiopian Jews
worship, God, Allah, or traditional have failed to find work or permanent
deities are supplicated, thanked, and held housing. Their clerical autonomy was
responsible for the ups and downs of life. threatened when Israeli authorities
Religion has played a key role in history, refused to recognise their spiritual
and today is one of the dividing lines of leaders, or kessim. A unique part of
society and politics. Ethiopia's cultural heritage has been lost,
The most remarkable feature of and the Falashas' dreams of the promised
Ethiopia's religious life is the centuries- land have been disappointed.
old coexistence of three of the world's
main religions. In and around Gonder, The Orthodox Church
Ethiopian Jews, Christians, and Muslims The Christian heritage of Ethiopia pre-
lived together in peace until very dates that of Europe. When Europeans
recently. were still pagan, the Christian faith was
taking root in Ethiopia. Ethiopian
The Falasha Orthodoxy was founded in 341 AD, after
Ethiopia's links with the pre-Christian two Christian Syrian boys, shipwrecked
Holy Land are confirmed by the survival off the Red Sea coast, were brought to the
of a 'lost tribe' of Jews, who lived in court of the Emperor of Axum.
northern Ethiopia around the city of Eventually they succeeded in converting
Gonder. Known by Ethiopians as Falasha his successor, Emperor Ezana, to
('strangers') and to themselves as the Bete Christianity. From there the religion
Israel ('house of Israel'), they lived spread far and wide, encouraged by early
according to a mixture of Jewish and missionaries from Syria.
Ethiopian traditions. Orthodox Christianity is divided into
Numbering about 40,000 in the early the Russian, Greek, Syrian, and Ethiopian
1980s, the Falasha were recognised as Orthodox churches. They differ from the
Jewish by the Israeli rabbinical rest of Christianity in their use of the old
authorities, although they conducted Julian religious calendar, the composition
their ceremonies in Ge'ez, the ancient of their scriptures (there are 81 books in
Ethiopic language. As war and famine the Orthodox Bible, against 57 in the
ravaged their region, the Falashas looked King James version), and their rituals.
for a way out. According to the Israeli The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has
law of return, they had the right to Israeli incorporated elements of Judaism and
citizenship. Israel, in a shadowy deal even, possibly, ancient Egyptian religious
with dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, ceremonies into its Christian faith. Its
arranged the evacuation of the Falasha in practices are arcane, complex, and almost
two dramatic airlifts: one from Sudan in unfathomable to the uninitiated. It is a
1985, and the other, known as 'Operation severe and ascetic faith. Judaic laws on
Solomon', in the last days of the Ethiop- diet and circumcision are followed
ian civil war in May 1991. But the strictly. A priest in Lalibela may spend
Falashas' deliverance has been mixed. about 12 hours a day at the church, with

53
 A priest The Church today is still strong,
displays priceless despite the confiscation of its property,
processional crosses
the politicisation of its leadership, and
at the Church of the
True Cross, Lalibela the uncomfortable encounter with
Marxist atheism during the Mengistu
regime. Even those who do not attend
church observe some of the customs of
the faith, bowing three times towards a
church, even when passing in a taxi in
Addis Ababa, and stopping priests in the
street to kiss their hands.

Islam in Ethiopia
Ethiopia's first refugees were Muslims.
While the prophet Mohammed was still
alive, some of his disciples took refuge in
Ethiopia from persecution in Arabia. As a
result, the Prophet dubbed Ethiopia 'a
land of righteousness where Allah will
give you relief from your suffering'. The
faith has grown in Ethiopia ever since, in
periods of violent conflict with Christ-
ians, interspersed with centuries of
Sunday ceremonies starting at midnight. peaceful cohabitation.
The devout pray seven times a day, and Muslims probably number as many as
fast on 180 days in the year. Hermits live Christians in today's Ethiopia; the precise
in the woods and caves around the count is a highly contentious issue. Given
monasteries. During times of persecution, Ethiopia's historical reputation as a
churches were built in the most inaccess-
ible places, on cliff-tops, islands, and
mountains. But at the height of its power,
the church amassed huge wealth: it
owned fifteen per cent of the land, and
collected rent and tax from its tenants.
Even today, the Church wields a major
influence on national politics and local
lives.
It is estimated that there are 20 million
Christians in Ethiopia. The Church itself
claims 38 million. Today the clergy
number about 200,000, scattered in 15,000
churches. A Sunday communion
ceremony (Qidasse) needs two priests and
three deacons to officiate. Much of the
church liturgy is conducted in Ge'ez, the
parent language of the Ethiopian
highlands - the Latin of Ethiopia. Even
Right: One of 87 when the sermon and other parts of the
mosques in Harar. ceremony are conducted in Amharic, the
The town is one of nation's modern lingua franca, much of
the most important the ritual is incomprehensible to the
Islamic centres in Ethiopian listener.
the world.

54
Christian redoubt, it has not been easy for blood, milk, and sometimes meat, and
Muslims to assert themselves in the growing sorghum in a few rain-fed areas.
modern state. None the less, Ethiopia has The idea of nation states and lines on the
a rich Islamic history. Harar is to map mean little to them. What is
Ethiopian Islam as Axum is to the important is their Hamer territory,
Orthodox Church. The oldest mosque in enclosed by a range of mountains to the
the Horn of Africa stands at the centre of east, beyond which live the Tsemhai
the walled city of Harar, founded in 1520. people, and the Omo river, controlled by
The Juma'a mosque, founded by Sheik the Geleb group to the west.
Abadir, proved to be a magnet for the Much photographed for coffee-table
surrounding villages, and five of the books, but rarely interviewed, traditional
main settlements moved into the town. peoples know their land better than any
The Sheik is buried at a shrine beneath government official or outsider. Eking a
the huge branches of an old fig tree in a living from the arid expanses of
corner of the old city. Ethiopia's periphery is a skill, but young
Harar grew into a powerful trading civil servants in the government
centre, exporting slaves, ivory, coffee, ministries still talk of the 'backwardness'
tobacco, cloth, livestock, honey, spices, of the 'nomads', and argue that
and incense. By now the city has settlement is the way forward for them.
accumulated a total of 87 mosques and The traditional peoples of Ethiopia are
103 shrines and is one of the most woven together by systems of age
important Islamic centres in the world. A groups, marital alliances, clan allegiance,
dusty museum holds manuscript copies and water rights. But their way of life is
of the Koran, 800 years old, bound in under pressure: the easy availability of
leather and exquisitely inscribed on guns, the shortage of land and water, and
goatskin. the threat of AIDS have all made life on
Ethiopia's Muslims are Sunni, the the periphery even more precarious. All
largest branch of Islam. As with the of Ethiopia's minority peoples are facing
Orthodox Christians, traditional beliefs in change. Pressure on land and livestock
natural spirits have been amalgamated has meant that many, like the Hamer, are
into the monotheistic religion of Islam. having to cultivate and become semi-
The relationship between the two is best sedentary. Most of their languages have
described by an Oromo proverb: 'His never been written down. Shiferew Ibeda, a
mouth talks about Sheik Hussein [a place of Hamer man, with his
Surha Ado, an elder of the Arbore gun. Weapons of war
pilgrimage], but his hands are stretched up people, says that life has become more are everywhere in
to the tree.' difficult. 'All we know is how to follow Ethiopia.

The old religion

Older than all the monotheistic religions
with their written scriptures are the
animist beliefs of Ethiopia's 80 ethnic
minority groups. At least a quarter of
these groups are less than 20,000 strong.
They are generally on the edges of the
country, mainly in the lowlands,
speaking an array of unique languages,
and leading their lives according to the
seasons.
The Hamer people, probably about
15,000 in number, live in the far south-
west of Ethiopia. They are a traditional
pastoralist society, rearing animals for

55
56
the seasons/ he says. 'If there was a
drought, we used to hunt.' But the
seasons are not reliable any more, and the
wild-life is fast disappearing. His people
now depend on rations from the
government Relief and Rehabilitation
Commission. 'It was never like this
before,' he says, echoing a theme voiced
by older people all over Ethiopia. 'You
don't even get milk from goats now.'
Turga Galsha, a greying elder of the
Hamer, welcomed the author of this book
and Jenny Matthews, the photographer,
to his hut in Deleme village. Coffee was
offered, but first a prayer: for more rain,
for the well-being of the guests. All blew
a hissing noise, symbolising the breath of
life, to close the prayer.
Regular seasons are God's respons-
ibility, and the Hamer, scraping by in
another year of drought, are fed up with
their God. 'God has gone to sleep. I've given
up begging him,' says Turga Galsha later.
But he stresses that their values remain
the same: 'There is no rich person and no
poor person among us. Even though God is
sleeping, we share everything. This is how we
are. Makers of beehives, herders of cattle, and
beginners at ploughing.'

Rastafarianism
Ethiopia is the spiritual home - if not the
geographical base - of Rastafarianism, a
religious and political movement which
began in Jamaica in the 1920s, and has
spread throughout the Caribbean, North
America, and Western Europe. Hundreds
of thousands of people of Afro-Caribbean 'dreadlocks': long braids of hair, often Above: The Bob
origin regard Ras Tafari - or the Emperor worn under caps in the Ethiopian Marley Music Shop in
Haile Selassie, as he later styled himself - Woldiya, Wollo:
national colours: red, yellow, and green.
as the Messiah and champion of the black reggae music comes
But many of them also follow strict 'home'.
race, because he was the king of the only dietary laws, and have developed a form
African country never colonised. Rasta- of religious mysticism which blends
farians, who identify with the Israelites of together African and Old Testament
the Old Testament, await their own practices.
'exodus': redemption for all people of
African descent by repatriation back to
Africa. Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah,
they believe, is not dead, and one day Opposite: A Hamer
woman making
will lead them home. The most obvious
pottery in the village
features of Rastafarian culture are their of Dimeka, south-
distinctive reggae music and their west Ethiopia

57
The re-invention
of Ethiopia

T he last few years of the twentieth

century will see the re-birth of
Ethiopia, or its return to civil war and
despair. A radical policy has been
developed to confront the problems of
ethnic division which have dogged
Ethiopia from its earliest beginnings to
the present day. The result, if all goes
well, will be a peaceful federation of
mutually-dependent states with a good
chance of developing and improving the
quality of life of their peoples.
Every ethnic group, people, or 'nation'
or 'nationality' - the translation of the
Amharic word betsowoch varies - will, in
theory, control its own affairs, in its own
language, without interference from
outsiders, in a voluntary loose federation
administered from Addis Ababa. To
avoid the possibility of civil war, every
region will even have the right to leave
the federation peacefully if it so wishes.
This ground-breaking new concept has
been described by some as a model for
Africa; others regard it as a cynical ploy
to stir up trouble among Ethiopia's ethnic
groups, and strengthen the power and
influence of any one minority ethnic
group.
Tribalism used to be a dirty word both
for African leaders and for liberal
observers of Africa. But it is becoming
more and more evident that the nation
states into which Africa was divided at
independence bear little relation to
Africans' actual sense of belonging. Many
Ethiopians' first allegiance is to their
tribe, or their ethnic group, or their
region; their country comes a poor
second.
A sense of belonging can be a force for
self-reliance. But how will the semi-
autonomous regions treat those of mixed
blood - those with a mother from Tigray

58
 'What you can't settle by peace
cannot be solved by war.'
(Somali proverb)

and a father from Oromia, for example -

or those living outside their 'homeland'?
There are millions of 'mixed' Ethiopians
who may need a 'national' identity, and a
national language. A homogeneous
'Ethiopian-ness' does exist: in the culture,
family life, and work patterns of most of
Ethiopia. It is needed by Ethiopians
themselves, as a source of pride, identity,
and national cohesion.
Opponents fear that without a sense of
national identity, supported and
encouraged by the central government,
there will be nothing left of Ethiopia in a
few years' time. The centrifugal forces of
ethnic politics may tear the country apart.
Its most vehement critics insist that
ethnic politics is a kind of apartheid.
Pessimists predict that, rather than
breaking new ground, Ethiopia is digging
its own grave.
Supporters of ethnic politics, on the
other hand, argue that this may be the
only way to ensure peace, democracy,
and justice. The risks are great, but it is
undeniable that little progress towards
reconciliation has been made with the aid
of less radical policies in Bosnia, Somalia,
and Rwanda. The Ethiopian experiment
in ethnic politics, if it succeeds, has
implications for many of the racial
disputes that are flaring up in the world
today. For the poor in Ethiopia, the price
of failure will be yet more hardship. In
the words of an African proverb, 'If the
fingers of one hand quarrel, they cannot pick
up the food.'

59
Dates and events

1930 Haile Selassie crowned Emperor of Ethiopia. establishes the Provisional Government of Eritrea. In
Ethiopia, the EPRDF re-establishes order in the cities,
1935 Italy invades Ethiopia; six years of military and disarms and disperses the defeated government
occupation follow. army.
1941 Italians defeated by guerrilla army and Allied July 1991 EPRDF invites opposition parties to a
troops. Haile Selassie returns from exile. national conference on peace and democracy to plan
1962 Eritrea annexed by Haile Selassie, prompting national and regional elections; meanwhile, a
emergence of an Eritrean rebel movement (ELF). transitional government rules. Eritrea is declared free
Start of civil war. to hold a referendum on independence.

1972-1974 Famine kills 200,000 Ethiopians. April 1993 98 per cent of Eritreans vote for
independence, which is granted.
1973 Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF)
formed, superseding ELF. May 1995 Ethiopian national elections scheduled.

1974 A group of junior army officers (subsequently Goats in Jinka market

known as 'The Derg') overthrow the ageing and
unpopular Haile Selassie. Political turmoil ensues.
1975 Rebel movement, the Tigrayan People's
Liberation Front (TPLF), emerges in Tigray province.
1977 Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam
emerges as undisputed leader of the Derg regime.
1977-78 Territorial dispute leads to war with
Somalia. Ethiopian victory secured with massive
support from Russian and Cuban troops. Ethiopia
enters Soviet sphere of influence.
1984-85 An estimated half-million Ethiopians die in
famine.
1986 Mengistu establishes the People's Democratic
Republic of Ethiopia, with a Marxist-Leninist
constitution.
1989 Despite forced conscription and military aid
from the USSR, the government is driven out of the
capital of Tigray province by the TPLF: a turning-
point in the 30-year civil war. The rebel coalition
EPRDF is formed (the Ethiopian People's
Revolutionary Democratic Front: TPLF plus like-
minded rebel groups from other regions).
May 1991 Mengistu flees the country before the
EPRDF enter Addis Ababa. EPLF enters Asmara and

60
Update: events in
Ethiopia since 1995
ince this book was first published in to import and export goods and services
S 1995, Ethiopia has faced many
challenges - both internal and external -
through Eritrea's ports, while Eritrea
earned about US$ 90 million dollars
to its recovery from conflict, chaos, and a year from the provision of services and
destitution. port duties, and exported a large
proportion of its goods and services to
War with Eritrea Ethiopia. However, this partnership did
not last long. After a few years, the two
Despite the very close historic links
countries were failing to agree on
between Ethiopia and its neighbour
common trade and investment policies.
Eritrea - links based on a shared history, They each introduced separate new
a common culture, and vital trade investment and tariff regimes, and
relations - war broke out between the independent exchange and interest rates.
two nations in 1998. The conflict began In 1997, Eritrea issued a new currency,
as a border dispute in May of that year, the nakfa, without due discussion with
with Eritrea's occupation of the area Ethiopia. The Eritrean government
around Badme. It turned into a full-scale initially assumed that the nakfa would be
war which cost an estimated 75,000 lives, exchanged at parity with the Ethiopian
displaced more than one million people, birr, and that the two currencies would
and severely damaged the economies of be usable in both countries. However, the
both countries. Ethiopian government refused to
Each government has accused the exchange on the basis of parity, and
other of territorial aggression and insisted that all trade and services should
expansionism. The border between the now be transacted in hard currency,
two countries, which was determined in using a letter-of-credit system. Eritrea
the early years of the twentieth century rejected this proposal and accused
by the Italian colonial administration, Ethiopia of hostile protectionism. At the
was never demarcated physically on the same time, Tigray (the northernmost
ground. So the colonial era left a legacy region of Ethiopia, which borders on
of controversy which soured relations Eritrea) was developing an
between Eritrea and Ethiopia after industrialisation strategy very similar to
independence. However, many observers that of Eritrea. This was resented by
Eritrea, which viewed it as an attempt to
are convinced that the border issue was
undermine its exports into Ethiopian
only a pretext for the conflict that broke
markets.
out in 1998. The real problem was an
economic one.
The human cost of the war
Underlying causes of the war Whatever the causes of the war, the
After the downfall of the Derg in human cost on both sides was
Ethiopia in 1991, a bilateral agreement of devastating. Apart from the estimated
friendship and co-operation with Eritrea 75,000 deaths, tens of thousands of
was intended to harmonise the two Eritreans and Ethiopians have been
countries' fiscal, monetary, trade, and expelled from both countries - either for
investment policies. Ethiopia was able reasons of State security, as the

61
 governments claim, or as acts of The economic cost
retaliation. In and near to the battlefields, The diversion of their resources to the
nearly one million innocent civilians war has destroyed the efforts of the two
have been displaced. According to the governments to reduce the deep and
Ethiopian government, 350,000 people persistent poverty which exists in both
had been displaced from the contested countries. Military expenditure rose to
area of Badme and Zalanbessa by the 29 per cent of Ethiopia's public spending
end of 1999. The number of displaced during the two-year war: more than one
Eritreans is likely to be much greater, million dollars a day.1 The indirect costs
because the war extended deep inside of the war, including the costs incurred
Eritrea's densely populated areas, with as a result of displacement, re-routing
the deployment of more than 400,000 the transport of exports and imports, and
soldiers, fighting with sophisticated replacing the assets of the victims, were
modern weapons. Resettlement of similarly severe. The international
displaced people is now an enormously community was reluctant to give
difficult task, and active landmines pose assistance to Ethiopia and Eritrea during
a major threat to reconstruction efforts. the war and denied them access to loans
Many villages and towns, formerly or debt-cancellation facilities for more
inhabited by thousands of people, are than two years, to put pressure on them
now devastated beyond the possibility to reach a peace agreement.
War with Eritrea: of restoration. In Zalanbessa, for Development assistance was almost
400,000 soldiers,
sophisticated
instance, once a town noted for its frozen as a result.
modern weapons ... architectural beauty, around two-thirds
75,000 people dead of the buildings have been destroyed.
and 1,000,000 made
homeless

62
The political cost Somalia
The mutual resentment which has Current relations between the Ethiopian
developed between the people of the government and the new interim
two countries is one of the most ugly government of Somalia, led by President
scars left by the war. Their antagonism Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, reflect the
has been compounded by the history of the relationship between the
communications media of the two two countries, which has been
countries, and fanned by accusations characterised by suspicion, conflict,
that the two governments are seeking and war. Ethiopia has been reluctant to
to destabilise each other, by supporting give official recognition to the new
opposition movements within each government of Somalia, which took
other's borders. Ethiopia has accused the power after Djibouti-hosted peace talks
Eritrean government of giving military in August 2000. It accuses Somalia of
and moral support to the Oromo and supporting extremist elements, some of
Somali opposition groups inside which are believed to have links with
Ethiopia, to increase political instability Islamic fundamentalists and are
and insecurity within the country. perceived by Ethiopia as posing a major
The war has aggravated other tensions threat to her national stability. Somalia
within Ethiopia, presenting an is also accused of seeking to destabilise
opportunity for some people to reflect on Ethiopia by giving support and arms to
their grievances against the government, the Oromo Liberation Front. In return,
which they perceive to be favouring the Somali interim government alleges
Tigreans, due to the fact that the that Ethiopia maintains a military
administration is dominated by the TPLF presence and political interference in
(Tigrayan People's Liberation Front). Somalia. Ethiopia denies all the
The war ended in June 2000, when the allegations. Whatever the truth of the
opposing governments signed a peace matter, relations between Somalia and
proposal sponsored by the Organisation Ethiopia are crucial to national and
of African Unity. They have generally regional security and stability.
accepted the judgement of a border-
arbitration body. A UN cartographic Sudan
team has delimited the 1000-km border A few years ago, there were no
between them, which is expected to be diplomatic relations between Ethiopia
physically marked on the ground in and Sudan, because the former accused
July 2003. A humanitarian commission the latter of direct involvement in an
established to settle the issues of attempt in 1994 to assassinate the
compensation and other consequences Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak.
of the war is expected to publish its Sudan was also accused of exporting
findings in 2003. But the two govern- Islamic extremism and supporting
ments are still in dispute about the status Al-litthad, a Muslim fundamentalist
of Badme, and at present the level of group in Somalia which is suspected of
resentment and hostility between them having links with the terrorist
is so great that any attempt to normalise organisation al-Qaeda. But the war
relations between them will be fraught with Eritrea has changed the political
with problems. dynamics of the region and, at least for
the present, the hostilities between
The impact on relations with Sudan and Ethiopia are over. The two
other countries in the Horn governments are accelerating the
The war between Ethiopia and Eritrea normalisation process by strengthening
has brought about changes in political their diplomatic links and economic
alliances in the Horn of Africa. co-operation. Sudan Airline has resumed

63
North Wollo: 1700 its weekly flight to Addis Ababa, and Large loans from the international
metres above sea- Sudan has offered Ethiopia the use of community were conditional upon the
level, in a landlocked
country where
facilities in Port Sudan, although the implementation of a Structural
transport routes are infrastructure there is poor, and the Adjustment Programme which at first
tortuous, and ports - distance from Ethiopia is great. seemed to achieve a quick recovery,
whether in Eritrea, The majority of Ethiopia's imports and with a high rate of growth in the gross
Djibouti, or Sudan -
are a very long way
exports are still handled by the port of domestic product (GDP), and stable
off. Djibouti, despite complaints of poor prices and exchange rates.
management and high tariffs there. In 1997, however, relations between
the government of Ethiopia and the IMF
Economic development deteriorated. The IMF suspended the
In 1993, Ethiopia adopted an economic concessional loan arrangement
strategy which aimed to increase negotiated under its Enhanced Structural
agricultural productivity, in order to Adjustment Facility (ESAF), on the
improve food security in the towns and grounds that Ethiopia had failed to meet
raise the incomes of the smallholder some of the conditions which were
farming population. It also aimed to supposed to reform the financial sector.
improve agricultural export earnings The IMF's conditions included market-
and generate income which could be determined rates of interest and
invested in other sectors of the economy. exchange; deregulation of fertiliser
The World Bank and the International prices; privatisation of government-
Monetary Fund supported Ethiopia's owned enterprises; and higher charges
Economic Reform Programme, which for water and electricity. The government
was designed to transform the negotiated a new agreement in 1998, but
centralised, nationalised economy into in 1999 the IMF declined to extend
a market-led, privatised system. Ethiopia's access to the second-year

64
concessional fund. This time it gave
the reason as the war between Ethiopia
and Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia's
access to debt relief under the HIPC
(Highly Indebted Poor Countries)
initiative was also delayed on the
same grounds.
In 2002, the IMF was satisfied with
Ethiopia's economic performance, and
agreed that the country should have
access to a loan of US$ 14 million under
the Poverty Reduction Growth Facility
programme. So far, Ethiopia has used
US$ 77m of the US$ 133m allocated by
IMF for its economic reform programme.
On the whole, Ethiopia has achieved The disease is a major threat to the Schoolchildren watch
relative macro-economic stability. GDP economic survival of Ethiopia. The fact a puppet show about
growth has remained strong, at an that HIV attacks young adults who are at HIV/AIDS, performed
estimated 5 per cent in 2001 / 02, while by a touring group of
the peak of their productive potential has young volunteers.
inflation is estimated to have fallen from many grave implications for families, for
11 per cent between 1992 and 1995, to communities, and for the whole country.
zero in 2000.2 However, Ethiopia's The Central Statistics Authority has
economic growth is far from being estimated that life expectancy may fall
sufficient to pay for significant from 55 to 42 as a result of AIDS. Many
improvements to basic social services elderly people who themselves need care
and effective measures to reduce poverty. are having to support their children who
Ethiopia remains one of the poorest are sick with AIDS, and their orphaned
countries in the world, according to the grandchildren: an estimated 1,000,000
UN's Human Development Index. children have lost their parents as a
result of HIV/AIDS. 5 Absenteeism from
The challenge of HIV/AIDS offices, farms, and factories due to
Until very recently, political commitment sickness is now a serious problem which
to deal with the onslaught of AIDS in affects many households, and severely
Ethiopia did not measure up to the damages the national economy. The need
extent of the problem. The first evidence to provide care for AIDS patients has
of HIV infection was found in 1984, and serious implications for the national
the first case of AIDS was reported in health budget. Currently up to 42 per
1987. The Ministry of Health estimates cent of hospital beds are estimated to be
that so far 1.2 million Ethiopians have occupied by AIDS patients, according to
died of AIDS-related illness. Government
the Ministry of Health.
figures suggest that 2.7 million are
currently living with HIV, although The government has established a
experts believe that the actual number national HIV/AIDS Council, with a
could be as much as three to five secretariat and members drawn from
million.3 Heterosexual transmission is various sections of society. To signal the
the primary mode by which the disease government's political commitment to
spreads. Between 10 and 18 per cent of tackling the problem, the Council is
adolescents are estimated to be HIV- chaired by the President of Ethiopia
positive.4 Girls typically contract the himself. Government departments and
virus at an earlier age than boys, as a NGOs are working at both community
consequence of cultural practices such as and national levels, basing their activities
early marriage. on the comprehensive national five-year

65
 Strategic Plan. They operate prevention livelihoods through subsistence farming,
programmes which promote behavioural based on rain-fed food production on
change and raise public awareness; smallholdings whose average area is
through advocacy and education they only one hectare. Coffee is the major
campaign against stigma and export crop, constituting one-third of
discrimination; and they provide HIV the country's export earnings.
testing and counselling, and safe blood Insecure supply of food is one of
supplies. Ethiopia's most persistent structural
Despite all these efforts, there remains economic problems. It is attributed to a
a deep-rooted social stigma attached to number of daunting factors, including
the disease. Most of the people infected, erratic and insufficient rainfalls; high
and their affected families, feel obliged population growth; the fragmentation
to remain silent about the problem - and degradation of land; the prevalence
which drives it further underground. of pests and diseases; high prices of
Prevention efforts are made more agricultural inputs; limited access to
difficult by traditional and religious credit; and improper land management,
attitudes to the use of condoms; by the inadequate farming techniques, and
powerlessness of the majority of girls inappropriate policy decisions.
and women to negotiate safer sex, in a A number of policy measures to boost
context where they have almost no food security and reduce vulnerability
economic alternative to marriage; by the have been adopted by the current
grinding poverty that compromises the government, ranging from establishing
ability of HIV/ AIDS patients to live a national Early Warning System to
healthily, let alone afford treatment; detect signs of famine, and improving
and by the prevalence of opportunistic the provision of agricultural extension
Ogaden, 2000: diseases such as malaria and services, to implementing emergency-
'We used to have tuberculosis, which attack people with preparedness measures. Some of these
200 sheep and depressed immunity. systems, including the early warning
40 cows before the
drought. We have
system, have been praised by many
just 10 sheep left. Agriculture and food security commentators as very effective.
My husband doesn't Agriculture generates around 50 per cent As this edition goes to press (May
have any work, so he of the GDP of Ethiopia, and around
cuts wood to sell,
2003), Ethiopia has once again been hit
and we use the
85 per cent of export earnings. Eighty- by a major drought. Fourteen million
money for food.' five per cent of the population earn their people are at risk of serious food
shortages, three times as many as in the
terrible famine of 1984-85.6 Much of the
population is living in a state of constant
vulnerability, and there are signs that
people are unable to cope with the
situation. There are reports of large
numbers of cattle dying in the Amhara
and Somali regions, with up to 15 per
cent of the population suffering from
malnutrition in some areas. People's
apparently endless resilience in coping
with recurrent droughts and hunger is
coming under acute strain: repeated
poor harvests and the high prevalence of
poverty and disease have depleted their
resources to dangerous levels.
The impact of AIDS means that this
state of affairs can only get worse.

66
Experience in Southern Africa shows that uneven patterns of land possession.
ill health among young adults threatens But in north Wollo zone, for instance,
the long-term food supplies of areas of land as small as a quarter of one
communities who were formerly able to hectare were allocated to newly married
keep going and weather the hard times. couples and re-settlers, and this policy
The Ethiopian government has appealed has been criticised for actually
for non-food items, including medical aggravating the fragmentation of land
supplies and water-supply tools, to the holdings, which all too often leads to
tune of US$ 76 million, but the response the degradation of the land in question.
of the international community is as yet In any case, the redistribution of land
inadequate. alone is no solution to the problem of
the lack of land to distribute: in many
Land: still a hot issue farming communities, a growing
Ethiopia has passed through various population is claiming an ever-
types of land-administration systems, decreasing amount of usable land.
linked to three different forms of political In Ethiopia, whose economy is mainly
rule: the monarchy, the socialist era, and based on agriculture, the issue of land
the current federal republic. During the distribution is obviously highly
monarchy, there was a dual system of controversial. The government argues
land tenure. In the north, where the rist that abolishing State ownership and
system was dominant, a member of a adopting the freehold system will lead Northern Wollo:
community would claim a portion of the to large-scale landlessness, because many women watering
shared agricultural land in the village by vegetables In a
of the peasants would probably be forced community garden
proving descent from the village. In the by poverty to sell their land to profiteers, which supports
south, the gult system was predominant, which would lead to their eviction and 18 families
in which land was given by the Emperor
to soldiers and civil servants as a reward
for their services. In 1975, at the start of
the socialist regime, land was proclaimed
to be the property of the State. Farmers
had the right to use the land, but all
private ownership and transactions in
land were outlawed, and the freedom to
hire labour was restricted.
After the collapse of socialism, the
Constitution of 1995 decreed that land
remained in public ownership. Although
land-policy reform has since relaxed
some of the constraints on use, the sale
and purchase of land are still prohibited.
The government's view is that any
significant changes to land policy require
not only the involvement of regional
parliaments, but also a change in the
federal constitution.
To tackle problems created by shortage
of land, redistributions took place in 1991
and 1996-97. The former measure was
intended to address the problems of
settlement-returnees and ex-soldiers,
while the latter was implemented in
Amhara region to reverse allegedly

67
 forced migration to urban areas, where Party, All Amhara People's Organisation,
they would face a very uncertain future the Oromo Liberation United Front, and
of poverty and misery. Critics of the the Oromo National Congress, ran for
government's policy on rural land tenure seats, 85 per cent of the House of People's
believe that the true motive for retaining Representatives and the Federal Council
public ownership is to keep control over remained in the hands of the EPRDF.
the government's constituencies. The In 1995, the Ethiopian federalist
system has been much criticised for structure was installed, with the aim of
giving tenants no security, and devolving power to regional
discouraging the mobility of the rural administrative structures, formed in the
population, so reducing the size of main on the basis of ethnicity and
family holdings and creating further language. The regional governments
environmental degradation. have extensive economic and political
In relation to urban areas, government autonomy, although the federal
policy has been very different. A system government has influencing power on
of leasing land in the cities permits monetary issues, ownership of land,
leaseholders to sub-let or sell the regulation of foreign trade and
property on the land, besides extending investment, and a nation-wide transport
their leases. The government has argued policy.
that the urban land system provides a The principle of basing federal and
marketable system of land holding, regional administrations on ethno-
while retaining the principle of State linguistic factors is a key aspect of the
ownership: in the urban areas, and political philosophy of TPLF, the
particularly in Addis Ababa, land for dominant party in the ruling coalition
investment can be acquired through government. This remains a hotly
auctions, with lease periods ranging debated issue. The opposition groups
from 30 to 99 years. However, many argue that such ethnic federalism is a
commentators argue that investment is potential threat to the Ethiopian national
deterred by the high costs of leasing, identity and the nation's sense of shared
with heavy down-payments required, values. However, others argue that rulers
and by the lengthy bureaucratic of Ethiopia have tried to build a sense of
procedures involved. national identity for centuries, but
without much success: most people have
Political developments remained loyal to their particular ethnic
Since the first edition of this book was group. Hence, they say, the new system
published, Ethiopia has held two reflects reality. Feelings of national
national elections. The first, in 1995, put identity and pride have mostly been
in place a democratically elected limited to occasions when Ethiopia as a
government after four years of rule by a State has had to defend itself. (The recent
transitional administration, composed of war with Eritrea is an obvious example.)
various groupings who had fought to The case in favour of ethnic federalism is
overcome the Derg regime. EPRDF, the that Ethiopia is a country which is rich in
major political alliance, won a landslide ethnic diversity but suffers from unequal
victory. Almost all the opposition parties distribution of power and resources
boycotted the process. EPRDF was between ethnic groups. Power and
accused of intimidation and vote rigging. authority have in the past been
The second election was held in May systematically centralised by successive
2000, and was reported by domestic and regimes, which have favoured one ethnic
international observers to be a fair, group - the Amhara. Devolution of
well-organised, and inclusive process. power through the federal system, it is
Although the major opposition groups, argued, is the sole means of ensuring the
including the Ethiopian Democratic equal distribution of political power.

68
 Another challenge facing the
government is the internal split within
the TPLF. The Front played a crucial role,
if not a leading role, in ending the regime
of the Derg in 1991. It has also played an
influential role in developing the idea of
federalism based on ethnicity and
language, and it has influenced the
implementation of this policy. In short,
TPLF, as a major force in the EPRDF,
provides an ideological direction to the
government of EPRDF. In the past two
years, TPLF has been challenged by
internal divisions. Its leaders split into
two factions over differences in ideology,
the war with Eritrea, and the question of relations, Ethiopia is considered as a Citizens of Ethiopia
corruption within the party and the country of strategic importance in efforts are gradually gaining
the confidence to
government. There was some speculation to combat international terrorism. Hence, express their views.
that this would lead to radical political relations with countries of the West,
change in Ethiopia, because TPLF is at including the USA and the UK, seem to
the centre of Ethiopia's national political be improving, leading to a flow of
dynamic. However, this was not the case. finance into Ethiopia to support
The immediate crisis within the party development activities that focus on
seems to be over, at least for the time good governance and the strengthening
being. Some of the dissidents left of civil society. Many feel, however,
Ethiopia as refugees; others were that such international support for the
detained on charges of corruption; and existing government will ultimately
another small group apologised and entrench the power and unity of the
rejoined the party, giving the TPLF ruling party.
leadership the chance to consolidate their
ideological position in the party. Abraham Woldegiorgis
(Former Community Development Team
Prospects for democracy Leader, working for Oxfam GB in Delanta,
The prospects for democracy in Ethiopia Ethiopia)
are unsure. On the plus side, under the
current administration there has been Notes
progress towards creating a democratic 1. The World Guide 2003/2004
culture, allowing individuals to express 2. Ibid.
their political opinions through the press, 3. 'The Next Wave of HIV/AIDS:
and permitting the political activity of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, India, and
opposition groups. However, the fact China', September 2002, National
remains that there is still a great deal of
Intelligence Council-ICA 2002-04D,
political intolerance and a lack of
www.odci.gov/nic
openness among political groups.
Currently, there is an unresolved 4. Ibid.
argument between the government and 5. 'HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia', A USAID
the independent press over the proposed Brief, July 2002, www.synergyaids.com
press laws, which will regulate the 6. Economic Intelligence Unit Report,
activities of journalists and the December 2002
circulation of information. Many see this
as a signal of political intolerance of
dissent. In terms of international

69
Facts and figures

Population: 66,040,000 (2002);

annual increase: 2.9% (1985-2000)
Cities: Addis Ababa (2.5 million),
Dire Dawa (203,000), Harar (94,000)
Land area: 1,000,000 km2
Life expectancy: 43 years
Infant mortality rate: 117 per 1000
Under-five mortality 174 per 1000
rate:
Access to safe 24%
drinking water:
Literacy: male 44%, female 33%
Primary-school enrolment: male 43%, female 28%
Secondary-school enrolment: male 14%, female 10%
Human Development Index 168 (out of 173) (2002)
ranking:
GNP per capita: $668
Annual growth of economy: 3%
Public expenditure: 29% to defence, 31% to social
services (1999)
Communications: 4 telephone lines per 1000 people
Currency: Birr; 8.4 birr = US$ 1 (March 2002)
External debt: $5481 million ($87 per capita)
Debt service: 17% of exports (1999)
Value of exports: $984 million
Value of imports: $1961 million

(All figures relate to the year 2000, unless otherwise specified. Sources: United Nations
and the World Bank, quoted in The World Guide 2003/2004.)

Giant lobelia growing

near Dessie

70
Further reading

Yeraswork Admassie Twenty Years to Nowhere: Property Rights, Land Management, and
Conservation in Ethiopia (Africa World Press /The Red Sea Press, 2000)
Donald Crummey Land and Society in the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia (James Currey
Publications, 2000)
Wendy James et al. Remapping Ethiopia: Socialism and After (James Currey
Publications, 2002)
Donald N. Levine Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multi-ethnic Society, second
edition (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Harold Marcus A History of Ethiopia (University of California Press, 2002)
Nega Mezlekia Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood (Picador, 2002)
Fasil Nahum Constitution for a Nation of Nations: The Ethiopian Prospect (Red Sea Press,
1997)
Tekeste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll Brothers at War: Making Sense of the
Eritrean-Ethiopian War (Ohio University Press, 2001)
Richard Pankhurst The Ethiopians: A History (Blackwell, 2001)
Wilfred Thesiger The Danakil Diary: Journeys through Abyssinia, 1930-1934 (Flamingo,
1998)
Kjetil Tronvoll Ethiopia: A New Start? (Minority Rights Group International, 2000;
text on-line at www.minorityrights.org.uk)
Bahru Zewde A History of Modern Ethiopia 1855-1991 Qames Currey Publications, 2001)

Battery factory,
Addis Ababa

71
Oxfam GB in Ethiopia

O xfam was one of the first

international humanitarian
agencies to work in Ethiopia. Its first
community-based development work.
Staff now support projects to recover
and improve exhausted farmland; to
grant for development work in Ethiopia conserve water and re-plant forests; and
was made in 1962; an office was opened to help marginalised groups, including
in Addis Ababa in 1974, in the wake of a disabled people and households headed
major famine. Since then, a broad-based by women, to earn an income. They are
programme of rehabilitation and helping to revive, repair, and install
development work has been built up in community water supplies in several
the northern, central, and eastern areas of Ethiopia, and supporting health
highland regions, in lowland peripheral programmes which emphasise the
areas in the east and south-west, and in welfare of mothers and children,
densely populated areas of the south. awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS,
During the 1984/85 famine, Oxfam and the provision of community-based
played a major role in the international family-planning services. Local partners
relief effort, organising food-distribution are supported to develop their capacity
and water-supply projects. When the to respond effectively to emergencies at
civil war ended in 1991, Oxfam's an early stage.
priorities shifted towards longer-term

Oxfam staff mixing,

weighing, and
packing
supplementary food
rations for children,
pregnant women,
lactating mothers,
elderly people, and
disabled people.
The ration is a
mixture of maize
flour, milk powder,
and oil, which the
recipients mix with
water and cook to
make a porridge.

72