Chinese build new highway to "lost" Kenya

By C. Bryson Hull

NEAR ISIOLO, Kenya (Reuters) - After a century of broken promises, a paved road linking Kenya to Ethiopia is no longer a mirage for a desert region choked by remoteness.

Hurling up a cloud of blinding white dust, Chinese road engineers are helping to lay down the first kilometers of tarmac to replace a 530-km (330-mile) forbidding rock track that joins Kenya's farms and port to landlocked Ethiopia.

The stretch of road from Isiolo to Moyale on the border is one of the last unpaved sections of the Great North Road, a British colonial dream to connect Cape Town to Cairo.

But where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years.

In what is a now familiar sight across Africa, China's drive to secure minerals, oil, and a place for its workers and industries to thrive is converging with Kenyan government plans to tap the potential of undeveloped regions.

The road could turn promises of oil into reality and increase tourism and trade in a starkly beautiful land where, until now, only banditry, desolation and poverty had flourished.

"This progress is going to benefit the whole area for tourism. Once it is finished, we can already see more trade," said Wu Yi Bao, project manager for the state-owned construction company China Wu Yi (Kenya) Co.

China Wu Yi is building the road with 4.3 billion Kenya shillings ($63.94 million) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Kenyan government.

According to AfDB estimates, paving the road between Isiolo, 340 km (211 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, and Moyale could boost trade between Kenya and Ethiopia along that corridor fivefold to $175 million from the present $35 million annually.

Trade between China and Kenya last year was worth $959 million, a 48 percent rise over 2006, according to the Chinese embassy in Kenya.

'NOT PART OF KENYA'

The tarmac of the Cape-to-Cairo road goes missing at the squared-off edge of pavement at the end of Isiolo.

Here one finds all the restless bustle of a quintessential border town because residents say it's the frontier between the "Kenya Mbili" -- Swahili for the two Kenyas.

"People in the north feel like they are not part of the country," said Hussein Sasura, assistant minister for Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands. "When someone leaves for Nairobi, people say he has gone to Kenya."

Hopes are high that the revamped road will draw more tourists and create more revenue for the people living here.

But some people are suspicious of China's motives, mirroring the ambivalence towards the Asian giant's investment push felt by many Africans.

Residents of some African nations, like Zambia, complain that China is undertaking a second colonization by focusing on Africa's resources and dumping its cheapest goods here. China denies this, and has a 50-year history of bilateral trade and cooperation with Kenya.

The Chinese have an immediate interest in rebuilding the first stretch of the Isiolo-Moyale road, so that it can move heavy equipment into Merti, roughly 80 km (50 miles) east of the end of the 136 km (84.5 miles) it has committed to build.

China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Sweden's Lundin Petroleum AB are carrying out seismic tests for oil in Merti in preparation for drilling next year.

Residents in Isiolo have been suspicious of oil exploration since a 1980s venture yielded nothing amid murky circumstances.

There are other signs of simmering resentment.

One Chinese engineer was shot and killed near the Merille River by shiftas -- or bandits -- on April 21. Tribal elders say he was targeted because of a feeling that not enough men from the area had been employed by the Chinese.

Wu said at least 150 of the nearly 200 people on the project were Kenyans and all the day laborers were locals.

After the shooting, the Kenyan government sent its elite paramilitary General Service Unit to the Merille River area to disarm youths and provide a security presence.

HIDDEN GEMS

There is little doubt the road will offer a lifeline to northern Kenya and could signal an end to years of neglect.

Under colonial rule, Isiolo was an outpost at the edge of the closed Northern Frontier District, which spanned the top half of Kenya from Uganda and Sudan in the west, across Ethiopia to Somalia in the east.

"In those days, Europeans were not allowed to stay there because it was too dangerous and the climate was too harsh. You had to have a permit," said George Cardovillis, a Kenyan descended from Greek traders who wanted to set up shop at the Ethiopia-Kenya border in 1914.

The government ordered them to keep going more than 600 km (373 miles) south to Maralal.

North of Isiolo to Ethiopia, not much has changed across desolate stretches of black volcanic stones and reddish sands since Cardovillis' forebears trekked south in a donkey train.

The sun still blasts shimmering heat waves down from an enveloping sky. Mountains loom in a gunmetal haze across the plains. Water is scarce. Electricity, telephone lines and most other services barely exist.

Amid this desolate beauty are some of Kenya's most unspoiled national parks, rarely visited because of their remoteness.

Barely 50 km (31 miles) past Isiolo lie three game reserves that rival the famed Maasai Mara for the volume and variety of animals. This is where "Born Free" author and naturalist Joy Adamson settled to raise leopards until her murder.

"We think our occupancies will double when the road is finished," said Jayne Nguatah, manager of the Sarova Shaba lodge in Shaba park. "It will be a Christmas gift to us."

The Sarova Shaba is built on the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro river, where crocodiles feed and Samburu and Borana herdsmen water their animals. Baboons and monkeys roam the main lodge, which is built like a treehouse and straddles a natural spring.

But infrastructure is not the only problem for those seeking to build a viable tourism industry in northern Kenya.

Banditry and tribal clashes are common here, thanks to weapons flowing in from past and present conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. And security forces are spread thin.

Nomadic herders roam for pasture and water for their sheep, cows, goats and camels, as they have for centuries. But today, some carry AK-47 assault rifles, while others brandish Sterling-Enfield rifles from colonial times.

And despite the Chinese engineers' industry near Isiolo, far to the north in Moyale, some people doubt the road will ever reach them. Plans to extend the tarmac beyond the stretch being reworked by the Chinese are still on the drawing board.

"For 45 years they have been promising us that road," trader Gumucha Gisiko said, waving his hand dismissively as a frown rose above his red henna beard.

"Seeing is believing."
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ETHIOPIA: Thousands displaced by flash flood in Gambella

ADDIS ABABA, 22 August 2008 (IRIN) - Three rivers in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia have burst their banks following torrential rains that fell in the area for three consecutive days, government officials in the area said. 

"We have not yet finalised our assessment, however, an estimated 10,000 to 11,000 people have been displaced," Akway Abala, team leader for the Disaster Prevention and Food Security Department of Gambella region, told IRIN on 22 August. 

A flash flood, he added, had occurred in Lare woreda (district) after the heavy downpour that lasted from 16 to 19 August. Villages in another woreda, Itang, which is located 53km west of Gambella town, were also swept away by a flood on 12 August after the Pukong river burst its banks. 

"Residents of the villages [have fled] to the highlands," Akway said. "Some of them have sheltered with their relatives and others have made temporary huts. After we finalize our assessment, we will appeal for aid from the federal government or other non-governmental organizations." 

Gambella has been repeatedly affected by flash floods whenever rivers draining down to the region from the western highlands of Ethiopia fill up and burst their banks.
Other regions of Ethiopia have also been affected. In April 2007, several houses were damaged by flood waters in the eastern town of Dire Dawa, 515km from Addis Ababa, after heavy rains pounded the area. 

The floods swept over the Addis Ketema and Decahtu suburbs, but there were no reports of casualties. In August 2006, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia's second-largest town with a population of 400,000, was again hit by flash flooding in which at least 250 people died and nearly 10,000 were forced to leave their homes. That flood prompted the town's administration to build sand banks in the Decahtu, Ashwa, and Hafcat. 

The latest reports of a flash flood have come as Ethiopia grapples with a food crisis affecting several million people, as a result of drought, rising global food and fuel prices and poor rains.
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Ethiopia - another famine, another avoidable disaster

Population explosion and a misguided land policy - two reasons why Addis Ababa is the architect of its own misery
Rosemary Righter 

It was at a railway crossing near Diri Dawa, the provincial capital in the Ethiopian Ogaden desert, that I saw them: small children's hands, blackened by sun, clutching at the slats of a cattle truck dumped on a siding. The year was 1984, the height of the Ethiopian famine that claimed about a million lives. These young things must have expired, hours later, of heat and thirst in temperatures peaking at about 48C, in the truck where they had deliberately been left to die.

I know it was deliberate because I took quick photographs, muttered a few words they couldn't understand, and headed in to Diri Dawa to get help. The famine relief office officials shrugged and directed me to the military police commander. He cut me short: yes, he knew where they were. They were ethnic Somali kids - Somalis, the majority population of the Ogaden, had been in rebellion against Ethiopian rule for years - and they had been caught throwing stones at a train. 

But they would die, I persisted. He lit a cigarette. "So what: they knew the risks and they must pay the price." 

You did not have to be caught throwing stones to "pay the price" in 1984. That famine in the Ogaden, the worst-affected region in Ethiopia, was far deadlier than it need have been because, until the international outcry forced it somewhat to relent, the Marxist Mengistu dictatorship blocked food aid to rebel areas, using it as a weapon of war.
What the world saw back then they are seeing again: heart-rending photographs of wide-eyed famished Ethiopian children. What the world did not hear much about then was the criminal exploitation of suffering. What the world will not see clearly, even now, is that disasters like drought can cause crops to fail, but should never, in a half-decently run country, lead to mass deaths from malnutrition. Famines in this day and age are man-made, if not by the sins of commission perpetrated by the thuggish Mengistu regime (and by North Korea's) then by culpable omission coupled with lousy policies.

Mengistu was overthrown in 1991, fleeing Addis Ababa to retire in the congenial climate of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Because Meles Zenawi, the Tigrayan rebel leader who ousted him, shed some of his Albanian-model Stalinist baggage, he was fêted by Westerners as a moderniser and showered with development aid. 

A spot of election-rigging in 2005, followed by the shooting of up to 200 pro-democracy demonstrators, caused some temporary tut-tutting, after which aid quietly resumed and, in Britain's case, doubled. Not so quietly, the Ethiopian Army is again cracking heads in the Ogaden, burning villages and, according to Human Rights Watch, torturing and publicly executing not only rebels of the resurgent Ogaden National Liberation Front but also civilians sympathising with them. In the Ogaden, famine looms. Plus ça change.

Still, Meles and Mengistu are not la même chose. Meles is a bit of a thug, but he has introduced some judicial and commercial reforms, devolved powers from Addis Ababa to the regions, improved education, curbed child mortality through anti-poverty programmes and, importantly, advocated greater equality for women. He has also ploughed 17 per cent of government spending into agriculture, three to four times as much as most other African governments. He claims that farm production is growing by 10 per cent a year, and boasts that, two years ago, the country actually exported maize (odd, that, when in a "good" year millions of Ethiopians rely on foreign food aid). 

After the last big drought, in 2003, the Ethiopian Government worked with donors to create a system designed to make famine history. It includes a Productive Safety Net, a public works programme providing seven million poor Ethiopians - nearly a tenth of the population - with food or cash, and a Famine Early Warning System that measures rainfall, livestock prices, household spending and signs of malnutrition. 

Textbook stuff, and in stark contrast with the junta's attempt to hide the 1984 famine from the world. And yet... how, then, has the failure of the "little rains" this spring, and the consequent loss of a single harvest, translated into a huge emergency affecting ten million people, by the aid industry's probably inflated account, and 4.6 million by the Government's defensively conservative assessment? 

Why are its emergency grain reserves so depleted that food rations have been reduced by a third, at least 75,000 children are already severely malnourished and hunger affects two thirds of the country and has, this time, spread to the towns? Why is Ethiopia, a country with lush two-crop breadbaskets as well as deserts and eroded hill farms, still so vulnerable that, as Meles himself admits, "one unexpected weather event can push us over the precipice"? 

There are two big causes, and drought is not one of them. They are within the power of politicians to tackle, and tackled they must finally be, with the requisite sense of urgency. The first is Ethiopia's population explosion; with families averaging 5.4 children, it has soared from 33.5 million in the 1984 famine to 77 million now. In a country where 85 per cent of the people rely on farming for a living, this means that, per head, food production has actually fallen since 1984 - by more than a third - and farm plots get smaller and smaller. A fifth of Ethiopian farmers try to survive on areas no more than 20 metres by 40 metres per person, yielding no more than half their cereal needs.

The second is Meles's purblind refusal to reverse the Marxist folly of his 1995 law that put all land under state ownership. "Land holding certificates" graciously permit farmers to till land that their forebears have farmed for generations; but surveys show that 46 per cent still expect to lose their farms.

The policy is a disaster. It discourages careful land management; it deprives farmers of collateral to raise bank loans to buy fertiliser and agricultural tools; and they cling to plots too small to feed their families because, with nothing to sell, they have no alternative. The coffee and infant rose-growing sectors apart, most Ethiopians farm as their ancestors did, with hoes, wooden ploughs, oxen and an anxious eye on the skies.

Enough food aid is once more pouring in to stave off serious famine; but it will not remedy Ethiopia's deepening aid dependency and rural despair. With a smaller - because more mobile - landowning rural population, able to access loans to invest in higher-yield seeds, tractors and drip irrigation, Ethiopia could feed itself. But will donor governments champion the farmers' right to get back their land? On past experience, pigs will fly. And the next famine will be a matter of time.
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War in eastern Ethiopia goes largely unnoticed

UN Wire | 08/20/2008

Hundreds of people have been killed in the ongoing conflict between Ethiopia's government and ethnic Somali rebels who are vying for autonomy in the eastern Ogaden region. But the bloody conflict has received little international attention, overshadowed by other crises such as the one in Darfur. Los Angeles Times

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Ethiopia can expect to earn $1.6bn a year from coffee export

In the latest edition of African Business (August/September 2008 Issue No 345), Anver Versi writes Ethiopia can expect to earn between 1.2bn and 1.6bn a year for virtually the same volume of coffee, thanks to branding its three premium coffee varieties.

In an article titled "Ethiopia blazes branding trail", he writes, at long last, Ethiopia, which produces some of the world's finest coffee varieties has taken a leaf from the Western marketing and branding manual and decided to trademark its unique coffee crop, thus earning much higher retail prices.

"The objective is to elevate the position of Ethiopian coffee - easily some of the very best in the world - to its rightful position among the high value, finest gourmet coffees in the world" said Crispin Reed, managing director of Brandhouse.

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ETHIOPIA: Emergency needs "set to increase"

ADDIS ABABA, 8 August 2008 (IRIN) - The number of people requiring emergency food aid is expected to increase as food security has not improved, according to the latest assessment of drought-affected areas, a senior government official said. 

"In general, the findings of the assessment indicated that the overall food security situation in the drought-affected areas has not improved," Abera Deresa, the minister of agriculture, told reporters in Addis Ababa on 7 August. The assessment was of the regular belg (short rains) season. 

Abera said the food security situation had been exacerbated by the country's dependence on rain-fed agriculture. "Failed rains in the south in October and November during the belg season led to crop failure," he said. 

Parts of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region (SNNPR) are extremely food insecure after minimal rains meant a failed sweet potato harvest in February and a near failure of the current belg harvest, according to a food security outlook for July to December by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net). 

In southern and southeastern Ethiopia, including the southern zones of Somali Region, pastoral and agro-pastoral populations remain highly to extremely food-insecure due to successive seasons of below-average rains, flooding in riverine areas, livestock disease, an army worm infestation, conflict, inadequate humanitarian assistance, and extremely high prices of food, stated the FEWS Net report. 

Successive poor rains in November and December and later in March and April had led to at least 4.6 million people requiring emergency relief, according to Abera. 

The government had launched an appeal for 509,916MT of food and an additional US$38.6 million for non-food needs such as health, nutrition, water, sanitation and agriculture. 

Abera said there was still a deficit of 278,000MT of food and $3 million to address the food and non-food requirements. 

"We are trying to address the problem with the available resources but we still need donor support," he said. 

Widespread crop failure had led to critical food insecurity, prompting increased migration, according to the July findings of the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA)-led multi-agency mission. 

Although food security is expected to improve in the eastern parts of Tigray, Amhara, and Oromiya region, as well as most of SNNPR from October to December, the average seasonal rains will be insufficient to improve food security for pastoralists in the south and southeast, said FEWS Net. 

How many more people required emergency food support would be established after consultation with the regional governments, according to the DPPA Director-General, Simon Mechale. 

"We do not have complete information from some of the regional governments yet," Mechale said.

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Despite lush fields, Ethiopia in famine

Even though prime minister claims 'spectacular success in agriculture,' 10 million people will need emergency assistance to survive until the harvest in September
By Edmund Sanders | Tribune Newspapers 
August 8, 2008

AJEE, Ethiopia — They call it the green hunger. 

Four-foot cornstalks sprout from rain-soaked earth, and wind billows fields of teff, the staple Ethiopian grain. Goats and cattle are getting fat on lush grasses — but the children are still dying. 

"It's strange to see hunger when everything is so green," said Wariso Shete, 26, a southern Ethiopia farmer who recently buried his 3-year-old son. "But there is no food. The boy just starved."

Once again, images of emaciated children are emerging from this Horn of Africa nation, rekindling memories of the 1984 famine that killed nearly 1 million people. This time Ethiopia has been grappling with a double whammy: drought in its breadbasket and a global food crisis that has pushed prices sky high.
Although recent rains and an influx of humanitarian aid have experts predicting the crisis might be stabilizing, nearly 10 million Ethiopians will need emergency assistance to survive until the harvest in September. 

Green hungers are just one of the oddities in Ethiopia's decades-long struggle to feed itself. The country, considered the water tower of East Africa because its highlands are the primary source of the Nile, suffers chronic drought. It is Africa's second-largest corn producer but still requires hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. 

An exploding population is one cause. Others point to a socialist-leaning government, which has been slow to embrace market-based policies. And everyone agrees that international donors spend too little — less than 5 percent of all aid — on long-term development, such as irrigation, to correct underlying problems.
Leader: Programs help
In an interview, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi emphasized that the current crisis masks dramatic progress.

"This emergency is occurring in an environment of spectacular success in agriculture," he said. 

Agriculture production is growing 10 percent a year, he said, and as recently as 2006, Ethiopia grew so much corn that it exported the surplus.

National pride might explain why the government initially seemed to downplay the drought, accusing the United Nations of exaggerating the number of malnourished children. Meles' exasperation with those who portray Ethiopia as desperate and needy was evident. 

"I'm telling those people to go to hell," he said. "Ethiopians are not hapless."

One of the biggest problems is population growth. Ethiopia, with an estimated 80 million people, has doubled in size since the mid-1980s. Nearly 40,000 babies are born each week. 

Simply put, the nation, in which 85 percent of people farm, has reached a point where it can't easily grow enough food to meet its needs. Although agricultural production has increased overall, it has declined per capita, according to the World Bank. 

Even in a year without crisis, one in 10 people rely on international food aid to survive. More than 400 children die every day from malnutrition. Ethiopia is one of the few African nations with its own factory for Plumpy'nut, a peanut-based paste used to remedy acute malnutrition. 

"We have not moved far enough away from the poverty line for us to have enough cushion," Meles said. "One unexpected weather event can push us over the precipice."
Some praise Ethiopia's government for its anti-poverty campaigns, which have reduced child mortality by 40 percent. New roads have fostered nationwide trade, helping agricultural markets stabilize. The government allocates 17 percent of its budget to agricultural development, nearly three times as much as its African neighbors. 

But Ethiopia's state-dominated economy is also blamed for the persistent food shortages. The government controls all major industries, and there is no private ownership of land. 

Under pressure from Western donors, Meles, a onetime Marxist who preaches the free market, has opened the window to private enterprise, most notably allowing flower farms to export. But economists are skeptical. 

Critics skeptical
"They talk about free market, but you don't see it," said economist Befekadu Degefe, a government critic. "They see the private sector as a threat, as competition, so they try to eliminate it."

In the agricultural sector, the government controls the distribution of fertilizer and, to a lesser extent, seeds. It extends most credit and sometimes restricts sales, such as a current export ban on cereals. Though farmers are free to grow what they want, a network of 20,000 agricultural advisers keeps close tabs, also functioning as tax collectors. 

"The government hand is still a little too heavy," said Glenn Anders, USAID's mission director in Ethiopia. "They look more to the Chinese model."

Farmer Mohammed Kedir, 23, dreams of the day when he can own his own plot of land. If he owned the land, Kedir said, he might experiment with more-profitable crops, and he said he'd take better care of the soil. 

"But if the government can take my land at any time," he said, "what's the point of trying so hard?"

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Meles Zenawi says no famine in Ethiopia in Q&A with TIME

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi denies famine in Ethiopia in an interview with TIME. He was quoted by TIME magazine as saying, "Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long , it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch - emergencies, but no famines.".

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines famine as "an extreme scarcity of food", in just the past few weeks, this website has archived more than 45 articles written about "extreme scarcity of food" aka famine, mainly in the south and eastern part of Ethiopia. There were reports of death, see picture below from the recent report by TIME magazine. We have posted video clips made by news agencies and NGOs of the famine unfolding in Ethiopia. Yet, the government mouthpiece Walta and state-run ENA completely ignore the famine that is killing mostly children of the Oromo, Somali and Southern tribes in the country, and the Prime Minister who famously promised to deliver three meals a day now denies famine under his watch, not in 2003 not now. 

Historically famine in Ethiopia ravages mostly the northern part of the country, Tigray, Wollo and its former province Eritrea. This time around, things are, let's just say different, we have 'green famine', and what was once the breadbasket of Ethiopia, the southern part of Ethiopia, is starving. One wonders if this is political? Unfortunately it is not surprising if it is, it has happened before in Ethiopia, and the victims then were Meles Zenawi's tribe.

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Ethiopia faces a new food crisis

More US Concerns Regarding Democracy in Ethiopia

By Scott A Morgan

According to a Ethiopian Newspaper the Addis Fortune the Bush Adminstration is concerned about the "narrowing" of Democracy in Ethiopia. The report indicates that there are two pieces of Legislation at the Heart of the Concern of the US Government.

In a joint press briefing that was held in Addis Ababa on July 24th the US Undersecretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor David J Kramer was joined by the Current Ambassador Donald Yamanoto to discuss the Concerns. On this particular trip Ethiopia was the only stop made in Africa by Ambassador Kramer. He spent a total of 48 hours in the East African Country.

During his Visit the Ambassador met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Zenawi and other Members of the ruling EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. The Ambassador stated that the US has vibrant ties relations with the Ethiopian Government. Two Areas that were prominently mentioned were Security and Humanitarian Issues. 

However there are two major areas of concern for this Administration in its last few months. First is the New Ethiopian Media Law. In the eyes of some experts this law makes it easier for the Government to Launch new efforts of Repression. One Chilling Chapter can allow for Defamtion Cases to be filed by the Government even if the person that was injured decides not to file charges.

This comes on the heels of the "reforms" last year of the Ministry of Information. The Government now has power to use licensing and registration as a Punishment of Dissent. Another Feature gives the Government Power to stop the Distribution of a Newspaper if the Attorney General deems a news item to be a criminal act.

The Actions against NGOs is a Major concern as some of them have been targeted for their work in the Ogaden Region. Once again Ethiopia has suffered from drought conditions and the country is heavily involved in neighboring Somalia. Some NGOs have been targeted for their work since the Controversial 2005 Elections that had a violent aftermath.

The US Congress has introduced a Piece of Legislation HR 2003 The Ethiopian Democracy and Accountability Act. It passed the House of Representatives without dissent but is currently stalled in the US Senate. This was introduced to raise the concerns of the Legislative Body after the violence plagued 2005 elections. A better way to raise US Concerns would be to pass this legislation as well as contacts with the current leadership in Addis Ababa.

For what its worth Ethiopia is a hingepin for a successful US Policy in the Horn of Africa. It has been active in Somalia on behalf of US Interests for a couple of years now. It has a long running feud with Eritrea that could erupt into warfare as well. So Whatever action Ethiopia takes probably has the blessing of this Administration. But what of the next one?

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