NYTimes CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, construction is underway on a public works project of gigantic physical proportions and exquisite political delicacy. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, now about halfway finished, amounts to a test: With water becoming precious enough to be the stuff of war, can nations find ways to…
The crackdown on Muslim activists is part of Addis Ababa’s crusade against independent voices and opposition leaders By Awol Allo I Aljazeera On July 6, Ethiopia’s Federal High Court convicted leaders of the Ethiopian Muslims protest movement on charges of terrorism and conspiracy to create an Islamic state in Ethiopia. The verdict — against two Muslim journalists,…
By RENÉ LEFORT I Open Democracy The history of this country is one of eternal recurrence. The ‘national question” re-emerges where it has always been, with varying degrees of visibility: at the heart of Ethiopian political life. steamroller has flattened everything in its way. The opposition held one seat in the outgoing parliament. It will not hold a…
Washington wants a stable partner in the Horn of Africa. But cozying up to the repressive regime in Addis Ababa isn’t the way to go about finding one. BY JEFFREY SMITH, MOHAMMED ADEMO Later this month, President Barack Obama will become the first sitting U.S. president to ever visit Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, and…
By Roel van der Veen, for Addis Standard Development in the non-Western world In the 1870s Japanese public intellectual Yukichi Fukuzawa shocked his audience by stating that he thought Japan should leave poor Asia and join the modern world. Japan in those days was going through a phase of rapid change, which would eventually lead…
By Ndesanjo Macha@ndesanjo , Global Voices US President Barack Obama’s last trip to Africa before his term ends will take him to Kenya and Ethiopia, where he’ll be the first sitting US president to visit. Obama first toured Africa nearly two years ago, making stops in Senegal, Tanzania, and South Africa. Obama’s decision to stop in Ethiopia has…
Geeska Afrika Asmara (HAN)– Regional Security strategy News. Security Industry Tracker. By Dr. Patricia Campbell, Assistant Provost at American Public University System. In 1993, the first post-colonial peaceful separation of two African states occurred when Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia. Post-colonial Africa is littered with failed secessionist attempts that have left millions dead as post-colonial leaders strove desperately…
Gizeyat Suliman Almosihij When former US Secretary of State Warren Christopher visited Addis Ababa in 1996, Ethiopian officials invited him to address a joint-press conference, to which he declined. He did so in protest against the harassment and imprisonment of independent journalists, and their exclusion from his official press conference. It was just in the prior…
By Kyle Mizokami The National Interest, Recent tension between the China and Japan in the East China Sea has raised the possibility of armed conflict the two countries. The two historical antagonists have not fought since 1945, in part because China has been unable to project power beyond its borders. Two decades of double digit defense budget…
Stratfor This is the fifth Decade Forecast published by Stratfor. Every five years since 1996 (1996, 2000, 2005, 2010 and now, 2015) Stratfor has produced a rolling forecast. Overall, we are proud of our efforts. We predicted the inability of Europe to survive economic crises, China’s decline and the course of the U.S.-jihadist war. We…