By De Birhan Media
08-10-2011
New
African is an authoritative African Magazine published by IC publications. IC
publications has been publishing magazines, newsletters, country supplements,
industry reports, and market intelligence on Africa and the Middle East since
1966.
The print copy of the New
African November 2011 issue has interviews with the Eritrean President, Isayas
Afeworki (Page 28 to 32) and Dr. Eleni Gebremedhin CEO of the Ethiopian
Commodity Exchange. I will quote some relevantly interesting statements from the
interviews.
First on Isayas’
Interview:
The Magazine begins by
reporting Eritrea’s ballistic economic growth,
Eritrea
is very much command economy where things are planned with military precision .
And in contrast to its neighbours, its agricultural model has led to self sufficiency,
and its economy is set to grow quite rapidly with the added bonus new mining
ventures which should make Eritrea the fastest developing economy in the world
this year,with a growth rate of 17%.
On aid he said,
Aid was fashionable at one point in time, but with but with experience
we see that in fact, aid has been disabling for Africa.
He also recalls that the
World Bank told him that they would write the country programme for him in
1994, when his nation was a nascent independent nation. He said after a controversial
debate with the reps of WB, he decided that they have to write their own
country programme themselves.
Explaining on how his
nation was able to survive the current regional drought, he said,
It is because of dams, small, medium, big dams. It is the result
of spate irrigation, where you divert streams of water flowing from one area to
another.
He blames
the governments of the Horn for the recent food problems in the Horn and advises
self-reliance as the best solution out of it.
I think it is irresponsible
governments, corrupt governments, who misuse external aid and support and don’t
have even an idea on how to tackle this problem on their own.
Asked
about the model of growth he would endorse, either American or Chinese; he opted
neither and said that the basics such as the economy, development, distribution
and citizenship have to be decided first. In an interview, which Isayas faced
few challenging questions, one final statement he made was about liberation
movements and corruption.
People talk about liberation movements but my question is, if
you have been a liberation fighter, why do you pickpocket, why do you take
money from the population? You don’t have a carte blanche to rob the population
of their resources simply because you fought for liberation.
With Dr. Eleni,(Page
34)
In an advertorial type of
Wh interview, Dr. Eleni of the ECX speaks of the rationale, challenges, services
of ECX and her roles. The following is an interesting quote that she said when
asked about the challenges they faced at ECX once they were founded.
…
I will give you an example; we had designed our system around the whole electronic
warehouse system. So when a commodity arrives at our warehouses, one of the
first things a clerk asks for is the license plate number of the vehicle so we
can go and sample that vehicle and take the commodity off the truck. In one instance,
the person who brought in a consignment of coffee and told our clerk that there
was no license plate number,without which the electronic system cannot proceed.
The clerk asked, “Why don’t you have a license plate number?” The answer: “because
I brought it on a donkey”. So here, we are trying to implement a global IT
trading system and we are right back down to earth with a donkey. So, this
quite clearly illustrates some of the challenges we faced.
New African also has a special feature on Frantz Fanon entitled “What
Frantz Fanon meant to African liberation” and a piece on aid that mentions
Ethiopia in few lines by Akua Djanie. If you buy the magazine €4.50 you will
also read about this important Ugandan lady; Elizabeth Bagaya of Toro.
