Picture of the year

This will be true in 2010.

Ethiopia rejects warning of hunger-- BBC

An Ethiopian minister has denied reports that millions of people need urgent food aid after failed rains.

Disaster Prevention Minister Mikitu Kassa told the BBC that the government was helping those hit by the drought.

He was speaking after the US-funded Famine Early Warning System warned of increased hunger in parts of the country in the coming months.

Ethiopia has been extremely sensitive to images showing its people as starving since the famine of 1984-5.

Mr Mikitu said the report was "not evidence-based".

"It is baseless, it is contrary to the situation on the ground," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Fewsnet Ethiopia warning In pictures: Living with hunger

He admitted that 5.7 million people were currently getting food aid but argued that "in the Ethiopian context, there is no hunger, no famine" and that the situation was not as bad as in recent years.

"The government is taking action to mitigate the problems," he said.

The latest Famine Early Warning System (Fewsnet) projections show parts of the country in the extreme east, north-east and south-west as "extremely food insecure" - one level below that for a famine - in the period January-March 2010.

The worst affected areas are in the Somali, Gambella and Afar regions.

It says high food prices, poor livestock production and low agricultural wages will lead to increased hunger.

Its report comes after the failure of both rainy seasons in 2009.

Aid agency Oxfam recently warned that drought had hit parts of East Africa for the sixth year in a row.

Oxfam said Somalia's drought was the worst for 20 years, and November rainfall was less than 5% of normal in parts of Kenya and Ethiopia.

The UN has already said it is aiming to feed 20 million people in East Africa over the next six months.

Islamist Rebels in Somalia Threaten to Attack Ethiopia

Hezbal Islam an Islamist rebel movement fighting the Somali government vowed on Thursday to carry out attacks inside Ethiopia targeting military bases and government buildings. According to Sheikh Shuriye Afrah Sabriye, the group’s regional governor of Hiiraan region bordering with Ethiopia, Islamist forces are ready for a big war against Ethiopia, saying the attacks inside Ethiopia are imminent in the next few days, “Ethiopia is responsible for attacks on positions belonging to our forces outside the city of Beledweyn and in retaliation we will attack Ethiopian army bases inside Ethiopian territories, we are committed to do that” he said

He said that in the past several weeks there have been attacks on Islamist positions near the border accusing Ethiopian military of helping the Somali government forces who carried out those attacks on Islamist positions in the region. “The enemy is on the way–we will not to wait for them to come and kill us so we are taking the battle field into inside Ethiopia specially the city of Ferfer where the enemies prepare themselves before they attack us” he added. He said that Hezbal Islam leaders are currently engaged in the final discussions to fix the date and how to carry out attacks in Ethiopia. “For the past several days I have been in Mogadishu for consultations with Hezbal Islam’s commanders and we will soon invade on Ethiopia” he stated during Thursday’s press conference in Mogadishu.

Meanwhile he also declared war on the moderate-Islamist controlled cities of Guri El and Dhusmareb in central Somalia, accusing the moderate Islamist group of Ahlu sunna Wal Jama’a of supporting Ethiopia. The central Galgadud region is currently controlled by the Moderate Islamists with ties to Somali government but was a base for the slain Al-qaeda Boss in Somalia Aden Hashi Ayrow, who was killed in a US air strike on May 1st last year.

Ethiopian Farms Lure Investor Funds as Workers Live in Poverty

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.

Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, anarea larger than Luxembourg.

The jobs pay less than the World Bank’s $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.

“My business is the third wave of outsourcing,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company’s dusty office in the western town of Gambella. “Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food.”

Companies and governments are buying or leasing African land after cereals prices almost tripled in the three years ended April 2008. Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Ethiopia alone have approved 1.4 million hectares of land allocations to foreign investors since 2004, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

Emergent Asset Management Ltd.’s African Agricultural Land Fund opened last year. On Nov. 23, Moscow-based Pharos Financial Advisors Ltd. and Dubai-based Miro Asset Management Ltd. announced the creation of a $350 million private equity fund to invest in agriculture in developing countries.

‘Last Frontier’

“African agricultural land is cheap relative to similar land elsewhere; it is probably the last frontier,” said Paul Christie, marketing director at Emergent Asset Management in London. The hedge fund manager has farm holdings in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

“I am amazed it has taken this long for people to realize the opportunities of investing in African agriculture,” Christie said.

Monsoon Capital of Bethesda, Maryland, and Boston-based Sandstone Capital are among the shareholders of Karuturi Global, Karuturi said. The company is also the world’s largest producer of roses, with flower farms in India, Kenya and Ethiopia.

One advantage to starting a plantation 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the border with war-torn Southern Sudan and a four- day drive to the nearest port: The land is free. Under the agreement with Ethiopia’s government, Karuturi pays no rent for the land for the first six years. After that, it will pay 15 birr (U.S. $1.18) per hectare per year for the next 84 years.

More Elsewhere

Land of similar quality in Malaysia and Indonesia would cost about $350 per hectare per year, and tracts of that size aren’t available in Karuturi Global’s native India, Karuturi said.

Labor costs of less than $50 a month per worker and duty- free treaties with China and India also attracted Karuturi Global, he said. The $100 million projected annual profit will come from the export of food crops, including corn, rice and palm oil, he said. The company also is plowing land on a 10,900- hectare spread near the central Ethiopian town of Bako.

The project will give the government revenue from corporate income taxes and from future leases, as well as from job creation, said Omod Obang Olom, president of Ethiopia’s Gambella region and an ally of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s ruling party.

“This strategy will build up capitalism,” he said in an interview in Gambella. “The message I want to convey is there is room for any investor. We have very fertile land, there is good labor here, we can support them.” The government plans to allot 3 million hectares, or about 4 percent of its arable land, to foreign investors over the next three years.

Surprised Workers

Workers in Elliah say they weren’t consulted on the deal to lease land around the village, and that not much of the money is trickling down.

At a Karuturi site 20 kilometers from Elliah, more than a dozen tractors clear newly burned savannah for a corn crop to be planted in June. Omeud Obank, 50, guards the site 24 hours a day, six days a week. The job helps support his family of 10 on a salary of 600 birr per month, more than the 450 birr he earned monthly as a soldier in the Ethiopian army.

Obank said it isn’t enough to adequately feed and clothe his family.

“These Indians do not have any humanity,” he said, speaking of his employers. “Just because we are poor it doesn’t make us less human.”

One Meal

Obang Moe, a 13-year-old who earns 10 birr per day working part-time in a nursery with 105,000 palm seedlings, calls her work “a tough job.” While the cash income supplements her family’s income from their corn plot, she said that many days they still only have enough food for one meal.

The fact that the project is based on a wage level below the World Bank’s poverty limit is “quite remarkable,” said Lorenzo Cotula, a researcher with the London-based IIED.

Large-scale export-oriented plantations may keep farmers from accessing productive resources in countries such as Ethiopia, where 13.7 million people depend on foreign food aid, according to a June report by Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food. It called for ensuring that revenue from land contracts be “sufficient to procure food in volumes equivalent to those which are produced for exports.”

Karuturi said his company pays its workers at least Ethiopia’s minimum wage of 8 birr, and abides by Ethiopia’s labor and environmental laws.

‘Easily Exploitable’

“We have to be very, very cognizant of the fact that we are dealing with people who are easily exploitable,” he said, adding that the company will create up to 20,000 jobs and has plans to build a hospital, a cinema, a school and a day-care center in the settlement. “We’re going to have a very healthy township that we will build. We are creating jobs where there were none.” The project may help cover part of the $44 billion a year that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says must be invested in agriculture in poor nations to halve the number of the world’s hungry people by 2015.

“We keep saying the big problem is, you need investment in African agriculture; well here are a load of guys who for whatever reason want to invest,” David Hallam, deputy director of the FAO’s trade and markets division, said in an interview in Rome. “So the question is, is it possible to sort of steer it toward forms of investment that are going to be beneficial?”

Buntin Buli, a 21-year-old supervisor at the nursery who earns 600 birr a month, said he hopes Karuturi will use some of its earnings to improve working conditions and provide housing and food. “Otherwise we would have been better off working on our own lands,” he said. “This is a society that has been very primitive. We want development.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via the Johannesburg bureau at abolleurs@bloomberg.net.

Sudan and Meles Sign agreemnets; vow for the 2010 election

The Issue EPPF included in the discussion

Ethiopia and Sudan will fight against Eritrea's attempts to arm insurgents to destabilize the two East African nations heading for elections in 2010 around their common borders, a senior Ethiopian security official said on Wednesday.

Ethiopia's top spymaster, Getachew Assefa, the Director-General of the National Intelligence and Security Services, said the border security was of utmost importance for the two countries as they prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010.

He said the elections in the two countries provided a 'golden opportunity' to the Eritrean government to stage attacks against Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian diplomats and security experts have been holding talks with their Sudanese counterparts in Mekelle town, some 900 kms north of capital Addis Ababa, on matters of mutual interest, covering border security and political stability.

The 12th session of the Ethiopian-Sudanese Development and Boundary Commission resolved to step up border security, warning that the next-door neighbour, Eritrea, was likely to use the border areas to cause political tensions in the two countries.

Sudan and Ethiopia, which have been holding the Joint Commission meeting in the region near Eritrea since 28 December, said the fight against terrorism would top their agenda as the two states head towards elections in 2010.

Sudan's electoral process is underway with Presidential nominations expected to take place on 22 January, while Ethiopia's parliamentary polls are due to be held on 23 May, 2010, in which the party with the majority seats in parliament forms the government.

Eritrea has been put under strict UN Security Council sanctions for allegedly supplying arms to insurgents battling to overthrow the western-backed Somali interim government and for its military aggression against neighbouring Djibouti.

Assefa warned that the Eritrean government was preparing to use the Sudanese territory as a base to arm insurgents and launch terrorist attacks against Ethiopia, according to state media reports, which quoted the Ethiopian official, urging joint security operations.

Sudan's Presidential Advisor General Salah Abdella said the two states were working together to scatter any terrorist attempts in the region.

Abdella said the two states would work closely in monitoring the border and fighting terrorism.

Eritrea has denied the accusations levelled against it by the Ethiopian government, saying the UN sanctions were based on falsified reports.

Debrebirhan's source's also stated that the two have agreed to capture and pass freedom fighters like Ethiopian People's Patriotic Front and others rebels to eachother.

America Awaits Teddy

Teddy Afro, Ethiopia’s biggest pop star, will kick off his 2010 American tour Saturday night at the D.C. Armory. Afro, bornTewodros Kassahun, is known asEthiopia’s Bob Marley, thanks to his occasionally sociopolitical lyrics and his frequent use of roots-reggae rhythms. Heralded throughout the Ethiopian diaspora since 2001, Afro is little-known in the Anglo music world—he is not even mentioned atallmusic.com—but he has received some media attention here in articles discussing his attitude toward his country’s government, as well as his recent jail time.

Afro’s profile at home grew when the Ethiopian government banned several of his songs as part of a 2005 postelection crackdown. Then, after a controversial indictment and trial, Afro began serving a jail sentence in 2008 for a 2006 incident in which he allegedly hit and killed a homeless boy with his BMW and fled from the scene. Afro maintained that he was innocent and that the governmenttrumped up the charges because of his political criticisms. He spent 16 months in jail. A judge had originally sentenced him to six years but an appeals court ruling and time off for good behavior reduced his jail time.

However, don’t expect Afro to cross over to Anglo audiences based on that rebel-poet image, at least immediately. He sings in Amharicand his music often has the very smooth, loungelike feel of quiet-storm R&B. While many of us may just hear polished crooning, the Ethiopian community will hear his messages—his pleas for peace in his homeland, his pronouncements of love, and his ode to Haile Gebrselassie, an Ethiopian gold medal-winning long-distance runner.

TEDDY AFRO PERFORMS SATURDAY AT 7 P.M. AT THE D.C. ARMORY, 2001 E. Capitol St. SE. (202) 547-9077. $50-$100.

Former Nigerian President among Ethiopia's land grabbers

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo,

secured 2,000 square meters of land in Ethiopia to join hotel and tourism business.

He has now secured 2,000 square meters of land near Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) town of Oromia Region called Ada. The former Nigerian President has taken the land two months a go and he is now about to implement his investment on the land located 50 Kilometers east of the capital -Addis Ababa.

Obansanjo’s intention to invest in Bishoftu has come following the footsteps of Djibouti’s president, Ismael Omar Guelleh, who took 10,000 square meters of land last year to build holiday home in Bishoftu and also bought 3,000 square meters of land for agriculture in Bale, Oromia Region of the country.

After Bishoftu town’s administration approved anew master plan last year, many investors are now investing in the town, which is known for its eight unique lakes.

Following that from 8 to 10 October, 2006 President Olusegun Obasanjo paid a three day state visit to Ethiopia, Visited flower farms in Bishoftu area.

Nigeria, through its technical cooperation, has been sending teachers to Ethiopia to make their contributions in higher learning institutions. “Ethiopia has become the largest recipient of Nigerian volunteers, in the area of Technical Aid Corps (TAC),” stated the information obtained from the official website of Ethiopia’s Ministry of foreign Affairs.

Petronas's risky involvment in Ogaden continues

Currently, the company’s experts are analyzing the results obtained from the well and it would take a few months to announce the result, according to a source at the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

The company has been searching for oil in different parts of Ethiopia for several years. It was in July 2005 that Petronas acquired three blocks in the Ogaden basin-Genale block 24,420 square kilometers, Kallafo 30,612 square kilometers and Welwel-Warder 36,796 square kilometers.

In 2007, including nine Chinese workers 74 people were killed in a volatile Ogaden region of Ethiopia. As a result, the Chinese Zhoungyan Petroleum Exploration Bureau suspended its seismic tests for Ethiopian-owned South West Energy in Ogaden.

In 2004 Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB), a Chinese company was contracted by Petronas to do seismic survey and drill exploration wells in the Gambella block owned by Petronas.

In 2005 ZPEB drilled the first wild cat well in Jikaw locality, only 175 km from the Ethio-Sudan border. The company drilled the second well in Jakaranda locality in 2006. Both wells were dry. Petronas spent 32 million dollars for the drillings and testing. ZPEB withdrew from Gambella after it finalized its work in 2006.

However, the same year, Petronas hired ZPEB to conduct seismic survey in the Ogaden basin. In July 2005, Petronas acquired three blocks in the Ogaden basin - Genale block (24,420 Sq km, Kallafo 30,612 sq.km and Welwel-Warder 36,796 sq.km). In 2006, ZPEB started collecting seismic data in the three blocks.

In October 2006 South West Energy hired ZPEB to do seismic survey in the Ogaden basin. In December 2005, South West Energy, a company owned by an Ethiopian businessman, acquired a Degehabur block covering 21,187 sq. km of land.

In January 2007, ZPEB commenced collecting seismic data in the Degehabur block. On 24 Apil 2007 the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked the Abole exploration site in the Degehabur zone of the Somali Regional State.

Seventy-four civilians, including nine Chinese, were killed in the attack. Seven Chinese workers were abducted by ONLF fighters. However, they were released after two weeks. Following the attack in May 2007, ZPEB evacuated all its employees working in Ethiopia.

Although the Ethiopian government tried hard to convince officials of ZPEB and SINOPEC to resume operations the companies declined to send their technicians back to Ogaden. ZPEB had terminated all the projects in Ethiopia at the time.

Three die in a week in Ethiopia due to AWD

Allover the country, only three deaths and 487 cases were reported within one week (between December 7 and 13, 2009).

Meanwhile, in Mid-October 2009, when thousands of people were infected by AWD outbreak, three hospitals were dedicated in the capital Addis Ababa to patients suffering from the disease. At early September it was reported that some 27 died in 31 districts outside Addis Ababa.

From August 2009 to 30 September 2009 the number of reported AWD cases was about 13,652.

The use of contaminated water is the major cause for the spread of AWD in Ethiopia. Seven children die of diarrhoea every minute globally, according to the World health Organization (WHO) data. This is mainly due to poor quality drinking water and malnutrition, which still affects the majority of the world population.

Frequent hand-washing, avoiding raw food and ensuring that drinking water is boiled, filtered and cooled before consumption are among the precautionary measures advised in order to avoid being caught by AWD.

The currently affected areas in Ethiopia includes: Arsi, West Arsi, Bale, West Hararghe and Jimma from Oromia Region and Wolayita, South Omo, Gedio and Silti from Southern Region, stated the weekly Humanitarian Bulletin released November 21, 2009. Two cases of AWD were also reported in Addis Ababa, both from pilgrims who had traveled back from Bale of Oromia Region.

Currently, the Oromia Regional Health Bureau (RHB) and partners have developed an AWD response plan, focusing on major response areas including coordination, case management, surveillance, hygiene and sanitation promotion and communication.

“WHO continues to provide technical support to the regions to strengthen surveillance, the early warning system, assessment of AWD response and outbreak investigation, and is providing on-the-job trainings for health workers to improve the quality of AWD case management. A total of 35 health workers in SNNPR were trained on case management and surveillance,” the weekly bulletin stated.

As of 28 September 2006, The Ministry of Health, Ethiopia has reported a total of 22 101 cases and 219 deaths. The major symptoms of AWD are dehydration, fever, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting and stomach pains.