CAF President Ahmad Visits Ethiopia

CAF President Ahmad has arrived in Ethiopia to visit sports facilities and interact with stakeholders towards the development of football.

He arrived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Sunday upon completion of his three-day official visit to Burkina Faso.

The CAF President commenced his Ethiopia mission on Monday, 7 August 2017, with the Youth and Sports Academy his first point of call. He was accompanied by CAF Executive Committee member, Souleiman Hassan Waberi and the Ethiopian Minister of Youth and Sports, Erestu Yirda.

“I am happy to be here. We need more and more of such facilities. CAF is willing to support football development not only financially but technically too. Our main target is to develop African football”, he said after a tour of the facilities at the Youth and Sports Academy.

His next stop was the Addis Ababa National Stadium, which construction started in 2013. The 60,000-capacity stadium, built strictly to FIFA and CAF standards is 77 per cent complete, and should be ready to host games by June 2018 according to the Project Manager.

The Ethiopian Minister of Youth and Sports commended the CAF President on the visit adding the Government is committed to building new facilities to serve the sporting needs of the continent.

“Your visit confirms your interest to develop football. The stadium will be ready not only for Ethiopia, but also Africa and the global football family. This clearly shows how committed and willing to go forward as a society,” Yirda said.

CAF President Ahmad summed his tour with a visit to the CAF Centre of Excellence located in CMC, a suburb of the capital, Addis Ababa.

“The idea of the project started in 2003 when CAF took the decision to build three Technical Centres in Cameron, Ethiopia and Senegal. The Ethiopian Government allocated a plot of 50,000-square metres and facilitated the work by allowing the workers and logistics free of charge to CAF, after signing of the MoU between CAF and the Ethiopian Government.

“CAF started the construction eight years later when we signed the new MOU which says that the academy will be built in two phases. The First Phase is already done with the building the fence and two blocks, and we are looking forward to the second phase,” said Sahlu Gebrewold Gebremariam, the Director of the academy.

“CAF will continue supporting but we have to know that with the new reforms we won’t go forward until we know where we are standing and how the monies have been spent. Our auditing team will do the reports and based on that CAF will take the next step. This will not be applied only here but also everything related to CAF and African football for the sake of transparency and the game,” said Ahmad.

The CAF President is expected to meet Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, later in the day to wrap up his tour.

Source: CAF

Ethiopia anti-corruption sweep snares a deputy minister

ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia's biggest anti-corruption sweep in years has caught another high level official, Alemayehu Gojo, deputy minister of finance and economic cooperation.

Gojo, who is a member of Ethiopian Parliament had his immunity revoked by a vote in the Parliament on Friday, a necessary step before he can be prosecuted for corruption.

Gojo was immediately put under arrest after the parliament voted to lift his immunity.

Another senior ex-government official Zaid Woldegebriel, former Director General of Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA) was also arrested on Friday.

Ethiopian government has identified corruption and rent-seeking activities as part of the reason Ethiopia was rocked by sweeping unrest in 2016.

The Ethiopian government has since then promised to crack down on grand scale corruption which has afflicted one of the world's fastest growing economies.

The anti-corruption sweep has already seen the arrest of more than 50 individuals, including both Ethiopians and foreigners in the business, public service, as well as military circles.

Read more here

Machete-wielding Muslims attack Ethiopian Christian for evangelizing

A group of machete-wielding Muslims in Hirna, Ethiopia, attacked a local Christian just because the latter was evangelizing, leaving the man with life-threatening wounds at the back of his head.

(REUTERS / Siegfried Modola)Orthodox Christian pilgrims pray by a wall at Bet Medhane Alem rock church in Lalibela. August 19, 2012.

The 27-year-old Christian, whose name has been withheld for security reasons, was alone in his home in Hirna on July 16 when the group of Muslims arrived and attacked him with machetes. A source told World Watch Monitor that the attackers were irate because of the victim's preaching activities and noted that the group had damaged the roof of the local Full Gospel Church prior to the incident.

The victim needed to undergo life-saving surgery and was referred to a hospital in Asebe Teferi. He was then sent to another hospital in Adama, where he underwent the surgery to stabilize his condition. However, the doctor who operated on him there believed that he still needed more specialized treatment in another facility.

Christians in Ethiopia face a difficult life because of the harsh forms of persecution and harassment from the Muslim community. In 2017 alone, persecution charity Open Doors recorded more than 100 incidents of physical attacks targeting Christians and their businesses.

In May, Eternity News reported that 22 Christians in Ethiopia's Kucha province who have been in prison for five years for allegedly "obstructing development" experienced having their appeal postponed again. The charge against them is usually used versus evangelical Christians or members of the religious or ethnic minority.

The charges stemmed from a federal government rule five years ago which said teachers must teach students during the first three years of schooling using their own tribal language. However, the government in Kucha only approved the Gamo language to be used for teaching. More than 600 were arrested as protests cropped up across the region.

Muslim and Orthodox protesters were later freed, but 303 evangelical Christians remained in jail. Their sentencing dates were deferred so many times and many were released over the years, but the 22 Christians remain in prison until now, with vague hopes for a set date for their appeal hearing. Read more here

Inside the doping hotspot of Ethiopia: dodgy testing and EPO over the counter

 The Guardian was able to purchase EPO at this chemist close to the national stadium in Addis Ababa. No questions were asked. Photograph: ARD

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Special report by Martha Kelner in Addis Ababa

Friday 4 August 2017 11.30 BSTLast modified on Friday 4 August 2017 12.38 BST

Inside Ethiopia’s flagship stadium, the bleachers are painted the green, yellow and red of the flag. The country’s best athletes have converged in Addis Ababa for the national championships while the great and good of Ethiopian sport gather trackside in matching beige suits and white baseball caps.

Haile Gebrselassie is among them, handing out medals in his capacity as the president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation. He receives a louder cheer than anyone when introduced by the stadium announcer. Two Olympic and four world 10,000m titles mark him out as one of the greatest distance runners of all time and the most famous man in Ethiopia, where athletics is the national sport. His reputation has helped build an enviable property and business portfolio, making him a wealthy man.

At one end of the stadium a billboard pictures other distance running greats Kenenisa Bekele, Tirunesh Dibaba and Almaz Ayana, whose extraordinary 10,000m world record at the Rio Olympics last summer was greeted with disbelief in some quarters. Beneath them, in bold writing, is the statement: “It is possible to be the best without doping.”

However a joint investigation by the Guardian, the German broadcaster ARD and Holland Media Combination suggests that may not be true in every case. It shows how easy it is to obtain doping products in the country and there emerges a prevailing sense of disorganisation at the Ethiopian anti-doping agency, which is charged with testing athletes. A hugely successful Ethiopian athlete is also caught on undercover film, seeking a new doping programme and admitting to having taken performance-enhancing drugs before claiming one of her biggest titles.

The findings may raise concern for British Athletics, which holds annual high-altitude training camps in Ethiopia for top athletes, including Mo Farah, who is attempting to do the distance double for a third time at the world championships in London, which begin on Friday. Read more here

Ethiopian parliament strips immunity of state minister

Ethiopian parliament strips immunity of state minister

Finance Min. Alemayehu Guijo arrested for alleged embezzlement, according to media reports

World Bulletin / News Desk

The Ethiopian Parliament on Friday stripped the immunity of Finance and Economic Cooperation State Minister for alleged embezzlement, local media said.

Alemayehu Gujjo, who is also a parliamentarian, was later arrested, according to FANA Broadcasting Corporate.

The measure against the state minister was taken upon the proposal of Federal Attorney General Getachew Ambaye during an urgent meeting of parliament.

Ambaye said the government had been bringing to court individuals suspected of corruption in five federal level institutions and also Addis Ababa, which is an autonomous city administration.

The parliament lifted Gujjo's immunity in a decision passed with only one abstention in a 547-seat House.

The minister's immunity was stripped on the grounds of having acted without the approval of the Federal Public Procurement and Property Administration Agency, and having made a payment pretending the task given to a certain firm without auction was accomplished.

The Ethiopian government on July 25 arrested 34 senior public officials, investors and brokers for alleged embezzlement of public funds. Later the number was reported to go up to 48 in an ongoing crackdown on corruption. Read more here