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Ethiopia Foreign Policy and Government Guide (World Business Intelligence Library) ... Read more

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This engaging and informative historical narrative provides an excellent introduction to the history of Ethiopia from the classical era through the modern age. The acute historical analysis contained in this volume allows readers to critically interrogate shifting global power configurations from the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, and the related implications in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa region. Adejumobi identifies a second wave of globalization, beginning in the nineteenth century, which laid the foundation for a highly textured Ethiopian Afromodern twentieth century. The book explores Ethiopia's efforts at charting an independent course in the face of imperialism, World War II, the Cold War and international economic reforms with a focus on the gap between the state's modernization reforms and the citizenry's aspirations of modernity. The book focuses on Ethiopians' efforts to balance challenges related to social, political and economic reforms with a renaissance in the arts, theater, Orthodox Coptic Christianity, Islam and ancient ethnic identities.

The History of Ethiopia paints a vivid picture of a dynamic and compelling country and region for students, scholars, and general readers seeking to grasp twenty-first century global relations. The work also provides a timeline of events in Ethiopian history, brief biographies of key figures, and a bibliographic essay.

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Ethiopia has made major strides in improving its human development indicators in the past 15 years, achieving significant increases in the coverage of basic education and health services in a short period of time. Improvements took place during a period of massive decentralization of fiscal resources, to the regions in 1994 and to woredas in 2002-03. The devolution of power and resources from the federal and regional governments to woredas appears to have improved the delivery of basic services. Surveys of beneficiaries reveal that they perceive that service coverage and quality have improved. Beneficiary satisfaction has increased markedly in education, and less conspicuously in water and health services. In the south, the decentralization to woredas 2002-03 tended to narrow differences in per capita expenditures on education and health across woredas.Decentralization disproportionately favored woredas that are remote (more than 50 kilometers from a zonal capital), food-insecure, and pastoral, suggesting that decentralization has been pro-poor. Decentralization also narrowed the gap in educational outcomes between disadvantaged and better-off woredas, especially in the south. Pastoral, food-insecure, and remote woredas gained in terms of the educational outcomes examined (gross enrollment rates, grade 8 examination pass rates, repetition rates, pupil-teacher ratios, and teacher-section ratios). ... Read more

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Ethiopia is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world. At the same time, it is endowed with huge unapped natural resources and human capital; long history that have contributed to human civilization; strategic geogprahical location in the Horn of Africa; rich and diverse culture; model of religious and ethnic coexistence and mutual respect; and heart of major faiths: Christianity, Islam and Judaism that have evolved in unique ways. Yet, this ancient country of almost 80 million people has among the poorest people in Africa. The primary reason for this condition is lack of representative, all inclusive and democratic governance. The challenge for this and the coming generation is to focus on the social, ideolgical and political conditions that perpetute poverty. The book offers penetraing insight on how the well being of Ethiopia's mosaic of people can be transformed. ... Read more

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Preface

This study focuses on Ethiopia's attempt at introducing soilconservation and afforestation innovations aimed at reversing theprocess of degradation of its agricultural resource-base. It considersthe tenure ambiguity, uncertainty, and insecurity stemming from thestate ownership of land under which these innovations wereattempted. It tells the story of how rural people responded to theproject-induced adoption of measures to protect the land even thoughtheir holdings remained under a constant threat of reallocation. Thisstory concerns issues arising from over-population, revolution,agrarian reform, population relocation, land reallocations,internationally financed projects, and not least, civil war.

Questions of soil conservation and afforestation, and land tenure areissues of fundamental importance to the millions of rural families inEthiopia. In fact, in the long-run, they may be more may be asimportant to the people of several Sahelian and Sub-Saharan Africannations that have opted for state ownership of land. The study dealswith the variety of ways in which institutional arrangements such asproperty rights regimes directly and indirectly influence the outcomeof attempts at externally inducing innovations, and contribute indefeating the intentions of planners as well as their newstrategies. In this study, I take exception to a good part of what thesoil conservation and afforestation program in Ethiopia has done; but,in no way do I wish to question the personal motives of theoverwhelming majority of the people that worked for it.

The present work is a cumulative product of my involvement with thestudy of the social aspects of environmental degradation andconservation issues spanning over the past 12 years. In the course ofthis period, I have been involved in a number of studies looking atdifferent socio-economic aspects of soil conservation andafforestation in Ethiopia and, to a small extent, also in Kenya (seereferences). ... Read more

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The Ethiopian famine of 25 years ago was the greatest humanitarian disaster of the late 20th century, killing more than 600,000 people before the world took notice. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicenter of the famine in 1984 and he returned at the time of Live Aid to research the definitive account of the disaster, A Year in the Death of Africa.

Now, in Famine and Foreigners, Gill returns to Ethiopia to piece together the real story of the last 25 years, drawing on interviews with leading Ethiopians and with an army of foreign aid officials. He conducted extensive interviews with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the leading development economists, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs. Most important of all, Gill has traveled throughout the country and interviewed scores of Ethiopia's dignified but still hungry farmers. What stands out in these pages are the graphic encounters with these Ethiopians--the supposed beneficiaries of western aid--who still struggle on the knife-edge of existence. What also emerges is the often tense relationship between official aid-givers and recipients--whether in the area of economic reform or the modern demands for "governance" and political change. Twenty five years on, we can say that we did feed the world.But did we change the face of poverty, did we close the gap between rich and poor, did we fulfill the promise of "development?"

A generation after Live Aid, this book questions whether any of world's big promises are being fulfilled. Have aid experts got it right? Are recipient countries allowed to pursue their own vision? Is democracy essential for banishing poverty? Now that the West faces its own economic challenges, it is time to ask whether the "development era" may be coming to an end. ... Read more

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The papers collected here describe and interpret the Ethiopian Revolution and explore its successes, failures, and intrinsic qualities. The contributors express a variety of viewpoints and approaches to the current crisis situation in Ethiopia, demonstrating that although the 15-year revolution has failed to measurably improve the lot of Ethiopians, Ethiopia's history, demographics, and climate have also been important contributing factors. A number of articles deal with aspects of the political crisis while others analyze the economic crisis, looking at present problems and their historical roots. ... Read more

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Almost unnoticed, in the wake of the overthrow of Emperor Haile-Selassie, the coming to power of the military, and the ongoing independence struggle in Eritrea, a band of students launched an insurrection from the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray. Calling themselves the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), they built close relations with Tigray's poverty-stricken peasants and on this basis liberated the province in 1989, and formed an ethnic-based coalition of opposition forces that assumed state power in 1991. This book chronicles that history and focuses in particular on the relationship of the revolutionaries with Ethiopia's peasants. ... Read more

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How do communities grapple with the challenges of reconstruction after conflicts? In one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of refugee repatriation anywhere in the world, Laura C. Hammond follows the story of Ada Bai, a returnee settlement with a population of some 7,500 people. In the days when refugees first arrived, Ada Bai was an empty field along Ethiopia’s northwest border, but it is now a viable—arguably thriving—community.

For the former refugees who fled from northern Ethiopia to eastern Sudan to escape war and famine in 1984 and returned to their country of birth in 1993, "coming home" really meant creating a new home out of an empty space. Settling in a new area, establishing social and kin ties, and inventing social practices, returnees gradually invested their environment with meaning and began to consider their settlement home. Hammond outlines the roles that gender and generational differences played in this process and how the residents came to define the symbolic and geographical boundaries of Ada Bai.

Drawing on her fieldwork from 1993 to 1995 and regular shorter periods since, Hammond describes the process by which a place is made meaningful through everyday practice and social interaction. This Place Will Become Home provides insight into how people cope with extreme economic hardship, food insecurity, and limited access to international humanitarian or development assistance in their struggle to attain economic self-sufficiency. ... Read more

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The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has made fresh attempts to deal with the intra-state challenges to the 'nation-state' in multi-ethnic societies. This book examines how that country is trying to implement a programme of decentralising state power to ethnically-based regional constituencies, which could be of interest to other countries in Africa. The study reveals that the Ethiopian Experiment questions conventional images of polyethnic states. This book presents a practical example of the formulation of new approaches towards ethnicity, federalism and objective nation-/statehood, attempting to examine the changing meaning of ethnicity and nationalism throughout history in Western Europe, to discuss how they impacted on state formations in Africa, and to consider why Ethiopia stands unique in the process of state-building versus ethnicity. The study elaborates the factors which convinced the new Ethiopian leadership to embark on such a revolutionary path, one on which each of the country's Nations, Nationalities and Peoples is guaranteed the right to self-government, self-determination and even independence.The thesis analyses the parallel developments in post-1991 Ethiopia of ethnic federalism and the transition to democracy. ... Read more

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More often than not, the distribution of socioeconomic resources and political power in Ethiopia has been perceived in favor of the Amhara ethnic group. In this new work, author Kasahun Woldemariam argues that the Amhara were as excluded economically and politically as any other ethnic group in Ethiopia, and that the concept of Amhara domination is a myth. Working from an interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological approach, this book is an important resource for scholars and students of African politics and ethnic conflict analysis and resolution as well as policymakers worldwide and Ethiopians in Ethiopia and the Diaspora. ... Read more

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This original work traces the cultural and political history of the Oromo, their colonization and incorporation into the modern state of Ethiopia and the racialized/ethnicized capitalist world system, and their long struggle for self-determination and democracy. It further illustrates how facing state terrorism, genocide, and gross human rights violations in the twenty-first century from the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian government has increased the commitment of the Oromo to determine their destiny as a nation.Focusing on the development of the class and nation-class contradictions manifested in the continuing crisis of the Ethiopian state, Jalata examines why the reorganization of that state in the 1970s and again in the 1990s failed to change the nature of Ethiopian colonialism. He challenges the assumptions of many modernization and mainstream Marxist theories that colonized peoples like the Oromo would disappear through a process of assimilation. To the contrary, the Oromo case serves as an apt demonstration that colonialism and imperialism have not been successful in destroying the cultural identity of colonized people, nor their desire for self-determination and democracy.Jalata provides a valuable study of the rise of Oromo ethnonationalism, and its deepening struggle with the Ethiopian state.—Crawford Young,University of Wisconsin-MadisonThe theme of the book reflects a worldwide proclivity for a redifinition of ethnicity. Useful for students of comparative ethnicity and nationalities.—W.M. Akalou,Texas Southern UniversityDr. Jalata has written a brilliant history of Oromia and its relations with Abyssinia (Ethiopia) from the point of view of the Oromo, whose voice has been omitted from Ethiopian historiography. In terms of clear articulation of the rich and wide use of Oromo sources, [and] careful interpretation of data the book is an excellent antidote to Ethiopian historiography. . . . this book explodes many myths about Ethiopia while placing Oromia on the intellectual map of the international community.—Mohammed Hassen,Georgia State University, Atlanta ... Read more

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Established around 1830, the Kingdom of Jimma Abba Jifar was the largest and most powerful of the five monarchies formed by the Oromo in the Gibe region of southwestern Ethiopia. Although the Oromo are known for their democratic ("republican") gada system, Jimma and other Gibe states arose through a series of processes and historical events in the 19th century that propelled certain men into positions of supreme power.Based on intensive fieldwork in Jimma, this book presents a study of the history and organization of Jimma under its most powerful ruler, Abba Jifar II (1878-1932). Lewis stresses the dynamic aspects of politics and places the politicial history and structure of Jimma in perspective by noting its similarities and differences to monarchial systems in other parts of Africa and the rest of the world.He also explores those distinctive aspects of the Oromo culture which gave Jimma Abba Jifar its particular political style and includes an ethnographic study of an Oromo Muslim agricultural community.

This is one of the first published professional anthropological works about the Oromo and will be of strong interest to social scientists as well as African anthropologists and historians. ... Read more