Saturday 8 October 2016

Ethiopia to overtake Kenya as Eastern Africa’s top economy

Ethiopia’s economy is expected to overtake Kenya’s this year, buoyed by massive government spending on infrastructure that has kept the Horn of Africa nation in the list of the world’s fastest economies in the past 10 years.
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest statistical estimates indicate that Ethiopia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to grow from $61.62 billion in 2015 to $69.21 billion this year, narrowly beating Kenya’s output which is expected to rise from $63.39 billion to $69.17 billion over the same period.
“Ethiopia has experienced double-digit economic growth, averaging 10.8 per cent since 2005, which has mainly been underpinned by public-sector-led development,” the African Development Bank, the OECD Development Centre and the United Nations Development Programme say in the latest African Economic Outlook report.
Kenya’s GDP of $14.1 billion in 2000 was 71.6 per cent larger than Ethiopia’s $8.23 billion in the same year but the Horn of Africa nation has closed the economic gap in the last five years of robust growth.
The IMF’s GDP estimates are based on current market prices using exchange rates prevailing between July 22 and August 19.
Having established its economic lead ahead of Kenya, Ethiopia is forecast to maintain its position as Eastern Africa’s largest economy over the medium term — a position that is also expected to improve its standing as an investment destination.
Ethiopia’s rise as a regional economic powerhouse has mostly been fuelled by mega public sector investment similar to the Chinese model that has enabled the Asian nation to become the world’s second-largest economy in two decades.
Ethiopia’s investment, as a percentage of GDP, rose sharply from 20.2 per cent in 2000 to 39.2 per cent last year and is expected to hit a new high of 39.2 per cent of the domestic output this year.
While Kenya has also raised its public investments, including on big infrastructure projects, it remains significantly below that of Ethiopia.
Kenya’s investment as a percentage of GDP rose from 18 per cent in 2000 to hit a high of 22.4 per cent in 2014 before receding to 21.2 per cent last year and is projected to rise to 22.5 per cent this year.
Public investments
Ethiopia’s economy is expected to grow further riding on the state-led investment in infrastructure, according to the African Economic Outlook report.
“Public investments are expected to continue driving growth in the short and medium term with huge investments in infrastructure and the development of industrial parks, prioritised to ease bottlenecks to structural transformation, which will still have to take shape with industry playing a significant role in the economy,” the report says.



Ethiopia’s ongoing projects include the $5 billion Grand Renaissance Dam with a generation capacity of 6,000 megawatts, which is expected to earn the country $1 billion annually from electricity sales, including exports.
source http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Ethiopia-to-overtake-Kenya-as-Eastern-Africas-top-economy/2560-3408092-bn8yh3z/index.html

List of conflicts in Ethiopia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Map showing the present-day location of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia within North Africa.

This is a list of conflicts in Ethiopia arranged chronologically from medieval to modern times. This list includes both nation-wide and international types of war, including (but not limited to) the following: wars of independence, liberation wars, colonial wars, undeclared wars, proxy wars, territorial disputes, and world wars. Also listed might be any battle that occurred within the territory of what is today known as the, "Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia" but was itself only part of a operation of a campaign of a theater of a war. There may also be periods of violent civil unrest listed, such as: riots, shootouts, spree killings, massacres, terrorist attacks, and civil wars. The list might also contain episodes of: human sacrifice, mass suicide, massacres, and genocides.

source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Ethiopia

Friday 7 October 2016

Are Ethiopian protests a game changer?


Political protests which have swept through Ethiopia are a major threat to the country's secretive government, writes former BBC Ethiopia correspondent Elizabeth Blunt.
For the past five years Ethiopia has been hit by waves of protest, not only by formal opposition groups but also Muslims unhappy at the imposition of government-approved leaders, farmers displaced to make way for commercial agriculture, Amhara communities opposed at their inclusion in Tigre rather than the Amhara region and, above all, by groups in various parts of the vast Oromia region.
In the most recent unrest in Oromia, at least 55 people died when security forces intervened over the weekend during the annual Ireecha celebrations - a traditional Oromo seasonal festival.
The Oromo protests have continued long after plans to expand the capital Addis Ababa's boundaries to take in more of the region were abandoned earlier this year. And in the last few months groups which were previously separate have made common cause.
In particular, Amhara and Oromo opposition has coalesced, with both adopting the latest opposition symbol - arms raised and wrists crossed as if handcuffed together.
The picture of Olympic silver medallist Feyisa Lilesa making this gesture while crossing the finish line at the Rio 2016 went round the world, and photographs from the Ireecha celebrations in Bishoftu show the crowd standing with their arms crossed above their heads before police intervention triggered the deadly panic.

'Inflaming anger'

In theory, Ethiopia has embraced parliamentary democracy, but such hurdles are put in the way of potential rival parties that there are currently no opposition members of parliament.
Image copyright Reuters
Image caption The security forces have been accused of using excessive force to quell unrest
The EPRDF has in theory devolved a good deal of power to the country's ethnically based regions, but time and again regional leaders have been changed by central government.
Ethiopia's constitution allows freedom of speech and association but draconian anti-terrorism laws have been used against those who have tried to use those freedoms to criticise the government.
It is now clear that these attempts to hold on to control in a changing world have misfired.
Just as attempts to dictate who should lead the Muslim community led to earlier protests, reports from Bishoftu town, where the 55 died, say that anger spilled over on Sunday because of official attempts to control which Oromo leaders were allowed to speak at the event.
The overreaction of the security forces then turned a protest that might have gone largely unnoticed into a major catastrophe, inflaming anger in Ethiopia itself and causing growing concern abroad.
And so the cycle continues, and every time protests are badly handled they create more grievances, and generate more anger and more demonstrations.
The US government is among those who have expressed concern at the deteriorating situation. Its Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, met Ethiopia's Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn during the UN General Assembly last month.
She urged him to be more open to dialogue, to accept greater press freedom, to release political prisoners and to allow civil society organisations to operate.

Ethiopia's ethnic make-up

  • Oromo - 34.4%
  • Amhara - 27%
  • Somali - 6.2%
  • Tigray - 6.1%
  • Sidama - 4%
  • Gurage - 2.5%
  • Others - 19.8%
Source: CIA World Factbook estimates from 2007
read more


Thursday 6 October 2016

Eritrea - History & Background

Eritrea, Africa's newest nation, celebrated its tenth year of independence in 2001. In May 1991, Eritrean liberation fighters swept the besieged remnants of Ethiopia's occupying army out of Asmara, the Eritrean capital, ending four decades of Ethiopian control and Africa's longest continuous modern war. In April 1993, Eritreans overwhelmingly endorsed independence in a UN-monitored referendum. On May 24, 1993, Eritrea declared itself an independent nation and four days later joined the United Nations.
The armed struggle for Eritrea's independence began in 1962, after a decade of Ethiopian violations of a UN-imposed Ethiopia-Eritrea federation, and following Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea as its fourteenth province. In the early 1970s, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), was organized and, throughout the next decade, emerged as the dominant liberation force. The Eritrean independence struggle became synonymous with "selfreliance"—a 30-year war fought from wholly within the country by a politically mobilized population supporting a large, well-trained army using captured weapons. The historical and political necessity of Eritrean self-reliance forced Eritreans to plan and test—while fighting for—the kind of society they wanted, with education a vital factor in the liberation movement's success and a key element in the Eritrean model of development.

Understanding Eritrea’s Educational Development

According to UNESCO, education is a fundamental human right and is essential for the exercise of all other human rights. Education also promotes individual freedom and empowerment, and is a critical factor for economic growth and broad development. Around the world, millions of children and adults remain deprived of education, many as a result of poverty.
A young, low-income country located in the fractious Horn of Africa (HoA) region, Eritrea has prioritized education as a key pillar within its national policy and broader framework for development, socio-economic growth, and poverty alleviation. READMORE
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Aslan Hasan, a student belonging to the Oromo ethnic group in Ethiopia, was called either a guilt-ridden terrorist who committed suicide or an innocent victim of brutal state repression, depending on who you listen to.
His death came following a bout of violence in May, when Oromo students in several towns protested against a government plan for the capital Addis Ababa to expand into Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia's largest and most populous federal region with around one-third of the nation's over 90 million people.
Security services said Hasan hanged himself in his cell after being arrested for a grenade attack that occurred at Haramaya University in the east of the country. Online Oromo activists such as Jawar Mohammed say Aslan, 24, had his throat slit by police on June 1 while in custody after being snatched four days before. A witness said it appeared his neck had been cut and his eyes gouged out.
Oromia Regional State is Ethiopia's largest and most populous federal region
Ethiopia's government is frequently accused of trampling on constitutionally protected ethnic rights as it prioritises security, political stability, and public infrastructure investments to drive growth. While technocrats have devised a rational scheme to manage a bulging city, the red-hot political issue of Oromo rights was barely considered, according to an Addis Ababa University academic who wishes to remain anonymous. "They think something is good, they go for it," he said about the ruling coalition's top-down methods. "It's a done deal, it's not consultative at all."
Jawar and other Oromos - including normally acquiescent Oromo members of the ruling political group - say the "integrated master plan" is an annexation of their territory that will weaken the ethnicity politically and also lead to the eviction of Oromo farmers from their land on the periphery of Addis Ababa. Oromos claim the capital city, which they call Finfinne, as their own, and in 2004 protested against the government's attempt to change their capital to Adama.
Deadly protests
The most serious unrest in May took place in the western town of Ambo and involved a student protest-turned-riot, with buildings damaged, cars torched, and civilians shot dead by security forces. At Haramaya, a grenade was chucked at students watching a televised football match. Officials blamed Oromo separatists; activists pointed a finger at agent provocateurs from the regime. In the southeast of Oromia, grainy video purports to show security forces firing on students around Madawalabu University at Robe. An independent assessment estimated as many as 50 people died.
The lack of clarity epitomises the propaganda battle raging inside Ethiopia - and online - amid fear of retribution and a paucity of reliable information. Few if any independent journalists or bloggers operate in the hotspots, and Ambo, for example, was placed on lockdown by security services when violence broke out. Two Peace Corps volunteers who blogged about the unrest - saying police killed two of their unarmed neighbours away from the protests - fled the country soon after.
While debate continues about exactly what happened, the protests indicate a growing and potentially important trend: a resurgence of Oromo nationalism that's increasingly driven by online activists.
During the demonstrations, US-based Jawar, a graduate student at Columbia University, acted as a central hub to distribute information from Ethiopia via Facebook and Twitter: posting photos of dead students and sharing news of protests under way. Cooperation between disaffected Oromo students and savvy mobilisers in the diaspora presents a fresh and substantial challenge to a government that still has work to do in resolving the centuries old issue of unmet Oromo demands for fair treatment and representation.
"The recent Oromo protests and the new online activism is significant, mostly because it represents a fresh, much younger generation of Oromo nationalists, and signals that Oromo nationalism is durable politically," said Michael Woldemariam, an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University.
Since moving into Ethiopia's highlands in the 1600s, the Oromos have been discriminated against by the ruling Tigray and Amhara classes, who often saw them as "uncivilised", according to historian John Markakis. The Oromos were largely excluded from national political power until 1991, when the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which was allied with other rebels, helped overthrow a military junta.
But the OLF soon left the transitional government after falling out with the dominant Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). The OLF has been in rebellion ever since and was classified as a terrorist group by lawmakers in 2011.
For the past two decades, the Oromo People's Democratic Organisation (OPDO) has represented Ethiopia's Oromo in the country's ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition. But the Oromo opposition claim the OPDO has been subservient to the country's Tigrayan political elite, and too weak to promote the community's interests.
'Fractious political debates'
Jawar's political profile soared a year ago when he said on Al Jazeera's current affairs show The Stream that he considered himself an "Oromo first" before he considered himself an Ethiopian. This put him at odds with many in the opposition, who think the current federal system that promotes ethnic rights undermines national progress and unity. Advocates of a unitary state promote a proud history of Ethiopia's ancient highland civilisation and resistance to European colonialism led by Amharas.
Ethiopia's 1994 constitution promotes ethnic rights by organising the country into federal states partly on the basis of "language and identity"; recognising all Ethiopian languages equally; respecting ethnic identities and non-harmful cultures; ensuring representation of ethnic minorities in both chambers of legislature; and, controversially, by providing mechanisms for all groups to try and become federal states and for states to secede from the federation.
In recent decades, Oromos have been weakened by fractious political debates about the nature of the self-determination pushed for by the OLF. Jawar said a new breed of educated, technocratic Oromo activists is revitalising the cause by moving beyond this factionalism. They have set up the Oromo Media Network and held "Oromo First" speaking events in the US. Jawar said they have begun to bring OPDO and OLF members closer together, and plan to work with the rest of the domestic Oromo opposition, who will be trying to break the EPRDF's stranglehold on parliament in elections next year.
The old days of single language, single community dominance, will not come back.
- Jawar, US-based Oromo activist 
Recent government arrests of opposition politicians and bloggers suggest that will be difficult, said Woldemariam. "The existence of armed Oromo opposition makes the task of the non-violent opposition who participate in the electoral process a lot more difficult," he said.
At the end of last year, the activists cut their teeth by taking on and beating multinational giant Heineken by pushing drinkers to #BoycottBedele - a local beer owned by the Dutch brewer that planned to sponsor concerts by Ethiopian pop star Teddy Afro. The reason was that the singer allegedly praised as a "holy war" the late 19th-century military expansions by Emperor Menelik II, an Amhara, that resulted in the incorporation of the Oromo and other southern groups into what became the modern Ethiopian state.
The Oromo movement now faces two comparable political challenges, according to Jawar: convincing the Amhara that "the old days of single language, single community dominance, will not come back", and targeting the Tigrayan elite's control over the country's government, security services, and economy.
"We have to make sure they cannot have free rein on our resources and there's a number of tactics in place to make sure that succeeds," Jawar added.
Jawar preaches peaceful civil resistance, yet admits this may not be sustainable. He said he told top security officials that law-abiding protests would be confined to campuses and that they only spread and became unruly after police attacked the demonstrators.
"It might be a challenge for the Oromo who believe in non-violence to maintain control over the population, given the kind of killing the government undertook," Jawar said. "Armed struggle might become the permanent form of response." source
Source: Al Jazeera

Oromo protests: Ethiopia arrests blogger Seyoum Teshome World's third worst jailer of journalists detains notable critic after days of deadly protests in Oromia and Amhara.

Ethiopian police have arrested a blogger who criticised the government, especially its handling of the ongoing protests in the Oromia and Amhara regions.
Seyoum Teshome, an outspoken university lecturer who has been quoted frequently by foreign media outlets about the anti-government protests, was detained on October 1 at his home in Woliso town in the Oromia region.
Ethiopia's government spokesman, Getachew Reda, told The Associated Press news agency on Tuesday that he had heard about Seyoum's arrest and is investigating the reasons why.
Days before his arrest, Seyoum told the AP that he was planning to start his doctoral studies at Addis Ababa University and was starting his own blogging website, Ethiothinkthank. He wrote about Ethiopia's anti-government protests on his blogging site and Facebook page.
"This arrest of a prominent writer and commentator is deeply disturbing as it comes against a backdrop of government moves to stifle protests and criticism," said Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "Seyoum Teshome should be released without delay and without condition."
Ethiopia is the third worst jailer of journalists in Africa, and a number of journalists are serving jail terms for writing critical pieces about the government, said the journalists' group.
The arrest came a day before dozens of people were killed in the Oromia region.
They were crushed in a stampede after government forces fired tear gas and bullets to disperse protesters during the annual Irreecha thanksgiving celebration of the Oromo people.
The government has said that 55 people died, but online activists and opposition groups outside Ethiopia claim the death toll is much higher.
The incident has sparked renewed protests in many towns across Oromia, where over the past year anti-government protests have called for respect for human rights, wider freedoms and the release of detained opposition figures and journalists.

WATCH: What is triggering Ethiopia's unrest?

Witnesses said that many people were crushed to death and others fell into ditches as they tried desperately to escape police. Shoes and clothing littered the scene of the disaster as a small group of angry residents dug for bodies in a deep ditch.
On Monday, Human Rights Watch called for an independent investigation and said the government should "end the use of deadly force to quell largely peaceful protests that began nearly a year ago".
Protests started among the Oromo - Ethiopia's biggest ethnic group - in November. They later spread to the Amhara, the second-most largest in the country.
Both groups say a ruling multi-ethnic coalition is dominated by the Tigray ethnic group, which makes up about six percent of the population.  source http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/oromo-protests-ethiopia-arrests-blogger-seyoum-teshome-161005071925586.html

Source: Associated Press

Wednesday 5 October 2016

Ethiopia: 25 Years of Human Rights Violation

Ethiopia: 25 Years of Human Rights Violations
When the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took control of the capital,
Addis Ababa on 28 May 1991, Amnesty International hailed the day as a “…break with the past” and
an opportunity to put human rights protection at the top of the agenda for the future.
However, as Ethiopians celebrate 25 years of EPRDF rule, they have suffered persistent and pervasive violations, in particular, of civil and political rights that has become a hallmark of the EPRDF government
Ethiopian civil society’s engagement with human rights is shackled by the Charities and Societies
Proclamation 621/09, which violates Ethiopia’s Constitution and the country’s international human
rights obligations and commitments. The law places funding and other restrictions on human rights
organizations, and to violate it is a criminal offense. Since 2011, the law has been used to freeze
assets of more than one million US dollars belonging to the country’s two leading human rights
organizations: the Human Rights Council5 and the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association.
Amnesty International’s study on the impact of the Charities and Societies Proclamation found: “This
law has also had a devastating impact on the staff of human rights organizations, the human rights
defenders themselves. For many years human rights defenders have operated in a climate of fear in
Ethiopia, subjected to regular harassment, arrest, detention and even violent attack. The underlying
impact of the Charities and Societies Proclamation has been to entrench still further, and even to
institutionalise, this fear pervading the work of human rights defenders”.6 25 years since the EPRDF
took power, only one independent human rights monitoring organisation-the Human Rights Council
-remains operational in the country.
The Anti-Terrorism Proclamation (ATP), which came into force in 2009, has also been used to silence
political opposition and voices critical of government policy and practice. The Proclamation’s
provisions defining ‘terrorist acts’, ‘moral support to terrorism and terrorist organizations’, and ‘search,
seizure, detention and arrest’ are vulnerable to abuse especially in a country not well known for
judicial integrity. The Government of Ethiopia denies that the law was aimed at political opposition
parties or journalists. Yet, journalists, political opposition leaders and dissidents, have been arrested,
and convicted for alleged involvement and links to the three domestic organizations that the
government considers to be terrorist groups - the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and Ginbot- 7
The ATP has been used against members and leaders of opposition political parties, journalists and
human rights defenders since its enactment in 2009. Political opposition figures such as Andualem
Arage, Nathanial Mekonnen and Asaminew Berhanu (all senior officials of the Unity for Democracy
and Justice Party), Zemene Molla, (General Secretary of the Ethiopian National Democratic Party),
Olbana Lelise, and Andargachew Tsige are among political opposition leaders charged and convicted

under the ATP. In 2014, Omot Agwa Okwoy, Ashinie Astin Titoyk, Jemal Oumar Hojele, land rights read more

What we talk about when we talk about change in Eritrea – the case of education

Education in Eritrea
Outside Eritrea, many people might scoff at the suggestion of there being “˜higher education’ within the country.  But up until fairly recently, the University of Asmara was regularly educating students who would go on to study at top-flight international programmes.
However, this changed in the mid-2000s when the Eritrean government dispersed the university around the country. The official rationale was that this would democratise access to tertiary education and encourage growth across Eritrea.  But opponents of the move were sceptical. Some saw it as a cynical attempt to weaken students’ revolutionary potential – disperse them to seven locations around Eritrea and they will never form a critical mass, the argument went – while the most ardent critics went even further, suggesting the government was deliberately trying to produce a less-educated and therefore more subservient population.
Testimony from staff and students who have passed through the new college system suggest there has been a noticeable reduction in academic expertise and output since the change. Swish new buildings do little to disguise a lack of resources, and despite large numbers of Indian staff being employed to mitigate the shortfall, there remain chronic shortages of skilled personnel.
Education in Eritrea also remains highly constrained. In the first place, students do not pick their own colleges and courses but are allocated to them based on the results they achieve at the Sawa military training camp regardless of their individual aspirations.  This hardly fosters motivation. Meanwhile, although some students manage to secure graduate positions at international universities, many are thwarted in their attempts to attend them because their exit visas are refused.
Within these limits, however, there may now be signs of positive developments being enabled and encouraged.
For instance, there are fresh attempts to provide post-graduate courses within the country, whether through taught programmes within the colleges or through e-learning initiatives. Additionally, the first major international academic conference since the early 2000s is being scheduled for July 2016. The theme for the event will be the future of Eritrean Studies. Panels are unlikely to focus on human rights abuses, the national service or democracy (or lack thereof) in the country. But, promisingly, suggested topics do include issues around foreign relations, climate change, migration and human trafficking.
Alongside these developments, the Journal of Eritrean Studies has also been relaunched recently. Predictably, the journal is devoid of politically controversial topics and the standard of the submissions is notably inconsistent. But the third edition is on the way.
And finally, the government is reported to have put aside 10 million Nakfa ($650,000) in a competitive fund for researchers of any nationality wishing to study Eritrea, though this may need to be seen to be believed.

Nonetheless, from inviting in speakers on contemporary global issues to re-establishing a national research journal, several Eritreans appear eager to rekindle a system of higher education with as much to offer students as the University of Asmara did in the early 2000s. read more

Eritrea: Take me to prison - they have food

 Binyam*, a refugee, lives in Kenya now, closing a circle that began with his birth. He’s making a new start with the help of relatives after escaping from Eritrea last year, just as his mother had to do three decades ago.
She eventually went home. Binyam hopes that one day he can, too.
His mother fled Ethiopian repression during Eritrea’s 30-year war for independence. Binyam fled Eritrean repression carried out in the name of national security and says Eritrea has become one of the most repressive states in Africa.
Binyam is the youngest of eight children. He was born in Nairobi after his father, an underground member of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), smuggled the family into Kenya in the 1980s when the Ethiopian authorities became suspicious of his activities. One of Binyam’s sisters was born in an Addis Ababa prison after his mother, also an activist, was arrested.
Binyam’s father had been running 12 clandestine cells, whose members gathered intelligence on Ethiopian operations and spread nationalist ­propaganda. He is still with the Eritrean government – the country achieved independence in 1991 – whose repressive rule his own son has now fled. This reflects how divided some families have become over post-liberation politics.
The family returned to Asmara, the capital of the newly independent Eritrea, in 1992. Binyam was a student when a border war broke out with Ethiopia in 1998. He was taken out of school for military training in 2000, but didn’t see combat. In 2003, after completing his 11th year of secondary school, he was called to the Sawa Defence Training Centre for his 12th, as has been the case for all who came of age since a truce that left both countries in a face-off that has yet to end.
Some within the liberation front’s leadership criticised how the war was conducted and the president refused to honour a Constitution that had been ratified before it began. This led to a massive crackdown in 2001 during which some leaders were imprisoned and private media outlets were shut down. Since then, all dissent has been labelled “treason” and thousands have been jailed.
Asylum seekersAs many as 300 000 people have fled the country over the past decade, making Eritrea, with a population of about six million, one of the largest per capita producers of asylum seekers in the world. Many are national service conscripts fleeing a programme initially set up for 18 months but extended indefinitely after the ­conflict with Ethiopia and now requiring up to 20 years at bare subsistence wages for a ­generation of soldiers, teachers, labourers and low-level administrators.
Binyam’s national service cohort was the 17th round – each “class” of conscripts is known by its place in the sequence since it was launched in 1994 with a term of 18 months –and it followed a particularly rebellious intake, so its members were kept at Sawa longer than usual, though neither Binyam nor his peers caused any problems.
“It was very tough, but we accepted it,” he said. He had expected that, once the training phase was done, he would go to college, get a good education and do well in life. He now knows how naive that was.
In 2004, he was sent to a new technical institute at Mai Nefhi, set up two years earlier when the University of Asmara, the scene of vigorous student protests, was broken up into smaller colleges dispersed around the country during a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent.
Military college“They turned it into a military college,” he said, describing a garrison surrounded by barbed wire that students could not leave without permission from the uniformed soldiers in charge of the campus.
“Mai Nefhi was a joke,” he went on.
The teachers, mostly young Indians imported for the task, were unfamiliar with Eritrea and not qualified in the subjects they were teaching; the administrators were disorganised and untrained. He said he had no Eritrean teachers during his two years and learned very little. But he was not prepared for what would come next: teaching mostly illiterate EPLF veterans in a small village outside the town of Mendefera.
Binyam had been studying fine art when school officials told him they couldn’t find his records, so he would have to take time off while they searched. This village is where they “parked” him under a ministry of defence programme staffed by national service conscripts.
For the next 10 months, he struggled to do the best he could, teaching two 45-minute classes each day. The classroom time was extremely stressful, he said, because he wasn’t sure what he was doing, but the hardest part was the downtime when he had nothing to do: “You lose your mind there.”
When he showed up at Mai Nefhi again at the end of 2008, he was told his grades had been lost so he would have to repeat a year, but he convinced his superiors to test him instead. When he passed, he was sent back to Mendefera to teach again, this time under the ministry of education.
“It was kids this time,” he said, “but I was still unqualified to teach.” No one was qualified, he added.
The national service teachers were paid 700 nakfa a month (roughly $12). Binyam rented a four-by-four-metre room with no furniture and no toilet for 400 nakfa a month. He, like most conscripts, had to rely on money from his parents for basic living costs.
The day he arrived in Mendefera he had to sleep on the street because he hadn’t been given proper identification documents and no hotel would take him. Nor did the school have quarters for teachers. The next day, the director placed him in a classroom and walked out without an explanation.
This time he had classes throughout the day attended by 70 fourth- or fifth-graders at a time, most of whom he was unable to control. Other instructors used abuse to get them in line, he said, but that was not his way, so he strove to get the pupils’ attention through patient dialogue.
Dysfunctional education systemBut the education system was structurally dysfunctional, according to Binyam. He said everyone under 18 was required to attend school, giving the country a high statistical enrolment figure that belied the fact that little actual education took place. The curricula were inappropriate, teaching was done by rote and the faculty and staff were poorly motivated and untrained – and were nearly all national service draftees. The result was chaos.
Many teachers failed to show up for classes once the semester was under way, but there was no attempt to reel them in or punish them because this would likely result in the teacher’s flight or arrest, leaving a classroom permanently empty. The upshot was untended classes in which the children went wild.
Binyam said that 12 of his pupils left for Ethiopia during this time. When one was caught, released and sent back, Binyam asked why he had fled. “If I stay here, I’m just going to turn out like you,” the youngster told him. “That was a blow to the face,” said Binyam.
After a while, the stress got to him. When he began to have fainting spells, he sought help. “It was a total breakdown,” he said.
Things got worse when food rations ran short and teachers turned up at school hungry. Finally, he said, he told the authorities he could no longer teach and started staying at home. When others joined him, he was accused of fomenting an uprising and threatened with prison.
“I told them to take me to prison,” he said. “They have food there. Here I am a slave.”
But the next day the school director, demoralised but determined to fulfil his nearly impossible mission, came with cooking fuel and food of his own so they could eat. From that day onward, said Binyam, it felt like “we started working for him, not the government”.
Nevertheless, by 2013, still under heavy stress and seeing no way out, Binyam went to Asmara to secure a sick leave pass. In the end he got one, but only after bribing a health worker with 2?000 nakfa. They, too, were conscripts earning between 700 and 1 000 nakfa per month.
He was released from national service that May, but it took him another 10 months to pay the bribes for an exit visa – 200 000 nakfa. Once he had it, he bought the first ticket to Nairobi and left Eritrea. “I was afraid to wait,” he said.
Today, Binyam is a first-year student at a Nairobi university studying computer technology and neuropsychology.
“It’s a new start,” he said with a shrug. He said he would go back to Eritrea, as his mother had done more than 20 years ago, but only if the government changed.
*Not his real name
Dan Connell, a visiting scholar at Boston University’s African Studies Centre, has covered events in Eritrea for more than 35 years. Visit his website danconnell.net for more information
SOURCE http://mg.co.za/article/2015-03-05-take-me-to-prison-they-have-food

Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language

English and development in Eritrea
Chefena Hailemariam, Sarah Ogbay and Goodith White
Introduction
A number of chapters in this volume (e.g. Williams 2011, Chapter 3 this volume)
reiterate the currently held view of development as encompassing both economic
growth and human development, with economic growth as one means by which
human development can be achieved rather than an end in itself. Djité (2008)
notes that the concept of human development has become progressively wider in
statements made by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and now
includes not only education, health care and good governance, but also issues such
as empowerment, sustainability, co-operation, culture and language, together with a
recognition that human development is concerned not just with individuals but also
with how they interact in communities. Djité points out that: ‘language constitutes
the common thread that links all of these aspects together’ (2008:175). In its 1996
and 2000 reports, the UNDP warned that the imposition of a dominant language
in the name of nation-building could be seen as a culturally repressive form of
development leading to the destruction of other cultures and the favouring of an
elite, and called for a ‘three-language formula’ for multilingual states, which would
allow for mother tongue use in education and government, as well as a national
lingua franca and an international language (UNDP 1996, 2000; see also Laitin 1992).
In Eritrea, this ‘three-language formula’ can be seen in operation, but it appears to
be working in a different way to that described in a number of the other chapters
in this book, and if English is the ‘international language’ in this trilingual system,
its role in development is harder to define in the light of the particular economic
and social conditions in the country. We will argue that in addition to, and in many
cases rather than, fulfilling instrumental needs such as employability, international
collaboration, accessing information and international mobility (Coleman 2010) it
is acting in a more nebulous, less easily described fashion as a channel for global
cultural flows (with their attached values and practices), as a means of lessening
isolation and linking local and diasporic Eritrean communities, and to fulfil future
aspirations as much if not more than current needs. We will argue that the impetus
for learning English is happening more as part of an individually motivated, bottom-
up grass roots movement rather than at a macro governmental level. We will also
show that the connections made by individuals between learning English and their
own development differ from the connections they make between development
and the country of Eritrea. read more