ADDIS ABABA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia has planned to increase the number of its industrial parks to 15 by June 2018 as part of its efforts to boost manufacturing and export.
Speaking exclusively to Xinhua on Thursday, Arkebe Oqubay Board Chairperson of Ethiopian Industrial Park Corporation (EIPC), said Ethiopia's aim in building more industrial parks is to enable the manufacturing sector to contribute to 20 percent of Ethiopia's GDP and 50 percent of the export volume by 2025.
Currently Ethiopia has seven operational industrial parks with Mekelle and Kombolcha being the latest additions commissioned earlier this month.
Mekelle and Kombolcha industrial parks were both built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) at a cost of 100 million U.S. dollars and 90 million dollars respectively.
"In January 2018 Kilinto Pharmaceutical and Bole Lemi 2 industrial parks will be commissioned, by May Bahir Dar and Jimma industrial parks will be operational, and in June expect Debre Birhan and Arerti industrial parks to start operations" said Oqubay.
The Ethiopian government has already announced that two other industrial parks, Dire Dawa and Adama will be commissioned in September.
The two industrial parks are also being constructed by CCECC at a cost of 190 million and 125 million dollars respectively.
"Industrial parks will initiate fast economic growth and enable structural economic change through a high tech manufacturing industry," said Oqubay.
He further said with Ethiopia planning to sustain 14 years of double-digit growth for a decade in order to create 2 million direct and 4.4 million indirect manufacturing jobs, the bulk of them will come from industry parks. Read more here
Thousands of Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia are in a state of limbo as they try to return home after being ordered to leave the Gulf state.
On March 29, Saudi Arabia launched a campaign it dubbed "Nation Without Violations," giving all foreign immigrants living there illegally 90 days to leave without incurring a penalty. They were told they could return later after applying and going through the immigration process.
As of the beginning of July, 111,000 Ethiopians had agreed to leave Saudi Arabia and 45,000 had successfully returned to Ethiopia, according to Meles Alem, the spokesperson of the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Many remained stranded, however, due to an inability to get a seat on overbooked flights.
Saudi government officials believe there are about 400,000 Ethiopians living illegally in the country. Most are employed as maids or other domestic workers; they have few legal rights and endure widespread abuse.
FILE - Ethiopia migrant workers seeking jobs in Saudi Arabia are turned back on March 16, 2012, in Haradh, a town in western Yemen.
In early July, VOA Amharic reported that 110 people were stuck for days in a community center in Riyadh, waiting for open seats on flights back to Addis Ababa.
"It is difficult for me to sit or sleep. There is another pregnant woman here and what is going to happen to us?" the woman told Gabina, VOA's Amharic youth program.
Another woman said, "We don't have proper sanitation here. About 20 people are jammed in one room."
Most of those who were stranded last week have returned to Addis, but many more are trying to get out as soon as possible.
It is unclear how many foreign workers will be affected. Middle East Monitor reported there are about 5 million illegal foreign workers living in the country. Saudi Arabia's total population is 32 million, and it relies heavily on imported labor.
Government officials have said the move will improve job prospects for Saudis. It will "revive the economies of companies and establishments and protect small businesses and projects from illegal expats, while also reducing unemployment rates and creating a safe economic and social environment," said Turki Al-Manea, general director of the branch of the ministry of labor and social development in Qassim, according to Arab News.
The head of the Ethiopian community in Riyadh, Shawel Getahun, warned that people should not try to start the process of traveling now.
FILE - Ethiopian migrants sleep out in the open near a transit center where they wait to be repatriated, in the western Yemeni town of Haradh, on the border with Saudi Arabia, May 21, 2013.
"People who actually bought tickets should consider going on time. Those who haven't bought tickets should process their papers in due time before it's too late," he said.
History of abuses
This is not the first such deportation. In 2013 and 2014, a similar effort led to the deportation of tens of thousands of Ethiopians. Many were detained, beaten and held in squalid conditions prior to deportation, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Yasin Kakande, a Ugandan journalist who has reported from the Middle East for more than a decade, said a traditional system known as "Kafala sponsorship" exists throughout the Gulf states, leading many African migrants to live in a state of indentured servitude.
The system gives Gulf citizens the right to sponsor foreign workers, who often must serve as maids or servants for an indefinite amount of time and for little or no pay.
"Most of the workers whom they refer to as illegal actually come to the countries legally," Kakande told VOA. "They have high hopes of working and helping their families at home, but once they get into these countries … they find that there are a lot of abuses, that they cannot get away."
In recent years, stories of maids being raped, beaten and starved have generated worldwide outrage. In one case that went viral on YouTube, a maid in Kuwait was left dangling from a seventh story window while her employer filmed it, making no attempt to help before the woman lost her grip and fell.
"Most of them, what they try to do, is try to run away from their sponsors to try to find some justice, and in the end they end up becoming illegals because the law doesn't give them a chance to get out of their employer," Kakande said. Read more here
Tewodros Kassahun’s manager meets me on a quiet suburban road inside a gated compound. With their neoclassical mansions, manicured lawns and white picket fences, compounds such as this are a rarity in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and this one is as grand as it gets. Still, I’m underwhelmed as we turn in to the driveway of the house, which, by contrast with its neighbours, is relatively modest. This is, after all, the home of the biggest star in Ethiopian musical history: Teddy Afro.
Teddy Afro … somewhat unintentionally, a flag-waver for the Ethiopian opposition. Photograph: Mulugeta Ayene/AP
He greets me in the living room, padding around in a tracksuit and socks. The house is in a bit of a mess, and he apologises – they’re clearing up the remains of an album launch party over the weekend. He and his manager are in high spirits. Three days earlier, they released Ethiopia, his fifth studio album; it had a record $650,000 recording budget, was the fastest-selling record in the country’s history, and topped Billboard’s world albums chart. Teddy’s relief is palpable – the release was beset by delays – as he settles into a chair and begins outlining his philosophy. “Art is closer to magic than logic,” he says, beaming cheerfully.
It is difficult to overstate Teddy Afro’s popularity and importance in Ethiopia today. “His level of celebrity is simply unprecedented,” says Heruy Arefe-Aine, the organiser of the country’s Ethiopian Music festival.
Ethiopia has long had a remarkably unified pop music culture – a national canon heard on buses and in bars across the country – but even in this context, Teddy stands out. He is the only artist of his generation to have risen to the level of Mahmoud Ahmed and Aster Aweke, the two greats of post-1960 Ethiopian pop, but at home at least he has comfortably outrun them both. Moreover, his significance reaches well beyond national borders: his popularity among the 2-million-strong Ethiopian diaspora, especially in the US, is unparalleled. The Ethio-Canadian R&B singer the Weeknd has cited him as a major influence.
But he is also a controversial figure. In 2008, he was imprisoned for a hit-and-run offence, which he has always denied he was responsible for. Many regard the jail sentence as a politically motivated move by Ethiopia’s authoritarian government, and a reaction to his 2005 album Yasteseryal, released in the year of a hotly disputed election. The lead single, whose video featured archive footage of the former emperor Haile Selassie and the bloody revolution that followed his reign, was interpreted by many as an indictment of everything that followed the emperor’s demise, including the current regime.
He became, perhaps somewhat unintentionally, a flag-waver for the Ethiopian opposition, a reputation he has maintained. The song is still, for all practical purposes, banned.
He makes for an unlikely political radical, and indeed his manager makes clear from the outset that politics is off the agenda. But he is nonetheless keen to explain the new album’s message. Lyrics are everything in Ethiopian music, and his – rich in idiom, allusion and wordplay – have excited his fans ever since he broke on to the scene in the early 00s. He argues that the country, under a state of emergency after violent anti-government protests last year, is slipping backwards. “We used to be a model for Africa,” he says, “but, because of our government, our country is divided.” The album is a call for unity and the rehabilitation of Ethiopia’s glorious past. “This younger generation is in a dilemma about their history,” he continues. “I feel a responsibility to teach them about the good things from their history. They should be proud of their achievements.”
Glancing references to the government aside, this is fairly inoffensive stuff. But in fact the politics are tricky. At the centre of the album is the story of Emperor Tewodros II, a 19th-century warrior-king whose rule is often seen as marking the beginning of modern Ethiopian history. “He fought and died for this country,” says Teddy, gesturing at a painting of the monarch on the living room wall, and pointing out that they share the same name. But the problem for many of Teddy’s critics is that his is a fiercely disputed view of that history. To many modern Ethiopians, Tewodros represents feudalism and imperialism. To some, his rule was characterised by the conquest and subjugation of other ethnic groups. But to his supporters, he united the country and resisted European colonialism.
Teddy’s previous album, Tikur Sew, released in 2012, did something similar for an even more controversial figure, Emperor Menelik II, hero of the Battle of Adwa in 1896, which saw the defeat of the invading Italians, but also the man responsible for the conquest of much of modern-day Ethiopia. Teddy, like Tewodros, Menelik and Selassie, hails from the Amhara region; his critics see him as peddling a sort of nostalgic Amhara nationalism. His living room also contains an original sword belonging to Menelik, the old imperial flag, and a photograph of Selassie. “The younger generation need to know what our fathers did for this country,” he says. “It is clear that Menelik fought for Ethiopia, for unity, and against colonialism.”
Although the album Ethiopia contains an eclectic mix of influences (the second track, Semberé, could be by Manu Chao), and lyrics in several of Ethiopia’s 88 languages, Teddy remains in many ways an Amhara musician. He recalls sitting as a young child on the knee of Hirut Bekele, a popular Amhara vocalist from the 60s and 70s, as she performed in small clubs in Addis Ababa. “She was like a queen,” he remembers. His early work was reggae-infused but in his recent albums he has returned to a more recognisably Ethiopian sound, though funkier and insistently catchy. Traditional vibrato vocals, the itchy triplets of traditional Amharan rhythms, highly polished synth-heavy production: all this is the language of modern Ethiopian pop.
The latter has often been a source of frustration to Ethiopia’s musical old guard, who lament the lack of instrumentation among the younger generation, although Teddy points out that a live band plays on the album’s final track. He is a child of two musicians – his mother was a dancer who toured the world, his father a songwriter for a police orchestra in 50s Addis Ababa – but he came of age in the 80s under the military regime known as the Derg, when live music all but disappeared as a result of a strict overnight curfew that lasted for 16 years. Like most pop stars of his generation who began their career amid the heady post-Derg optimism of the late-90s club circuit, Teddy sings and plays keyboard.
It is perhaps for this reason that Teddy is almost unheard of beyond Ethiopia and its diaspora. Despite its distinctly Ethiopian vernacular, his music is still pop: cosmopolitan and perfect for dancing to. Musicians such as Mahmoud Ahmed or Mulatu Astatke (the father of Ethiopian jazz) appeal to western audiences drawn to a more exotic sound, complete with live bands. Teddy doesn’t offer that. But in any case, his focus is closer to home. “This is a dangerous time,” he says. “My priority now is Ethiopia.” Read from the source here
July 12, 2017 - US President Donald J. Trump has picked a new Ambassador to Ethiopia, America’s strong anti-terrorism ally in the restive region of East Africa. The new Ambassador, Michael A. Raynor, is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and has served as an American diplomat since 1988. Currently, he is the Director of the Office of Career Development and Assignments in the Bureau of Human Resources of the Department of State.
Raynor has had many foreign placements, including service as general services officer at the U.S. Embassy in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and consular officer at the Embassy in Luxembourg. He also served as management officer at the embassies in Djibouti, Guinea and Namibia.
He has a B.A. degree in International Affairs from Lafayette College, graduating in 1984, and a Master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, graduating in 1986. The nomination was welcomed by the Senate on May 25 and is awaiting approval in the Committee on Foreign Relations. He will replace the outgoing Ambassador, Patricia M. Haslach.
The United States first established diplomatic relations with Ethiopia in 1903, and has maintained them ever since, despite changing forms of government. The diplomatic relationship between Ethiopia and the United States is important, complex and focused on four broad goals: (1) protecting American citizens, (2) strengthening democratic institutions and expanding human rights, (3) spurring broad-based economic growth and promoting development, and (4) advancing regional peace and security, the Us state government website reads.
July 11, 2017 - Thirty-eight Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voiced concern about the political situation in Ethiopia, according to Africa News.
In a letter titled, ‘EU response to the human rights situation in Ethiopia,’ and addressed to the European Union (E.U.) High representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, the MEPs called for action to be taken relative to 2016 protest crackdown in three states of the country.
They also asked for action on ‘‘the continuing systematic sexual violence against ethnic minority women across the country, as well as the case of a British citizen, Andy Tsege, currently held on death row.’‘
The letter issued in Brussels and dated July 7, 2017; bemoaned how the government had flatly refused to allow an independent probe into the protests but to rather stick to a government led inquiry they described as ‘highly controversial for significant reasons.’
“Instead, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC), whose impartiality is questionable, released on 18 April 2017 the findings of its own inquiry. This report is highly controversial for significant reasons: not only does it underestimate the number of casualties, but it also considers the security measures taken as mostly ‘fair and proportional,” the letter read.
On the subject of the UK citizen currently on death row, the letter said: ‘‘Andy Tsege, a UK citizen and father of three from London. Andy is a campaigner who had previously addressed the European Parliament on the need for freedom and democratisation in Ethiopia.
‘‘In June 2014 he was kidnapped and rendered to Ethiopia as part of the Ethiopian Government’s crackdown on political opponents and civil rights activists.
‘‘Andy was held in secret detention in solitary confinement for over a year. He faces a sentence of death for his opposition to the Ethiopian regime, which was handed down in absentia while he was living in London. We call on you to do all you can to secure Andy’s return to his family in the UK.’‘
In May this year, the Ethiopian government formally responded to a resolution passed by MEPs condemning the country’s human rights situation and what it called ‘political persecution.’
The response was carried in a communique issued by the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels, Belgium – the seat of the European Union.
The response titled ‘‘The EP Resolution on Ethiopia lacks understanding on important issues,’‘ tackled five major areas chiefly amongst them, the arrest of leading opposition figure, Dr. Merera Gudina, the state of emergency and Ethiopia’s internal probe into protest deaths.
The two other areas were on the human right situation and finally on the political space. The authorities insisted that the country was making headway with wide-ranging reforms, which needed the support of the MEPs and not their criticisms.
Ethiopia said it was disappointed that the MEPs failed to recognize that the government had opened talks with 17 opposition parties and had also launched its second National Human Rights Action Plan as part of efforts to deepen its democratic credentials.
The government has yet to comment on the resolution by 14 United States Senators who are also calling for the opening of the democratic space and respect for human rights.
Ethiopia Today bringing you recent information about Ethiopia. It bring you, news, Amharic movies, Musics and many clips. subscribe and get many Videos on time
