Monday, July 18, 2016
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Never be satisfied with mediocrity, Kagame tells Ethiopian students
Rwanda: "Never be satisfied with mediocrity, Kagame tells Ethiopian students
By: JAMES KARUHANGA
PUBLISHED: July 03, 2016 News Print Email
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L-R: Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Tedros Adhanom, First Lady Jeannette Kagame, H.E President of the Republic of Ethiopia, President Paul Kagame, Dr Mulatu Teshome, Ato Gadu Andargachew, President of the Amhara Region State, Dr Baylie Damite, President of Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia yesterday. (Photograph: Sisay Argwa)
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President Paul Kagame yesterday told students of Bahir Dar University, in Ethiopia, to use their voice to stand up for what is right.
The President said this after the Ethiopian university conferred to him an honorary Doctor of Laws in recognition of his role in stopping the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, championing the empowerment of women and ensuring Rwanda’s sustainable development. The President was accompanied by the First Lady Jeannette Kagame.
“You have as much stake in this world of ours as anyone. Take your seat, Africa’s seat at the high table. In every situation strive to bring people together never to divide them. We benefit from our diverse ideas and identity,” Kagame said.
Whether as a nation, continent or the world, he added, there is always a way to build a common purpose and “we should strive” for this.
“Thank you for this great honor bestowed upon me and my people, this speaks a lot to how much we can do as brothers and sisters. We will continue to work together ever more closely with the people of this great nation of the Republic of Ethiopia.
These are among the African and universal values that you youth inherit and you should be proud.”
The President thanked Bahir Dar University for awarding him with a honorary degree which pays tribute not just to him but also the Rwandan people.
“This recognition is a great honor to the struggle of the Rwandan people for liberation and prosperity.”
“You got it right by emphasizing the huge role Rwandan women have played in Rwanda’s rebirth. Thank you for that. Our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia have been with us, all the way, which we will always appreciate and reciprocate. I am honoured to stand together with you today and to be associated with this university and the great nation of Ethiopia.”
“To the new graduates. Like your parents, I came of age in a different Africa with complicated circumstances. Injustice and bad politics prevented many of us from attending university. Even the right to live, was not always assured. We had no choice but to struggle and fight to secure the dignity and opportunity we now enjoy and deserve.”
Kagame then urged the graduates to build on “this foundation” and do even more and better for the continent’s future.
“We must therefore never take for granted how far we have come and the sacrifice required to get to where we are today. Neither can we be satisfied with mediocrity or praise for small ambitions. We live in a better Africa than ever before.”
He told them that it is not enough to have a degree or to be young. More important, he said, is the mindset of ownership, responsibility and curiosity. The biggest part of any problem, President Kagame added, is accepting it as normal.
President Mulatu Teshome and Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Tedros Adhanom, including Chief Administrator of Amhara Regional State, Gedu Andargachew, attended the event.
President Teshome said: “It is an honor for us to have President Kagame grace this graduation. A continued testament of our close relations.”
“On behalf of the Government, I would like to thank the University for presenting this degree to President Kagame. Congratulations President Kagame on receiving this honorary Doctor of Laws. May our two countries continue to prosper.”
Bahir Dar University located in the city of Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara National Regional State in Ethiopia, graduated 8, 321 students trained in first, second and doctorate degree programs.
editorial@newtimes.co.rw"
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Saturday, July 2, 2016
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Ethiopia gets non-permanent UN Security Council seat
Ethiopia is to be a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for two years. The country may spread peace while on blue helmet missions abroad, but critics complain that political space at home is contracting.
The vote at the UN General Assembly electing Ethiopia as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council turned out to be largely a formality because Ethiopia ran unopposed in its regional grouping. Africa heads of state and government had agreed on Ethiopia as a joint candidate at their summit in January, when Kenya and the Seychelles withdrew from the contest.
Ethiopia may have run unopposed but it still had to pick up two thirds of the votes cast in the 193-nation assembly. It was backed by numerous African states, including Rwanda whose candidacy Ehtiopia backed in 2013/2014, and by Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Viera said Ethiopia "with its extensive experience in regional, African and global peacekeeping missions" could make "an immense contribution" to the UN Security Council.
Regional gendarme
Ethiopia's participation and experience in peacekeeping in Africa was a trump card in its bid for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. Its contingent of 8,000 troops - men and women - on peacekeeping duties is the largest in the world. (The official promotional literature says Ethiopia has the biggest number of female peacekeepers worldwide.)
As a founding member and host country of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the African Union (AU), Ethiopia is a major pillar in the continent's peace and security architecture. Africa's second most populous state also chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), mediating in conflicts on the Horn of Africa, most recently during the strenuous negotiations between the warring parties in South Sudan.
Ethiopia has been criticized for ignoring the Ethiopia Eritrea Boundary Commission ruling that defines their common border
Ethiopia and Liberia signed the UN Charter as founding members in 1945. Ethiopia has represented Africa at the Security Council twice in the past, the last time in 1989/90. It contributed troops to the UN in Korea in the 1950s and 60s (when 121 Ethiopian soldiers lost their lives over three years) and in the Congo. Ethiopia pursed its candidacy for 2017/18 with some vigor, it would have been disappointed if it had ended in failure.
Crackdown on dissent
Critics of Ethiopia says its participation in blue helmet missions in Liberia, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and other conflict zones is considerably more successful than its efforts to create democracy and stability at home. The country, with a population of some 90 million, is run by an authoritarian regime. Journalists, human rights campaigners and opposition activists complain that the political space is contracting and that anti-terror legislation is being used to crack down on dissent.
The Ethiopian foreign ministry says it wishes to use its non-permanent seat on the Security Council to "promote peace and security through dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution." This prompts the question why Ethiopia has been so belligerent in its recent border clashes and verbal exchanges with its neighbor Eritrea.
In the promotional literature for its candidacy, Ethiopia said it "wanted to expand the role of regional security deals." So why then does Ethiopia ignore the ruling of the Boundary Commission defining its border with Eritrea?
Chatting with DW on Facebook on Tuesday, a number of Ethiopians spoke of the changes they hoped the Security Council seat would bring. "Perhaps there will be change within the country," said Kibrom Tadesse. Nesta Worku is more pessismistic. "Which African country protects human rights or democracy? The UN Security Council can't do anything about the African heads of state - they repress human rights."
Ethiopian troops standing guard before a display of weapons left behind by al Shabab militants in Somalia
In his historic speech to the UN General Assembly in 1963, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie said that "the Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man" only to add that "these, too, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning."
More than 50 years later, Ethiopia is no longer an empire but one of Africa's "lion states." As such, it will be expected to demonstrate that "African solutions for African problems" really is a promise that can be kept, especially in the field of peace and security policy. There is one particular project which Ehtiopia is expected to nudge forward - the African Peace and Security Architecture - the main plank of which is a rapid reaction force based in Addis Ababa.
Friday, May 27, 2016
Monday, May 2, 2016
The 75th anniversary of Liberation Day in Ethiopia
May 5 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of a signal day in modern African history. On that day, British forces brought back into power Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, who had been driven out of his country by the forces of Fascist Italy almost exactly five years earlier. The oldest independent nation in Africa, indeed, one of the oldest nations on earth, was restored.
The Fascists were bad. The use of poison gas by air was particularly reprehensible, but the history surrounding the Second Italo-Ethiopian War defies the standard understanding of bad European colonial power and noble indigenous African nation which we have been taught. The lessons of that war are useful in understanding our world today.
Ethiopia, like most large nations in the Old World, was an empire with ruling peoples and subject peoples – just like Iran or Iraq or Turkey or Pakistan or China or many other trouble spots in our world. Haile Selassie was an enlightened despot but he was a despot who ruled without the consent of his subjects, just like Mussolini.
The Fascists were bad. The use of poison gas by air was particularly reprehensible, but the history surrounding the Second Italo-Ethiopian War defies the standard understanding of bad European colonial power and noble indigenous African nation which we have been taught. The lessons of that war are useful in understanding our world today.
Ethiopia, like most large nations in the Old World, was an empire with ruling peoples and subject peoples – just like Iran or Iraq or Turkey or Pakistan or China or many other trouble spots in our world. Haile Selassie was an enlightened despot but he was a despot who ruled without the consent of his subjects, just like Mussolini.
What of the Fascist leader in this war? Mussolini was a cynical politician and his motives need not be trusted but the arguments he made for war – arguments which have all disappeared down the memory hole – which were not bad arguments.
Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”
Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.
Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.
Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)
Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.
Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.
Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”
Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.
Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.
Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)
Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.
Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.
May 5 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of a signal day in modern African history. On that day, British forces brought back into power Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, who had been driven out of his country by the forces of Fascist Italy almost exactly five years earlier. The oldest independent nation in Africa, indeed, one of the oldest nations on earth, was restored.
The Fascists were bad. The use of poison gas by air was particularly reprehensible, but the history surrounding the Second Italo-Ethiopian War defies the standard understanding of bad European colonial power and noble indigenous African nation which we have been taught. The lessons of that war are useful in understanding our world today.
Ethiopia, like most large nations in the Old World, was an empire with ruling peoples and subject peoples – just like Iran or Iraq or Turkey or Pakistan or China or many other trouble spots in our world. Haile Selassie was an enlightened despot but he was a despot who ruled without the consent of his subjects, just like Mussolini.
What of the Fascist leader in this war? Mussolini was a cynical politician and his motives need not be trusted but the arguments he made for war – arguments which have all disappeared down the memory hole – which were not bad arguments.
Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”
Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.
Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.
Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)
Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.
Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.
The Fascists were bad. The use of poison gas by air was particularly reprehensible, but the history surrounding the Second Italo-Ethiopian War defies the standard understanding of bad European colonial power and noble indigenous African nation which we have been taught. The lessons of that war are useful in understanding our world today.
Ethiopia, like most large nations in the Old World, was an empire with ruling peoples and subject peoples – just like Iran or Iraq or Turkey or Pakistan or China or many other trouble spots in our world. Haile Selassie was an enlightened despot but he was a despot who ruled without the consent of his subjects, just like Mussolini.
What of the Fascist leader in this war? Mussolini was a cynical politician and his motives need not be trusted but the arguments he made for war – arguments which have all disappeared down the memory hole – which were not bad arguments.
Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”
Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.
Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.
Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)
Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.
Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/the_75th_anniversary_of_liberation_day_in_ethiopia.html#ixzz47VSAxtHc
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Thursday, April 7, 2016
Tiny Djibouti thinks big with China-backed infrastructure splurge | Daily Mail Online
The tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, which votes Friday in presidential elections, is hitching its wagon to the star of neighbouring Ethiopia with a series of cross-border projects funded mainly by China, the new power-broker in the region.
Djibouti's President Ismael Omar Guelleh, in power since 1999, is seeking a fourth term as head of the former French colony that sits at the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
The vote, which the opposition has already branded a sham, will test support for a series of infrastructure projects that aim to increase the already outsized influence of the country of around 800,000 people, home to America's biggest -- and only permanent -- military base in Africa.
Djibouti's President Ismael Omar Guelleh, in power since 1999, is seeking a fourth term as head of the former French colony that sits at the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)
Djibouti has been in the lucrative position of offering landlocked Ethiopia its only access to the sea since Ethiopia went to war with Eritrea next door in 1998.
During the two-year conflict, Addis Ababa relied on Djibouti's main port to import weapons.
Since then Ethiopia's economy has grown exponentially, and with it the tide of imports flowing through Djibouti to the country of 97 million people, which accounts for 86 percent of all goods transiting through Djiboutian ports.
Not content to rely on passing trade and playing host to the military bases of several world powers, Djibouti is now looking to play a bigger role in east Africa, in tandem with fast-growing Ethiopia.
"Even if the country has a very good strategic location, small economies like ours need to be integrated into regional development efforts," Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf told AFP.
- A 'model' for east Africa -
In 2011, Djibouti was hooked up to Ethiopia's electricity grid. Two further interconnectors are planned, one of which could transport Ethiopian power across the Red Sea to Yemen.
A 752-kilometre railway line linking the city of Djibouti to Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa is scheduled to open soon, with another line for exporting potassium from the northern Ethiopian city of Mekele through the Djiboutian port of Tadjourah set to soon follow.
In the past year the neighbours have also announced two major energy projects.
A multi-billion-dollar pipeline will transport natural gas from Ethiopia to a liquefaction plant and export terminal at Damerjog in Djibouti, while in the other direction, a planned 550-kilometre pipeline will carry diesel, gasoline and jet fuel from Djibouti's ports to central Ethiopia.
Completing the list of cross-border projects is a water pipeline to channel drinking water from Ethiopia to Djibouti, which like Ethiopia is prone to droughts.
"Our relationship is gaining momentum", said Tewolde Mulugeta, spokesman for the Ethiopian foreign ministry, who sees the deepening ties between the two countries as "a model" for the region.
It is a view shared in Djibouti.
"The main thing is that the development benefits not only the two countries but also other countries in the region," Energy Minister Ali Yacoub Mahamoud told AFP.
"That is why we must combine our resources, our efforts and our ideas".
- Chinese money -
The two countries see themselves as the engine of closer cooperation within the regional IGAD grouping, which also includes Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.
Ethiopia and Djibouti's special relationship has been welcomed by China, a major investor in the region.
Most of Djibouti's 14 major infrastructure projects, which have been valued at a total 14.4 billion dollars, are being funded by Chinese banks, including the railway line that will halve transit times from Djibouti to Addis Ababa.
"These are very big investments," Djibouti's foreign minister said, explaining that China was "the only partner that accompanied us along this path."
China is also funding the pipeline that will transport natural gas to the port in Djibouti for export to the Asian powerhouse, and recently signed an accord with the Red Sea state on the construction of a free trade zone around 50 kilometres from Djibouti city.
Economists warn that Djibouti is becoming too reliant on Chinese credit. The country's public debt burden is forecast to rise from 60 per cent in 2015 to around 80 percent in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund.
"It's a dilemma," admits Youssouf, the foreign minister. "The more indebted we are, the more we depend on our creditor. But what alternative is there? Countries can only develop if they have infrastructure."
Not content to rely on passing port trade and playing host to the military bases of several world powers, Djibouti is now looking to play a bigger role in east Africa, in tandem with fast-growing Ethiopia ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)
Workers seal packages in the port of Djibouti, which is in the lucrative position of offering landlocked Ethiopia its only access to the sea ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Ethiopia welcomes the Queen: archive, 2 February 1965 | World news | The Guardian
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip with Emperor Haile Selassie I, 1965. Photograph: Keystone/Hulton/Getty Images
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came here tonight to a leonine welcome at the start of a week’s state visit to Ethiopia.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came here tonight to a leonine welcome at the start of a week’s state visit to Ethiopia.
Waiting for her at the airport was the Emperor of Ethiopia in field-marshal’s uniform and a lion’s mane helmet. As she drove the two miles to the Jubilee Palace she passed two huge gilded aluminium lions erected in her honour.
Halfway on the journey they changed from a car to a state coach drawn by six white horses. Surrounded by a 100 horsemen of the imperial bodyguard, jogging under heavy lion’s mane helmets, it took more than an hour to drive the two miles through crowd clapping a rhythmic welcome and drums thumping. Horsemen cantered among the crowd with even longer lions’ manes stuck to their hair.
State banquetLater the Queen was guest of honour at a state banquet in the old palace, where in the gardens the Emperor keeps his pet lions. By then she could be in no doubt that she had come to the land of the Lion of Judah, King of Kings.
The welcome, all the same, was gay and unforced. The traffic jams began two hours before her plane arrived, and it was noticeable how pedestrians who had armed themselves with spears made the best progress.
Her palace looks out upon the handsome African Hall where many times in the past 18 months African leaders have met to denounce the colonial Powers and to plan the liberation of Southern Africa. But a banner strung across the road proclaims “Long live the friendship between Great Britain and Ethiopia.” And behind her palace are roads named after three British generals - Wavell, Wingate, and Cunningham - who helped to liberate Ethiopia from the Italians.
Tonight, Britain was in Ethiopian eyes the great country and a liberator rather than a colonialist. Many of the soldiers at the airport wore the British Africa Star.
The state visit is being made in return for one paid to London by the Emperor when Sir Winston Churchill was Prime Minister ten years ago. Britain was also host to the Emperor and his family while he fretted out four years of exile in a country house near Bath.
Ancient gloriesFor a week, Ethiopia is prepared to be unashamedly imperial. Today’s Issue of the “Ethiopian Gazette” carefully notes that the six white horses drawing the state coach were bred from the stable of the Emperor Maximilian, famous 300 years ago.
During the week the accent will be mainly on the country’s ancient glories, with a night spent camping above the old capital of Gondar. But the Queen is also to see new glories, such as the huge Tendaho cotton estates, one of the few pieces of British enterprise in Ethiopia. It is the successful vision of Mitchell Cotts, and that company’s 10,000 British shareholders.
The Queen’s arrival has inspired the capital’s only daily newspaper to inaugurate a women’s page, and in this the Queen is praised as a monarch who has shown interest in industry and patronised the arts. There is little doubt that the Queen, who added to today’s brightness by wearing a buttercup yellow coat and petal hat, will wipe out the somewhat frosty memory most Ethiopians have of the British monarchy.
No one in public speeches is likely to mention the unhappy events of a century ago, when the Emperor Theodore felt himself slighted in correspondence with Queen Victoria, and the incident ended with a British punitive expedition and the Emperor dying after battle. Today’s horsemen looked as if they had galloped out of the last century, but their welcome belonged to this happier age.
The Queen has invested Emperor Haile Selassie with the honorary rank of field-marshal in the British Army. The only other monarch in the world to hold this British rank is the King of Nepal.
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