The renowned Ethiopian poet, screenwriter, journalist and essayist, Solomon Deressa, who settled in the United States in the early 1980’s, died on Thursday in Minnesota, his family announced. He was 80.
Solomon, born in Wellega, western Ethiopia, has come to be recognized as one of the most influential figures of the Ethiopian literature with his refined, innovative poems. Sometimes called a surrealist poet, Solomon has produced two collection of Amharic poems, L’Jinnet (1970) and Zebet Ilfitu: Walotat (1999), which have been lyrical delight for lovers of modern and contemporary verses. Africa: an Encyclopedia of Culture and Society (3 volumes) (2015), wrote that Solomon, though frugal in production, was highly philosophical because he was arguably the most well-read Ethiopian of his generation. “As seen in his collection of poems published under the name Lijinet (childhood) his poetry is characterized by the substitution of different measures to break up a rhythm. Solomon happens to be one of the very few poets recognized enough to have his poetry chosen among the best of Africa and published in the collection of works of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.”
Solomon’s poems, at times, served as kind of litmus test for readers, many finding his work willfully difficult and self-indulgent. He has rather made his reputation in his lively articles in the excellent yet short-lived magazine, Addis Reporter in the mid- 1960s. Through his writing he has voiced the challenges of living in different cultures as the “Hyphenated-Ethiopian,” a term he and Gedamu Abraha popularized in the late sixties. The educated Ethiopian’ they said at the outset of their artilce, ‘is Ethiopian in transition’. ‘Passing from the annual harvest to the monthly salary and from the homestead to the apartment, we have exchanged communal security for individual destinies’
Another of Solomon’s memorable essays in the Addis Reporter were “The Dime Novel”, a scathing critique of the ephemeral Amharic novels that were flourishing at the time and profile of a waiter, in which he said “a waiter’s life is a dog’s life. Yet it can be a lordly life also. The hours are long and most customers obnoxious. But you address them all as “Getoch” and by conferring honor and dignity on all and sundry, you become honourable-a lord.”
In 1972 Solomon attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the result was of further collection of poems, twelve of which were published in Topics, the United States Information Service. One of these is a piercing and prophetic comment, in the words of literary critic Albert S. Gérard, emanating from the decade which had just ended, and is appropriately entitled “Abyssinian Sixties.”

What an age!
Mature beyond its future
Departures that forego aspirations
Morning glories and Job’s tears
lilies and roses.
Buds clamp on their inner selves
as the storm approaches.
Darkness shall soak us
in accumulated pains,
and names explode like flowers in summer.
Will the heroes be maimed
our dreams congested
dragging their buttocks
along the same asphalt that buried the flowers,
and lovers stand aside
to watch the tight fornication of tradition?

One of the major themes of Solomon Deressa’s second volume of Amharic poems, Zebet Ilfitu: Walotat, published in 1999, was alienation, estrangement, the idea of home becoming too distant and the inability to return, frustrated by poltical circusmtances, which was clearly a personal statement for the poet. As a fitting tribute to Solomon, we are publishing one of his poems dealing with such theme in Amharic and English, as translated by Mitiku Adisu. This is part of a translation project that Mitiku undertook recently to introduce 15 of Ethiopian poets to the English-speaking world. The project is completed and is awaiting publication.

The following is a review of Innes Marshal, director of the HISU Press (today’s Addis Ababa University Press) of Solomon Deressa’s English and French volumes of poems, “The Tone of Silence”, which appeared in the Addis Reporter magazine in April 18, 1969. Innes Marshal was full of praise for Solomon’s collection, admiring it for casting “visual images freely throughout his poems,” and “the sharp rhyming throughout this poem.” It is published online here for the first time.

I can clearly remember the arid voice of my University lecturer on criticism: “No one can write true poetry except in his own language.” What my lecturer perhaps did not take into account for (or, more probably, what I failed to realise was implicit in his statement) is that a poet can make any language his own, to dream in, or, better, to write in, and that, I feel, is what Solomon Deressa has done in his volume of poems in English and French. “The Tone of Silence”.
The sub-titles of “The Tone of Silence” is “a mid-century african portrait”, and the small “a” of “african” is significant in the context. The poems do not drum out political slogans in the name of Africa. Fortunately or unfortunately, my own slim volumes of verse from the rest of Africa are invariably borrowed (on a permanent basis) by friends. In any case I should prefer not to draw contrast between any other African poet and Solomon, and merely point out that political poetry in English tends to generate into doggerel, and that Solomon, african or Ethiopian, has chosen the better part by rejecting extraneous influences.
He evidently believes with Keats that “axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses”, and he has, on the whole, digested physically and cerebrally the emotions which go to make up his portrait. This is not to say that he doesn’t make the most of a poet’s right to play with contemporary words and images, and occasionally to fling them in the reader’s face. The last line of “Prayer”, Solomon’s introductory poem, takes full advantage of his license and warns us what to expect:
With hands that have lost their balm
Like Tarzan I swing
In the labyrinth of my own mind
Screaming forgiveness, dying to be pardoned

Or he may deal in the Latinate vocabulary of the Metaphysicals, to emphasises

The endeavour to find a novelty of sort to utter
cost what it may…
Here, in “Lost Song,” he asks

Is it the gone song or inchoate night,
is it a wounded mind or a tortured street
that lies thickening beneath this
tumid invidious scor
(whip-handle of a prescient star)
the tormentor’s tormented
incandescent metal bar?
And to me the sharp rhyming throughout this poem is a deliberate reminiscence of the drums which Solomon calls up several times in his book, either in metaphor or in physical sound.
Again, he may use a highly personal vocabulary that is rarely handled so successfully in contemporary verse, as in “Death Like Life”, where the drums once more have full play:
But I,
I pour out of the characters of theses
eyes that I myself slice
Medicore songs on incoherence
(juicy looseness of a machete’d
melon.)
Wagging the lightness in my head:
Drum drum drum
Beat beat beat
Detonate within the head
As drunkenness in a splintered bottle
Chastening unmitigated tam-tam
His inventive terms (“demented collectors cantle-hooked on the tide”, “the welder-me”, “dead at the drumnether”) sometimes, however, as he admits, detonate into mere cleverness, with the stress on each syllable beating out an intellectual joke. I can defend “anti-climax wise” in “The names of you all”, but not so easily “the courtesan on a loud guilt-edged ottoman”, in “Cheap Toy”
Many of us know Solomon as art critic. Like the artist, he casts visual images freely throughout his poems, sometimes impressionistically, sometimes with the transparent depth that make us believe, as in the paintings Gebre Kirstos Desta, that we can really see the underlying Platonic original. “The Dry Well”, for example, is written in clear, almost harsh, half-prose style, ironically conjuring up first an Ethiopian scene, then Ethiopian legend, and finally, an objective summary.
I do not want to quote this poem, but I strongly recommend it to those who believe, with the critic I.A Richards, that “the arts are our storehouse of recorded values”, and perhaps also to those who don’t believe that, an apparently simple, dry narrative, given the force of emotion behind it, can turn into poetry.
“Prose-poetry” (a term I dislike, but convenient here) is also used, but with less success, in a fragment of a love poem. “I would not have believed”, and again in “Have you ever watched a toddler”, which starts with a vivid little drawing of mother and child, and ends with a sad denunciation of those who, like the mother, are too close to emotion to sympathise with the many manifestations of love.
“Ring the Child Alive” is another brilliant glance at lost innocence, this time all too easy to identify with one’s own experience:
Gathering waif-ends and shells
Combing a cold deserted beach
For a child a thousand years dead..
This poem, however, has an ending at once triumphant and resigned:
Turn the sea into a gong,
To ring the child alive
Disturbing his innocent slumber
And then lull him back to sleep.
In contrast to the convoluted vocabulary he uses in his poems in English, the French in which Solomon deals is very much simpler and less fraught with over- and under-lying play on meaning, except in “Café terrace,” where a mocking repetition of “percer” is caught up with “per se”. Some of the French poems are miniature illuminations of grief, perhaps all founded on the first stanza of “Solitude of the Runaway Macadam (à un enfant pied-noir rapatrié)”;

Un coin pour s’asseoir
le temps pour se rappeler
des heures lourdes
Other poems do not lack an ironic humour, underlined in the sharp black-and-white sketch of “Man sitting: From a Hundred Yards”, which is linked in capital letters. It begins
AINSI
ASSIS
AU BORD
DE LA RUE
JE REGADRDE
MA JEUNESSE
PASSER
LES MAINS
DANS LES POCHES
ET MOUCHOIR DESSOUS …..

Also strongly recommended is « Regards Aveugles »;
Je suis noir
je suis barbu
grand et maigre,
and the musical little “In a Whisper”,
which I cannot resist quoting in full:
Si je me laissais faire
Tu me méprisais
Aurais-je le droit
De faire ça
A ton amant mon amour
Purists may condemn the fact that, besides writing in French and English, Solomon occasionally flings French terms into English poems. As may own native language is vigorously macaronic (this has, after all been a complaint since the 13 century), I would only quibble when “foreign” words seem forced or out of place, and this fault is rare in Solomon’s volume. I think I shall be in accord with many readers, however, in wishing he had included the originals of the three poems, which I the edition in front of me, are followed by pencilled note: “translated from the Amharic,” for they are very different from other translations from the Amharic.

Saudi Arabia detained 11 princes, four current ministers and tens of former ministers in a probe by a new anti-corruption body headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Reuters reported citing Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television. Mohammad al-Amoudi, the Ethio-Saudian businessman, is one of those arrested.Considered Ethiopia’s biggest employer, Al Amoudi, enjoys close relationship with Ethiopia’s political leaders.
Al Amoudi chairs Mohammed International Development Research and Organisation Companies, better known as MIDROC, which in turn owns more than 40 subsidiaries operating in the agriculture, agro-processing, construction, hotels and tourism, manufacturing, mining, real estate, transport, aviation, trade, health care and education sectors. These companies employ over 15,000 Ethiopians.
His arrest sent shockwave through the Ethiopian political and business world and has left many asking how it would play in the economy.

Seminar by Anaïs Maro
CFEE Seminar Past and Present: History, Memory and Heritage
(2017-2018)
Thursday 9 November 2017, 2-4 PM, Berhanou Abebe Library of Ethiopian Studies, Centre français des études éthiopiennes -CFEE.

“New Oromo music”: This classification can often be found on YouTube videos for music in Oromo and is a popular search for anybody interested in discovering new releases from Oromo artists. But this concept is relatively new and cover different kinds of genres and geographical origins. There is no direct translation for this concept in Oromo language, rather a multitude of genres exist. So what is ‘Oromo music’? What makes it a stand-alone category, beyond the common language?
Reviewing existing studies and analyzing them in a socio-historical framework, I will present various forces that linked music with Identity and their evolution in time. This seminar, preliminary to my Ph.D. fieldwork, presents a meta-analysis of existing literature with a first approach to modern music videos. Beyond the particular interest about the Oromo people and ethnomusicology, this research questions cultural heritage as a dynamic process rather a fixed asset.

About the speaker

Anaïs Maro is a specialist of performing arts and a consultant in creative and cultural industries. She is currently a full-time Ph.D. candidate with Queensland University Technology (QUT), Faculty of Creative Industries in Brisbane, And associate reasercher at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University. Her transdisciplinary approach is using history, anthropology, and ethnomusicology as a base, but is also very influenced by the theories performance studies. Her interpretation framework is based on a hermeneutic that doesn’t read all phenomenon as a text, rather tries to interprets embodiments and emotions extra-textually.

The Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), Abune Mathias, faced resistance a few weeks ago when he decided to disband the influential student organisation, Mahibere Kidusan.
Mahibere Kidusan, which describes itself as “Sunday School Department” has been in existence for the past twenty five years. In addition to its headquarters in Addis Ababa, it has 48 centres across major towns and more than 500 centres throughout the country. The tension between Mahibere kidusan and the church hierarchy over doctrinal and administrative issues is not new, but has never been this severe. It occurred after Abune Mathias decided to outlaw and shut its television program, which is transmitted with the U.S.-based channel Alefe in three local languages for seven hours per week.
The broadcast provoked the Patriarch’s anger for its continued attack on the alleged infiltration of the evangelical renewal movement in EOC administered colleges. The station is targeting the colleges for embracing dissent against essential Orthodox doctrines in favour of the evangelical teachings, and hosting Protestant-trained elements who are operating trying to convert Orthodox members to the evangelical church, a claim the movement has been making for the past two years.
The Patriarch rejects the accusation and even accuses Mahibere Kidusan of exceeding its jurisdiction by bringing unfounded charges against the seminaries. In the recent Synod meeting, leaders of the Mahibre Kidusan were banned from attending, despite their efforts to preserve their good standing with the Patriarch. Other archbishops presented reports recognising the movement’s outstanding achievements and favouring a conciliatory approach towards Mahibere Kidusan, which angered the Patriarch.
Despite protests from the archbishops, the Patriarch refused to change his position on the channel and condemned the station in the final communique. However, he was unable to convince the Synod of the idea of disbanding the whole movement. Although the conflict is seen as an internal church matter, it is however becoming a serious issue that could undermine attempts to achieve reconciliation in the church; and it is an indication of division into ideological groups that could have serious implications for the future of the church and the Patriarch.

The Ethiopian government has announced new measures to “to maintain the peace and security” of the country and “curb out violence and terror” following tumultuous and bloody months, in a declaration announced by the defence minister on Friday night on state-run television. A day after Prime Minister Hailemarim Desalegn announced the formation of a new body called the National Security Council, a closed meeting was held at the Prime Minister’s Office today in the presence of all regional presidents, mayors of selected towns, security forces of the Federal and regional administration, and high commanders of the National Defences Forces. Defence Minister Siraj Fegessa, who chairs the Council, speaking at the end of the meeting said that though the security situation improved in many parts of the country after the end of a nine-month state of emergency in August, there have been a spate of demonstrations in recent months, causing loss of life, property damage and huge displacement people in Oromia and Somalia regions. Siraj said “a one-year uniform peace and security plan for all regions” has been prepared aimed at improving security, and has been ratified after “extensive discussion”. He said the plan would be implemented from federal region to the lowest administrative unit. He said that unauthorized mass demonstrations and carrying flags of groups branded a terrorist would no longer be tolerated. The newly formed Council would be given powers to detain and arrest members of the government and other individuals who were involved in the violence. The Council would deal issues such as facilitating political processes, initiating consultations with the public, the relocation or return of displaced people, Siraj said. It would also ensure that people’s right to freely move and establish their residence within the country is respected, according to the defence minister.The National Security Council would disclose other course of action to be taken in due course, Siraj said.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Hailemarim said an arrest warrant would be issued for certain party and government officials who, he said, participated in diffusing escalation across the country.

Suspects belonging to the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) held in detention since May 2017 have been charged with terrorism by a court in Addis Ababa, the Amharic language newspaper The Reporter wrote on Sunday. The 26 Ethiopians were accused of having “enlisted” in the Islamic State group and running ISIS-linked cell in Addis Ababa, Harar and Alaba towns, according to a charge by the prosecutor, cited by the paper.
The members were planning terrorist attacks after taking military training in the Somalia town of Bosasso, it was stated. While making thier base in Addis Ababa, they were moving actively in areas of Oromia, Harar, Southern state and Amhara regions and used the “Bilal Broadcasting Network” to spread their message, according to the charge. The prosecutor also said “the hard line group” used a website called “Islamic Fighters” and social messaging platform, What’Up for its communications with the Islamic group abroad.
The members were in communication with the US based extremist group called Abdelhab and another group in Sudan through telephone calls and other channels to receive orders and carry out attack, it was stated.
The trial is expected to resume on 12 January.
Increasing Islamic militancy in the region – Kenya and Somalia have all witnessed increased Islamist activity – is of concern to the Ethiopian authorities, who say they are facing growing threats.
At the same time, Ethiopia’s government has the history of using terrorism-related prosecutions to clamp down on lawful freedom of speech and assembly and has been interfering in the religious affairs of its Islamic population and wrongfully arresting people.

The United States would be willing to help facilitate conversations between Ethiopia and Eritrea to try to ease tensions between the two sides, Acting U.S Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and a former US ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti, Donald Yamamoto told a briefing this week. Speaking on the eve of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s high-level meeting with 37 African foreign ministers in Washington on Thursday and Friday, Yamamoto said that US is actively committed to supporting a resumption of the peace talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea after both countries reiterated their readiness to resolve their decades-long border dispute.
Although there has not been major war since direct hostilities ended in 2000, both countries have been fighting through their proxies: armed rebel organizations that they host and support against each other. Their proxy war has spilled over to Somalia.
The high-level event, described as the largest African foreign policy event to date under President Donald Trump, on November 16 and 17 will include discussions on trade and investment, counterterrorism, and good governance. In addition to the ministerial attendees, African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat and other A.U. representatives will attend.
Saying that the US has been working with Ethiopia with regards to regional security since the era of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the current Prime Minister Hailemarim Desalegn, Donald Yamamoto said that conflicts such as the cross-border clashes in the Oromia and Somali areas are caused by lack of good governance, high unemployment, and economic injustices. Especially, good governance is one the biggest challenges facing Prime Minister Hailemarim, he said.
He also talked about water shortages in several regions, citing instances of farmers who used to produce three times per year now struggling to produce only once.The fact that Khat, mild narcotic leaf, is replacing coffee crops in regions such as Harar should be reason for concern, he said.
The Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs said the goal of the meeting is to craft policy that goes beyond aid to build mutually beneficial partnerships.
“If you look at the United States and our approach to not just Africa, but in the other regions of the world, it’s a much more multidimensional, very complex approach,” Yamamoto said. “It is not just only humanitarian assistance, but also developing capacity infrastructure, and also we’re looking at capacity building. In other words, we’re looking at how we can have sustainable economic growth.”

Center for Photography in Ethiopia (CPE) provides a learning and discussion platform for Ethiopian photographers and communities through various workshops, training, screenings, discussions, exhibitions and installations.It was founded by Maheder Haileselassie, a photographer based in Addis Abeba who is currently being mentored by John Fleetwood, a director of Photo: in South Africa. It’s part of the Creative Futures program that is funded by the European Union through Goethe-Institut.
CPE is currently giving the fourth workshop where 12 talented Ethiopian photographers Addis Aemero, Adiamseged Nigusse, Abdi Bekele, Bemnet Fekadu, Brook Getachew, Frehiwot Gebrelu, Jami Hassen, Meseret Argaw, Solomon Negus, Obsa Zerihun and Maheder Haileselassie are being mentored by an established Ethiopian photographer Michael Tsegaye for three months.
During this period, photographers are supported by individual, group and peer to peer meetings in addition to assignments and readings.

Exhibition – In Quest for in Kampala (October 2017)

CPE was invited by the Uganda Photo Press Awards 2017 which took place from 26 Oct-03 Nov 2017 in Kampala, Uganda. In Quest for, a collective exhibition curated by Katrin Peters-Klaphake and originally exhibited by Goethe-Institut Addis Abeba was opened at the Square Place in Kampala. In Quest for involves the work of six emerging Ethiopian photographers Abel Assefa, Brook Getachew, Eyoel Kefyalew, Meseret Argaw, Maheder Haileselassie and Zelalem Gizachew.
The work speaks to the notions of search and research, questions of communication and identity, ideas of wandering and wondering – of moving in the world with an open mind and open eyes.
Maheder along with photographers Meseret and Brook was in Kampala and has participated in the workshops, portfolio reviews and panel discussion that took place during this period. In Quest for will be open to public at the Square Place in Kampala till 21st of Nov, 2017.
Exhibition – Inspiring Women (August 2017)

(Pioneering journalist, activist and politician, Sophia Yilma Deressa pofiled here.)
CPE was invited by Goethe Insitut to take portraits of renowned women like Yetenbersh Nigussie, Tsedeniya Gebremarkos, Sophia Yilma and more that was exhibited in the institute hall for two months.

The focus of the exhibition was outstanding women who live and work in Addis Abeba, who pursue extraordinary careers, or are pioneers in male dominated areas. Women who break gender stereotypes and make independent choices and are actively involved in advancing women’s rights and supporting other girls and women was the main focus.

(The text and the photos provided by CPE.)
Visit CPE’s website here.

Several borrowers have given up paying on more than 9 billion birr in commercial farms debts for the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE). Teklewold Atnafu, Governor National Bank of Ethiopia, told the parliament’s budget and finance affairs standing committee on 06/11/2017 that though the default rate was not supposed to exceed 15 percent, it has reached unprecedented 25 percent this year. Teklewold said this was in large part related to massive credit the bank guaranteed for investors in the Gambella Regional State, which was later discovered that some were engaged in illegal behaviours such as using the loans for other purposes than was initially intended and abused the privileges of importing equipment with interest free, citing a report presented to the Prime Minister’s Office a year ago. DBE’s long time President, Esayas Bahre, was fired as result, who is curiously today attending educational training in South Korea on government sponsored fund.
Though not named by officials, there are some known figures in political and business circles who are responsible for using the loans to construct buildings and hotels in the capital and other towns. Among them, are an “investor” Fisseha Beyene, who was once jeweller in Addis Ababa and was granted credit to start farming in Gambella’s Itang region. Fisseha first started growing oil seed with 500 hectare and was given more land in the suing years, as far going to secure 2,000 hectares, with his added benefit of political access. Fesseha also owns Sapphire Addis Hotel, adjacent to Bole Medanailam Church, a hotel settled on 1300sq and described as a five star hotel. Others were former high command in the army such as Tsadkan Gebretensae, the former Chief of Staff, before dismissed by Meles Zenawi in 2002 and Yemane Kidane, a former member of the TPLF central committee, who also served in the Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs for several years, Dawit G.Egziabher, a business mogul and former TPLF member. The three associated to grow gum and incense in Gambella, after securing 3,000 hectares and large amount of credit from DBE. Their company is one of those that were singled out for fake reporting, bad audits and deliberate concealment and has not started paying back the debt even after the due date. No legal proceedings were brought against them. The three associated with other businessmen and politicians to launch Raya Brewery in the northern town of Maychew two years ago. They are majority shareholders and implicated in using the farm loans in favour of the brewery. Another investor on the list is Tiliksew Gedamu, a woman close to officials of the Amahra National Democratic Front, who owns four expensive hotels, the famous one being an 18-storey Grand Resort located on the shores of Lake Tana and three hotels in Debre Markos, Hawasa, and Gambela towns. Tiliksew also grows cotton in Gambella region 800 hectares. She is also one of the those business persons accused of using the commercial loans for hotel construction and importing vehicles interest free for purposes other than the farm.
Teklewold Atnafu in his parliament speech said that the government cannot do anything other than declaring the loans as defaulted, yet continuing to make loans to investors with through review and investigation, which in a way indicates that the people in question could get away with almost anything.

Twenty Chinese built long distance buses are being put in service next week in the Oromia region. The region has officially launched this pilot project today as part of an economic initiative that it says will address the inequality and economic marginalization believed to be the roots of the recent wave of unrest. 30 trucks have also been imported for freight transportation.
Gadaa Bus Share Company is a subsidiary of ODAA Integrated Transport Share Co., a scheme announced on March 2017 to initiate a program of radical economic and social reform through, among others, public-private partnerships to reduce youth unemployment. In the first phase the projects are said to include the Oda Integrated Transport Share Company, Kegna Beverage, Ambo-Gnemer Manufacturing, Agro-industry and Mining, Western Poultry Farm, and Oromia Construction.
The bus company would compete with the well-established Selam Bus Share Company, affiliated with the Tigray Liberation Front and Sky Bus S.C. and has plans to develop a car assembly facility in partnership with a foreign partner. The ambitious public-private partnerships aims to various stakeholders, including Oromia International Bank, Awash International Bank and insurance companies, as well as farmers and youth together to make the project successful.
Although Ethiopia has experienced more than a decade of double-digit economic growth, many point out that growth in Oromia and Amhara regions have been uneven, noninclusive and destabilizing. Many Oromo and Amhara entrepreneurs are absent in many industries because they are unable to compete with Tigrayan entrepreneurs who have superior access to local state networks and capital.

Chairman of Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) and an Ethiopian Catholic cardinal, Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel has been banned from entering Eritrea, in a mission for mediation talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Reporter wrote on Sunday.
Cardinals and bishops of other eleven countries who offered to act as mediators to resolve the long-running border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea were allowed to enter but Berhaneyesus Demerew has been banned because he is an Ethiopian national, the paper wrote citing sources. AMECEA members have started talking to government officials in Eritrea, according to the Reporter. This is the Cardinal’s personal commitment and the incident would not stop him from trying to mediate the two country’s crisis in the future, an unnamed confidante told the paper.
AMECEA is established in 1961 and now counts for more than 56 years of service. Since 1964 the head quarter of AMECEA is in Nairobi Kenya. Currently AMECEA member countries are Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In addition Djibouti and Somalia are Associate Members of the Conference.
It was recently reported that Washington would be willing to help facilitate conversations between the neighbouring nations saying Addis Ababa and Asmara had given the green light for mediation talks. Observers say the two countries, beset in their own internal problems, are eager for progress to be made on planned talks, and to see how far it can go.

In a series of two articles that came out in Addis Reporter magazine in February 1969, Gedamu Abraha and Solomon Deressa made a compellingly intense, vaguely philosophic exploration of the educated Ethiopian, the Hyphenated Ethiopian. Here is Part 1 published online for the first time.

An educated man worried about the education of the up-coming generation successfully carried an investigation to determine whether African students retain their lessons better when conclusions are offered first and the arguments then presented or when the arguments are marshalled and then conclusion drawn.
An official presented with decisions based on the investigation, after having paid due compliments to such an impressive study brought to a successful finish, added the following: “But, you see, the real problem is not where the conclusion should come, but how to deliver newspapers and magazines to the hinterland during the rainy season when the feeder roads are impassable. Does the position of the conclusion matter in an article that never reaches the reader?” Leonard Doob, a Yale sociologist, tells a story to this effect in his Communication in Africa for an altogether different reason. But the point is well taken.
Not so long ago Addis Reporter asked “Shall she be educated or shall she be ignorant?” perhaps we should ask “Are we educated or are we ignorant?” Perhaps we should ask “Are we educated or we we ignorant?” Leaving definitions of such dubious words as “educated” to those who earn their living defining and answering, we’ll make a simple division that will lead into statements that are really questions.
Coming from immobile life in small communities we have passed into the mobility of life in Dire Dawa, with its multi-dimensional, be it parochial culture; Asmara, with its undertow of Mediterranean gesticulations; and Addis Ababa, uneasily hovering on the verge of metropolitan internationalism. In short, the educated Ethiopian is Ethiopia in transition. The implications are obvious.
Passing from the annual harvest to the monthly salary and from the homestead to the apartment, we have exchanged communal security for individual destinies.
Our physical mobility has towed along a social mobility that has dashed traditional class differences to smithereens. Our prospects are becoming more and more dependent on levels of individual achievement rather than lineage.
Accomplishments have become more the yardstick against which we are measured than the steadfastness of our faith. Roles that used to be ordained by social structure have become manipulable. Might it be right to say that in our society the age of faith is slowly ceding to the age of research ad sanitation?
Unfortunately perhaps communication has gotten to a point where differences in culture are bulldozed. The other side of the coin, however, is that newspaper articles which tell us of other ways of life, books in Amharic that give us the excruciating details of the six-day war before the dead have buried their dead, and television documentaries that take us to the battlefront in the comfort of foam-rubber-cushioned armchairs, lager bottle in hand, daily stretch the boundaries of the individual’s imagination. Vicariously at least, we truly live not in any given community, but in the world at large. In a future “Star Trek” age we might even live in the universe at large.

Sudan has become the first Arab country to acquire the fourth generation Su-35 fighter jets from Russia just ahead of President Omar Ahmed al-Bashir’s first visit to Moscow on Thursday.
The first batch of jets were delivered late last week are considered the backbone air superiority fighters for the Russian airforce. The UAE signed a similar agreement earlier this year to develop the same jets with Russia.
Sudanese deputy air force commander, Salahuddin Abdul Khaliq Saeed, announced the deal in March. He told Sputnik news agency that the aircraft will contribute to the consolidation of Sudan’s defenses and will provide it protection from any threat.
The number of fighters delivered, however, was not released.
Thursday’s visit by Bahsir to Moscow will include a number of high level agreements expected between the two countries, according to government officials.
Find the whole story here.

Musa Bihi Abdi of the ruling Kulmiye party was declared the winner of Somaliland’s presidential election on Tuesday, by the election commission of the breakaway region.
Situated at the northern tip of east Africa on the Gulf of Aden – one of the busiest trade routes in the world – Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 and has been relatively peaceful since. The region of 4 million people has not been internationally recognized but it has recently drawn in sizeable investments from the Gulf.
In the election, Abdi won just over 55 percent of the vote, while opposition leader Abdirahman Iro took nearly 41 percent, election commission chairman Iman Warsame said. Turnout was 80 percent.
Find the whole story here.

Ethiopia’s prominent human rights organization, the Human Rights Council (HRCO) has urged the government to turn the rhetoric into tangible action in its commitment to upholding human rights, supporting democratic values. While welcoming the ruling coalition’s announcement to release political prisoners and close the infamous Maekelawi detention center in the capital, HRCO said there are many other similar “torture facilities” in the country and the government should shut down them all.

The 4-page report released Saturday by HRCO stated that since anti-government protests erupted three years ago in the Amhara and Oromia regions , government security forces, particularly the federal police and defences forces have been using excessive and unnecessary lethal forces on peaceful and unarmed civilians. HRCO said the federal government authorities have not made any meaningful investigations into alleged security force violations. As matter of fact, the reports reads, certain police and security officials hampered the discussion and adoption of the legislation on the use of force and accountability in the parliament, which was prepared some years ago by the Ethiopian Federal Attorney General, making it impossible to safeguard the lives of citizens and protect their rights, according to HRCO. Meanwhile, HRCO applauded certain regional government’s security forces’ effort in exercising restraint during protests, and making a move to investigate the response of security forces who made alleged human rights violations and held certain federal and defences force members responsible.

HRCO said it has been expressing serious concern about the restriction of the political space for the opposition, the increasing human right violations, and the danger this could pose for the very existence of country over the past twenty-five-year. “We call on the government to make concrete commitments to bring about deep reforms of laws, policies and actions towards ending longstanding political repression and human rights abuse in the country. And civil society institutions and the media should be allowed to function freely to play an instrumental role in the democratization process,” it concluded.

The Ethiopian government did not respond to requests for comment regarding the report.

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Foreign academics at state universities in Ethiopia are responding with frustration and anger to a decision by the Ethiopian government to reduce their pay. According to the decision, which was issued without prior notice to state universities on December 2017, 35.5% salary cut and a general tax of 35 percent will be applied to their annual income, which means a salary cut of 40 percent.

The decision is driven by the foreign currency shortages in the country. There are around 2,000 Indian faculty members and scores of Europeans in Ethiopian colleges and universities, according to the latest official figures. “Most of the Europeans have left but the Indians and a number of Filipinos who remain here very displeased with the decision,” one of the Indian professors teaching at the Addis Ababa University’s Institute of Foreign Language Studies told Ethiopia Observer, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The universities and colleges have implemented the decision since December, and deducted our salaries ever since,” he said. He said that this is contrary to the law, which exempts professors’ base salaries from taxes and reducing a salary mid-year is a violation of the contract. The professor said he is aware that the Filipino faculty in Axum University have returned to their countries and some Indians in other universities and colleges are either seeking jobs with international non-governmental organisations or considering returning home.

An official of the Ethiopian Ministry of Education contacted by the Ethiopia Observer admitted that a number of German nationals teaching at the Architecture Department at Addis Ababa University have left, but he said it had nothing to do with salary cut, rather it was because the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) aid fund dried out. Commenting on the case of Indians, he remained vague, only saying that the Ethiopian government cares about the interests and rights of faculty members.

The country’s higher education infrastructure has mushroomed in the last two decades but suffer due to funding cuts, unqualified lecturers, forcing the institutions to turn to hiring foreign academics. While the government needed to save money, cancelling wages of university lecturers would affect the quality of education, according to observers.

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BGI Ethiopia, Ethiopia’s largest brewing company and unit of the French Castel Group, is set to take over full ownership of Zebidar Brewery, a relatively young player in the industry whose majority share is owned by Unibra, the Belgian-based company, writes the Amharic bi-weekly on Sunday. The Reporter newspaper quoted reliable sources as saying that BGI has offered unspecified amount to buy the brewery that has been producing a beer under its own name since January 2017. Zebidar’s board members and BGI officials are about to come to final agreements, even though the exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, according to the paper. Unibra holds 60 percent of the Zebidar brewery and the rest of the share is owned its local partner, Jemar Hulugeb Industry S.C..

The acquisition of Zebidar Brewery will give BGI, ownership of the plant that sits at 150,000sqm plot of land and has an annual production capacity of 350,000 hectoliters. Zebidar intoducded a lager style beer with a 33cl bottle with a pull off, ring pull bottle cap, which the company described was a “new innovation for the Ethiopian beer market.”  The brewery is located in the SNNPR, close to Welkite town, 167 kms from Addis Ababa.

On November 2017, it was also reported that BGI Ethiopia has offered 2.5 billion birr to fully acquire Raya Brewery, a brewery located in the northern part of the country, in which BGI is the majority shareholder. The purchase is to be finalized yet.

BGI’s expansion plan is mainly driven by the success of its product, St. George, Ethiopia’s oldest beer brand that Castel Group bought in 1998 and two other brands it added, Amber and Castel. Though still the number one player in Ethiopia, BGI is facing fierce competition from Heineken’s popular brand, Walia and two other brands, Habesah, unit of the privately-owned Dutch brewer Bavaria and Dashen. Meta Abo Diageo, which acquired Meta Abo Brewing in 2012 for $225 million is not faring that strong important presence.

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Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki accused interested circles in Sudan and Ethiopia of attempting to create a conflict between Khartoum and Asmara, stressed that there were no Egyptian troops at the Sawa base, which borders the Sudanese border.

On Thursday, Sudan officially announced sending troops and equipment to the border with Eritrea and spoke about security threats after the alleged arrival of Egyptian troops to the Eritrean military base of Sawa, an area bordering the eastern province of Kassala in Sudan.

In an interview with Eritrean television on Sunday evening, Afwerki ridiculed Sudan’s allegations about the presence of Egyptian troops at the Sawa military base and slammed the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV channel which broadcast the news. Find the whole story at the Sudan Tribune.

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