National Parks of Ethiopia

Ethiopia is also a land of natural contrasts, from the tops of the rugged Simien mountains to the depths of the Danakil Depression, at 120 meters below sea level one of the lowest dry land points on earth. The cornucopia of natural beauty that blesses  Ethiopia offers an astonishing variety of landscapes: Afro-Alpine highlands  soaring to around 4,300 meters, deserts sprinkled with salt flats and yellow sulphur, lake lands with rare and beautiful birds, moors and mountains, the  splendor of the Great Rift Valley, white-water rivers, savannah teeming with game, giant waterfalls, dense and lush jungle  the list is endless.

Ethiopia's many national parks enable the visitor to enjoy the country's scenery and its wildlife,  conserved in natural habitats, and offer opportunities for travel adventure unparalleled in Africa.
Awash National Park 
Awash National Park  is the oldest and most developed wildlife reserve in Ethiopia. Featuring the 1,800-metre Fantalle Volcano, extensive mineral hot-springs and extraordinary  volcanic formations, this natural treasure is bordered to the south by the Awash  River and lies 225 kilometers east of the capital, Addis Ababa.

The wildlife consists mainly of East African plains animals, but there are now no giraffe or  buffalo. Oryx, bat-eared fox, caracal, aardvark, colobus and green monkeys, Anubis and Hamadryas baboons, klipspringer, leopard, bushbuck, hippopotamus,  Soemmering's gazelle, cheetah, lion, kudu and 450 species of bird all live  within the park's 720 square kilometers.

Bale Mountains National Park

The Bale Mountains,  with their vast moorlands - the lower reaches covered with St. John's wort- and  their extensive heathland, virgin woodlands, pristine mountain streams and alpine climate remain an untouched and beautiful world. Rising to a height of  more than 4,000 meters, the range borders Ethiopia's southern highlands, whose  highest peak, Mount Tullu Deemtu, stands at 4,377 meters.

The establishment  of the 2,400-square-kilometre Bale Mountains National Park was crucial to the survival of the mountain nyala, Menelik's bushbuck and the Simien red fox. This  fox is one of the most colorful members of the dog family and more abundant here than anywhere else in Ethiopia. All three endemic animals thrive in this environment, the nyala in particular often being seen in large numbers. The Bale Mountains offer some fine high-altitude horse and foot trekking, and the streams of the park - which become important rivers further downstream - are well-stocked with rainbow and brown trout. 

Gambela National Park 

The Baro River area, accessible by land or air through the western Ethiopian town of Gambela, remains a place of adventure and challenge. Traveling across the endless undulating plains of high Sudanese grass, visitors can enjoy a sense of achievement in just finding their way. This is Ethiopia's true tropical zone and here are found all the elements of the African safari, enhanced by a distinctly Ethiopian flavor.

Nile perch weighing  100 kilos can be caught in the waters of the Baro, snatched from the jaws of the  huge crocodiles that thrive along the riverbank. The white-eared kob also haunts the Baro, along with other riverbank residents that include the Nile lechwe, buffalo, giraffe, tiang, waterbuck, roan antelope, zebra, bushbuck, Abyssinian reedbuck, warthog, hartebeest, lion,  elephant and hippopotamus. 

Omo National Park      Far to the south-west lies Omo National Park, the largest in the country, with an area of 4,068 square kilometers. It is a vast expanse of true wilderness, adjacent to  the Omo River, which flows southwards into Lake Turkana and is one of the richest andleast-visited  wildlife sanctuaries in eastern Africa. Eland, oryx, Burchell's zebra, Lelwel hartebeest, buffalo, giraffe, elephant, waterbuck, kudu, lion, leopard and cheetah roam within the park's boundaries. The Omo Valley is  virtually free of human habitation but is rich in palaeo-anthro-pological  remains. According to scientific research done in 1982 by the University of California at Berkeley, hominid remains from the Omo Valley probably date back more than four million years. Much of Africa's volcanic activity is concentrated along the immense 5,000-kilometre crack in the earth's surface known as the Rift Valley. It is the result of two roughly parallel faults, between which, in distant geological time, the crust was weakened and the land subsided. The valley walls - daunting blue-grey ridges of  volcanic basalt and granite - rise sheer on either side to towering heights of 4,000 meters. The valley floor, 50 kilometers or more across, encompasses some of the world's last true wildernesses. Ethiopia is often  referred to as the 'water tower' of eastern Africa because of the many rivers that pour off its high tableland, and a visit to this part of the Rift Valley, studded with lakes, volcanoes and savannah grassland, offers the visitor a true  safari experience. The Omo River  tumbles its 350-kilometre way through a steep inaccessible valley before slowing its pace as it nears the lowlands and then meanders through flat, semi-desert bush, eventually running into Lake Turkana. Since 1973, the river has proved a major attraction for white-water rafters. The season for rafting is between September and October, when the river is still high from the June to September  rains but the weather is drier. The river passes varied scenery, including an open gallery forest of tamarinds and figs, alive with colobus monkeys. Under the canopy along the riverbanks may be seen many colorful birds. Goliath herons, blue-breasted kingfishers, white-cheeked turacos, emerald-spotted wood doves and red-fronted bee-eaters are all rewarding sights, while monitor lizards may be glimpsed scuttling into the undergrowth. Beyond the forest, hippos graze on the savannah slopes against the mountain walls, and waterbuck, bushbuck and Abyssinian ground hornbills are sometimes to be seen. Abundant wildlife, spirited rapids, innumerable side creeks and waterfalls, sheer inner canyons and  hot springs all combine to make the Omo one of the world's classic river  adventures. East of the Omo  River and stretching south towards the Chew Bahir basin lies the Mago National Park, rich in wildlife and with few human inhabitants. The vegetation is mainly  savannah grassland and bush, extending across an area of 2,160 square kilometers. Mammal species total 81, including hartebeest, giraffe, roan  antelope, elephant, lion, leopard and perhaps even a rare black rhino.

Simien Mountains National Parks

The Simien Mountain  massif is a broad plateau, cut off to the north and west by an enormous single crag over 60 kilometers long. To the south, the tableland slopes gently down to  2,200 meters, divided by gorges 1,000 meters deep which can take more than two  days to cross. Insufficient geological time has elapsed to smooth the contours of the crags and buttresses of hardened basalt.Within this  spectacular splendor live the Walia (Abyssinian) ibex, Simien red fox and Gelada baboon - all endemic to Ethiopia - as well as the Hamadryas baboon,  klipspringer and bushbuck. Birds such as the lammergeyer, augur buzzard,  Verreaux's eagle, kestrel and falcon also soar above this mountain retreat.Twenty kilometers  north-east of Gondar, the Simien Mountains National Park covers 179 square  kilometers of highland area at an average elevation of 3,300 meters. Ras Dashen,  at 4,620 meters the highest peak in Ethiopia, stands adjacent to the  park. The Simien escarpments, which are often compared to the Grand Canyon in the United States  of America, have been adopted by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.

Who is Birtukan Mideksa?

Birtukan Mideksa

Birtukan Mideksa

Birtukan Mideksa was born in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia and attended the Yekatit 12 secondary school (also known as Etege Menen). After graduating from high school, she attended Addis Ababa University where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Law. She practiced law in the third district of the federal judiciary. In 2014 Birtukan received Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University WEB Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

While she was working for the federal judiciary, Birtukan was appointed to be a judge at the 3rd district court of the federal first instant court. During that time, she presided over a high-profile case of the former defense minister and top ranking official of TPLF, Siye Abraha who was accused of corruption. She set the defendant free on bail, and was surprised minutes later when government authorities arrested Siye while he was walking out of the court accompanied by his family and friends.

Mideksa decided to join a political party to help bring about change, including recognition of the rule of law, and full respect for the implementation of the constitution. She joined the Rainbow Ethiopia: Movement for Democracy and Social Justice Party, and later, Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD). In the election of 2005, her party won over a third of the seats. Party members believed they would have won even more seats if not for voting and counting irregularities. After the election, the governing party started to round up opposition party leaders, Mideksa, who was convicted of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and was sentenced to life in prison. She was pardoned in 2007 after lengthy negotiations and after she, along with other leaders of the opposition, spent 18 months in prison.

Mideksa later founded UDJ (Unity for Democracy and Justice) with the same principles that guided CUD. The need for having the new party name came from the fact that the ruling party's election commission awarded to a splinter group from CUD (aka Kinijit). Birtukan was elected to be a chairperson of the UDJ, which has the goal of bringing about change in Ethiopia by peaceful means.

Mideksa decided to join a political party to help bring about change, including recognition of the rule of law, and full respect for the implementation of the constitution. She joined the Rainbow Ethiopia: Movement for Democracy and Social Justice Party, and later, Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD). In the election of 2005, her party won over a third of the seats. Party members believed they would have won even more seats if not for voting and counting irregularities. After the election, the governing party started to round up opposition party leaders, Mideksa, who was convicted of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and was sentenced to life in prison. She was pardoned in 2007 after lengthy negotiations and after she, along with other leaders of the opposition, spent 18 months in prison.

Mideksa later founded UDJ (Unity for Democracy and Justice) with the same principles that guided CUD. The need for having the new party name came from the fact that the ruling party's election commission awarded to a splinter group from CUD (aka Kinijit). Birtukan was elected to be a chairperson of the UDJ, which has the goal of bringing about change in Ethiopia by peaceful means.

On December 28, 2008, Mideksa was re-arrested. Her 2007 pardon was revoked and she was sentenced to life in prison. Human Rights Watch called the arrest politically motivated.The Ethiopian government claimed that her pardon had been conditional on "an apology for her crimes," and that it had ordered her re-arrest after hearing reports that she had publicly denied having apologized for her actions or asking for a pardon. Elizabeth Blunt of the BBC said that since her arrest, Mideksa, whom she described as "one of the younger and more charismatic leaders of the coalition which did so astonishingly well against the ruling party in the 2005 elections," had become "even more of a heroine, attracting widespread sympathy as a single mother separated from her baby daughter."

In December 2009, Amnesty International categorized Birtukan's imprisonment as "unjust and politically motivated" The organization also launched an international campaign demanding her release, challenging the Ethiopian government's claim that her incarceration was a legal matter.

On October 6, 2010, Mideksa was released from prison. According to government spokesman Shimeles Kemal, Mideksa submitted a pardon plea in October 2010, while the justice ministry quoted a statement in which she expressed regret for denying her 2007 pardon. The United Kingdom's Minister for Africa, Henry Bellingham, welcomed her release, stating "This is an important step forward. We have always taken the view that her re-imprisonment was not in Ethiopia's interest and a solution should be found ... for her to be released."

In 2011, Mideksa was awarded the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, giving her five months in Washington, D.C. to "study the principles of democracy."

As of 30 March 2013, Mideksa was a fellow at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

Encouraged by the political reforms started by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in April 2018, Birtukan returned to Ethiopia in November 2018. On November 23rd of 2018 she was elected and sworn in as chairwoman of the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE). Good Luck!

Hamza Mohammed develop wireless power

Hamza Mohammed, freshman student at the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Gondar has developed his own Wi-fi apparatus and he sees it as a simple thing. The big issue is how he developed a wi-power with his own hand made transformer. He practically showed us how his transformer can provide light to places many KMs away. Now the key is in our hands and in the hands of other government and non-government organizations. If we really invest on him, he us the one who will pull out more than 80 people out of darkness.
His Wi-Fi tech is under registration by the Ethiopian intellectual property office. As the EIPO requires a technology to stay at least for six months, we expect his patent by the next two months. Now, my team are helping him on the registration of his wi-power technology. By the way, his hand made transformer gave electric light service for a village which is more than 25 km. The world best I read is 3 - 5 metres.

Biggest Ever Demonstration in the State of Amhara!

Biggest Ever Demonstration in the State of Amhara!
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It can be rightly claimed that the entire people of the State of Amhara are staging the biggest ever peaceful demonstration. The demonstration is taking place all over the cities and towns of the state. My age is almost close to 34, and I have never seen such a huge demonstration in my entire life. This event is happening in the aftermath of the considerable popular victory Ethiopians (especially Amhara and Oromo ethnic groups) achieved after years of oppression under TPLF’s tribal fascism. The major calls of the demonstrators include: Restore the territories (of Wolkait and Raya) and the people Tigray forcefully annexed some 27 years ago, restore Metekel area of the former Gojjam province, conserve heritages such as Lalibella and Tana, stop terrorizing the people of Afar, among others. One of the most pressing calls the demonstrators convey is a caution for PM. Abiye Ahmed to stop establishing Oromo hegemonial administration and, instead, to pave the way for the establishment of a system that serves all Ethiopians. Read more here

Best Hot Ethiopian music - Beautiful Ethiopia

https://youtu.be/xvp49hAN7fg