Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 23:03:46 +0200
New York Times says Ethiopia is in flames in face of unrest
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ESAT DC Morning News Wed 19 Oct 2016
ESAT News (October 19(2), 2016)
The New York Times says that Ethiopia is in flames and cast doubt on its ability to sustain economic growth in the face of turmoil.
“Ethiopia is now in flames. Hundreds have been killed during protests that have convulsed the country,” the paper said on Tuesday in an article “ ‘Africa Rising’? ‘Africa Reeling’ May Be More Fitting Now.
“No place exposes the cracks in the ‘Africa rising’ narrative better than Ethiopia, which had been one of the fastest risers,” the New York Times said in an article on Tuesday.
The paper recalled the government, whose stranglehold on the country is so complete that not a single opposition politician sits in the 547-seat Parliament, recently took the drastic step of imposing a state of emergency.
Many of the Ethiopia’s new engines of growth — sugar factories, textile mills, foreign-owned flower farms — now lie in ashes, burned down in an anti government rage, it said.
At the same time, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, an arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, just listed Ethiopia as the fastest growing economy on the continent from 2010 to 2015. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which is also rapidly sliding toward chaos — again, was second.
“Political turmoil on the one hand, rosy economic prospects on the other. Can both be true?”
“It comes down to how sustained the turmoil is,” said Acha Leke, a senior partner at McKinsey.
In Ethiopia’s case, the unrest appears to be just beginning. Videos show demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians chanting antigovernment slogans, giving a sense of the depth of discontent. The protesters hail from Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups, a population of more than 60 million, leading many analysts to predict that this is no passing fad.
As Mr. Leke said, “You can’t eat growth.”
Mr. Chelwa, the Zambian economist, has a different view. The fundamentals of African economies have not changed nearly as much as the “Africa rising” narrative implied, he said, with Africa still relying too heavily on the export of raw materials and not enough on industry.
“In Zambia, we import pencils,” he said.
He also points out that some of the fastest-growing economies, like Ethiopia, Angola and Rwanda, are among the most repressive. These governments can move ahead with big infrastructure projects that help drive growth, but at the same time, they leave out many people, creating dangerous resentments.
In Ethiopia, that resentment seems to be growing by the day.
The trouble started last year when members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, began protesting government land policies. Soon Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group, the Amhara, joined in, and the protests have now hardened into calls to overthrow the government, which is led by a small ethnic minority.
If you track the news coming out of Ethiopia, you would not be a fool to think it is two totally different countries. One day, there is a triumphant picture of a new electric train, with Chinese conductors standing next to shiny carriages. (China remains a huge investor in Ethiopia.) The next, there are grisly images of dead bodies that witnesses said were people gunned down by the police.
Chatham House says Tigrian monopoly deepens Ethiopia crisis
ESAT News (October 19, 2016)
A think-tank said on Tuesday that corruption by ruling party officials and disproportionate benefits of the economy that has 
gone mainly to Tigrayans drove the people to rise up against the regime in Ethiopia.
London-based Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said in a report that “perceptions are widespread that control of the EPRDF and a disproportionate share of the benefits of the growing economy have gone to ethnic Tigrayans, whose Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) formed the core of the EPRDF.”
“Over the last two-and-a-half decades, there has been a growing contradiction inherent in the expansion of the economy and provision of services, as it is outstripped by growth in expectations, especially among the youth,” the report further said.
“This anger is intensified because of corruption in the political system; the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), the EPRDF member party which controls Oromia Region, is seen as particularly corrupt. This has pitted the population against a party which is meant to represent its interests,”
Chatham House noted that declaring the state of emergency meant that the EPRDF “recognizes that it is has been unable to impose order.”
In a similar vein, Dr. Aleksandra W. Gadzala, a political-risk consultant and political analyst on africa, wrote in National Interest magazine that Tigrayan domination after the fall of the Derg has been palpable. “The presidential office, the parliament, central government ministries and agencies—including public enterprises—and financial institutions have since 1991 all been controlled by the TPLF,” wrote the Oxford-educated expert, who studied the Chinese influence in Ethiopia for her PhD dissertation.
Dr Aleksandra W Gadzala
“Ninety-nine percent of Ethiopian National Defense Force [senior] officers are from Tigray; 97 percent are from the same village. Only the prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, is not Tigray: he is Wolayta, an ethnic group that forms the majority of the population in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR). His historically close ties to Meles, first while President of SNNPR, then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, have, however, effectively rendered him Tigray by association.”
Dr. Gadzala pointed out that submission to the Tigrians is the core of the so called revolutionary democracy, the ideology of the ruling elite. “The EPRDF’s governing ideology, “revolutionary democracy”—a curious concoction of Marxist, Maoist, and ethno-regionalist thought—demands Soviet-style submission to the Tigray-dominated state.”
She argued that TPLF is unwilling to compromise on monopoly control of the state power even under pressure from every direction. “In many respects the state-building question has gone unresolved; Ethiopia’s crisis is largely an existential one. In the coming weeks Hailemariam Desalegn will likely attempt peace by announcing a redistribution of government investments. Most, if not all, political and economic power will remain vested in the TPLF.”
But the expert indicated that even if this may quell the protests for a time, without genuine efforts to address the grievances, the crisis will only get worse.
According to her without “attention to the country’s conflicting institutional and ideological challenges, central to which is the dominance of the TPLF and the Tigray, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.”
“All that is at stake, is everything,” she concluded.