Ethiopia: Another T-TPLF White Elephant for Sale? By Prof. Al Mariam

Is the T-TPLF setting up the “Ethiopian Railway Line” for a fire sale?

The “Ethiopian Railway Line” opened in October 2016 with all the bells and whistles. Today it is derailed and teeters on the edge of financial disaster.

The T-TPLF  (Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front) last week announced that the “Ethiopian Railway Corporation” (“ERC”) is drowning in an ocean of debt.

According to a report in the online version of the “Reporter”, a “private newspaper published in Addis Ababa”, Getachew Betru, “CEO” of “ERC” informed the “Ethiopian Parliament” that the Corporation is $102.5 billion birr in the red.

The official currency exchange rate is USD$1 to 22.50 Ethiopian birr. On the black market, one could fetch 27-30 birr for USD$1.

According to the Reporter, the so-called Addis Ababa Light Rail is 1.8 billion birr in the hole.

The “Ethiopian Railway” project is said to connect the Ethiopian capital with Djibouti on the Red Sea coast. The USD$4 billion project is backed by China and built by the China Railway Engineering Corp. and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation.

The Chinese have built dozens of ghost cities where no one can afford to live, including some in Angola. Now they have built the first ghost railway to nowhere in Ethiopia.

According to Betru, ERC needed 60.2 billion birr for its annual budget in 2016.

The T-TPLF “thought” it could secure a “foreign loan for 25.9  billion birr” and drum up”34.3 billion birr from domestic sources”. But the T-TPLF could only secure 10.5 billion birr from local sources.

Betru provided the following stunning explanation for the humongous shortfall:  “We boldly got into such a railway project thinking believing in a principle that we’ll find a way out.”

In other words, to borrow a rail metaphor, the T-TPLF thought it could outrun the train at the bridge crossing but found itself stuck on the rail lines.

It is a mind-boggling situation. The T-TPLF decided to build a railway on a wing buffeted by gusts of wishful thinking casting financial caution and prudence to the wind. The T-TPLF started a rail line without establishing a demonstrably viable revenue source to sustain it. Did the T-TPLF configure passenger traffic as part of the revenue source for the long haul rail line or mainly freight? If it calculated freight as the main source of revenue, would that freight be principally “government” freight? Did they calculate the marginal cost of running a train based on expenses for operations, equipment maintenance, fuel, overhead, interest, cost of capital, etc.?

It is clear from Betru’s statement that the T-TPLF expected the “Ethiopian Rail Line” to operate like the toy model trains bought from the China Model Train Company.

The abysmal nitwitedness  of the T-TPLF is evident in its own published reports.

A report by the T-TPLF’s Ministry of Trade indicated that in 2015-16  Ethiopia “earned 139 million dollars less in exports than the three billion dollars registered in 2014/15. Last year, the export sector significantly underperformed as it missed its set target of four billion dollars by a wide margin.” The report concluded, “the share of export earnings in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country has continued its usual pattern of declining by two percentage points between 2010 and 2015, averaging at 13pc. This figure is considerably lower than other countries in the region, with export earnings accounting for 20 and 19pc of the GDPs of Kenya and Uganda, respectively.”

The data on imports is equally dim: “Imports in Ethiopia decreased to 4064 USD Million in the second quarter of 2016 from 4367.40 USD Million in the first quarter of 2016. Imports in Ethiopia averaged 2705.91 USD Million from 2006 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 4382.60 USD Million in the fourth quarter of 2014 and a record low of 1355.50 USD Million in the second quarter of 2006.”

The T-TPLF leaders must have obviously known that there is very little likelihood for export and import freight to provide long-term revenue sources to sustain the rail line and be profitable. That is assuming that they read and understand their own reports, which is highly doubtful.

Could passenger traffic sustain the 470 mi (756km) rail line to Djibouti? Suffice it to say that the Addis Ababa Light Rial which runs an 11 mi (17km) track is 1.8 billion birr in the hole.

What were they thinking when they borrowed USD$4 billion to have China build the rail line? I mean aside from the obvious one which lines their pockets.

Betru’s statement for the rail line is the equivalent of saying, “Building the rail line seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The fact of the matter is that the T-TPLF built a white elephant rail line based on a pipe dream about money growing on trees (or picking up money along the rail lines) only to find out at the end of the year that they must have been smoking something in that pipe when they thought they will “find a way out.”

Is there any realistic possibility that the rail lines (both long haul and light) could ever become profitable and financially viable.

The T-TPLF says the lines can be viable and that the current fiscal crisis is a bump on the road, or the rail line. So much credibility from the guys who promised so much from the construction of the rail lines.

Are both rail lines doomed to bankruptcy and/or fire sale auction?

According to evidence obtained by the Reporter, the debt accumulated in 2016 for the rail project from foreign bank loans increased from 71.2 billion birr to 76.37 billion birr. Domestic revenues obtained from long-term bond sales for the project increased from 15.4 billion birr to 17.6 billion birr. Nonetheless, ERC will be unable to meet a debt obligation payment of 1.06 billion birr (USD$45 million) in January 2017.

The total debt of the ERC in 2016 increased from 95.9 billion birr to 102.5 billion according to the Reporter.  Total payments in principal and interest due January 2017 are said to be 2.2 billion birr (“USD$96 million”). The Reporter stated that because of lack of funds for operational needs and the enormous debt burden, the ERC is “in extreme financial distress”.

The economy in T-TPLF’s Ethiopia is in implosion mode.

Moody’s bond rating service in December  2016 rated Ethiopia’s USD1 billion Euro bond issued in 2014 B1 (highly speculative,  subject to high credit risk”, bordering on noninvestment grade). To put it bluntly, the T-TPLF Euro bond is pretty much “junk bond”.

In September 2016, the T-TPLF ordered exporters to sell 90 percent of their foreign exchange proceeds to the commercial banks and can keep only 10 percent. This extreme measure was taken by the T-TPLF because of “critical shortage of foreign currency”, weak performance of the export sector and high demand for foreign currency.

Could the ERC and Addis Ababa Light Rail end up on the auction block or in bankruptcy?

Are the “Ethiopian Railway Project” and the “Addis Ababa Light Rail Projects” white elephants set up by the T-TPLF to line the pockets of its cronies and hoodwink the world into believing that they are “transforming” Ethiopia into a middle-income country?

A “white elephant” is a “possession entailing great expense out of proportion to its usefulness or value to the owner.”

White elephant vanity projects are common in Africa. All African dictators like to build big projects  for self-glorification and to amass great fortunes for themselves and cronies.  Kwame Nkrumah built the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River, at the time dubbed the “largest single investment in the economic development plans of Ghana”. Mobutu sought to outdo Nkrumah by building the largest dam in Africa on the Inga Falls in Western Democratic Republic of the Congo (Zaire). In the Ivory Coast, Félix Houphouët-Boigny built the largest church in the world, The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, at a cost of USD$300 million. It stands empty today. Self-appointed Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic built the largest hotel, a 500-room Hotel Intercontinental, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of his people starved. Moammar Gadhafi launched the Great Man-Made River in Libya, dubbed the world’s largest irrigation project, and proclaimed it the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” In 2011, the T-TPLF launched construction of the “largest hydroelectric power plant” in Africa.

When I wrote “Dam! White Elephants in Ethiopia” in April 2014, T-TPLF trolls accused me of being “against Ethiopia”.  In that commentary, I argued that the so-called “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” (GERD) is actually a vanity make-believe project, just like all the other African vanity projects, principally intended to glorify the late T-TPLF thugmaster Meles Zenawi posthumously. In April 2015, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam remained dammed by cash flow problems as it does in 2017.

Could the T-TPLF which could not even run a 756km rail line for a few months be able to operate the “largest dam in  Africa” that will be “1,800 km long and 155 m high and with a total volume of 74,000 million meters”?

In much the same way as the Ethiopian Rail Line is built on skyscrapers of fantasy and wishful thinking about its commercial prospects and viability, the “Grand Renaissance Dam” is equally doomed in its fantasies about supplying electric power not only in the region but also in parts of the Middle East.

The evidence on electric power production and costs under the T-TPLF regime is telling.

A 2011 World Bank study  found that electric power “underpricing is a significant issue” in Ethiopia.  “Ethiopia’s power tariffs of $0.04-0.08 per kilowatt-hour are low by regional standards and recover only 46 percent of the costs of the utility.” The study recommended that “major investment needs in the country’s transmission and distribution networks to push up the overall long-term marginal cost of power to around $0.16 per kilowatt-hour.” The study made the stunning finding that the Ethiopian Electirc Power Company’s (EEPCO) “overall hidden costs of power sector inefficiency absorb around 100 percent of EEPCO revenues; meaning that the company only captures about half the revenue that it would need to function effectively. This performance, though comparable with other power utilities in East Africa, leaves significant room for improvement.”

The “Grand Renaissance Dam” is another white elephant waiting to crash and burn in bankruptcy within months of opening (assuming it ever does) just like the Ethiopian Rail Line. It simply will not have the revenue source to cover the cost of transmission, distribution, maintenance and all of the other hidden costs EEPCO has been dealing with for over two decades.

I have argued for the past 11 years that the T-TPLF guys are a clueless band of thugs who are playing the game of governance completely out of their league. But I am only the latest to share that observation.

In its November 7, 2006 editorial, the Economist Magazine described “the Ethiopian government as one of the most economically illiterate in the modern world.”

The same observation was repeated in 2009 at a high-level meeting of Western donor policy makers in Berlin where, according to a Wikileaks cablegram, a German diplomat suggested that Ethiopia’s economic woes could be traced to “Meles’ poor understanding of economics”.

Truth be told, Meles’ and the T-TPLF’s poor understanding of economics is understandable because they were taught economics in the bush by a wandering social anthropologist.  I have written extensively on the “voodoo economics”  of Meles Zenawi and his T-TPLF.

It is also true that many T-TPLF leaders have purchased advanced graduate degrees from internet diploma mills hoping to make themselves literate not just in economics but also in the 3 Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic).

I shake my head in total amazement thinking about the kind of a “government” that “boldly got into a multi-billion dollar debt-financed railway project “thinking” in principle that money grows on trees? But that is exactly what the Railway CEO said in explaining how the T-TPLF decided to borrows billions to launch the rail line!

But I should not be surprised.

The same T-TPLF economic geniuses that ordered a rail line to nowhere for USD4$ billion are the same geniuses who sent their hucksters to hawk illegal bonds in the U.S. to finance their White Elephant dam on the Nile.

In June 2016, the T-TPLF agreed to pay  the American Securities and Exchange Commission USD$6.5 million dollars in “disgorgement” (a legal act by which someone who has obtained profits or something of value by illegal or unethical acts is forced to return the ill-gotten gains to the rightful owner) for selling unregistered bonds in the U.S. for a period of years.

But the T-TPLF’s vanity projects are not limited to so-called infrastructure projects. The Karuturi land grab debacle is another major case in point with disastrous consequences for the people of Gambella in Western Ethiopia. A year ago, the T-TPLF and the Indian agribusiness Karuturi duked it out in public. As I discussed the issues in my January 2016 commentary, “The Wrath of Karuturi and the “Power of India” in Ethiopia”, company president Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi threw the gauntlet at T-TPLF: “Touch me, then you will see the power of India”.

As I demonstrated in that commentary, the prima facie evidence points to the fact that Karuturi was ripped off by the T-TPLF.  I was always opposed to the T-TPLF-Karuturi land deal. As evident in my March 2011 commentary, “Ethiopia: Country for Sale”, I warned  Karuturi to “beware of those bearing free gifts”, that is free land.  Too bad he ignored my advice because he got taken to the cleaners by the T-TPLF and then railroaded straight into bankruptcy.

Earlier this month, the T-TPLF announced its plans to sell “Ethiopian Shipping Lines”.

Kebour Ghenna, Executive Director of the Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PACCI) in a recent commentary questioned: “Is the government so short of money to run its business and service its loans that it has to look for such a short cut” by selling Ethiopian Shipping Lines? Kebour’s deep dismay and exasperation are shared by all Ethiopians: “From where I sit the proposal to sell the ESL is outrageous. It amounts to disinheritance of future Ethiopians. National assets like the ESL are strategic investments for not just economic but security reasons as well.”

From selling the shipping line to the rail line: What will become of the “Ethiopian Railway Corporation” and “Addis Ababa Light Rail”?

If history offers any clues, it is likely that the T-TPLF will declare the two rail operations bankrupt and unload them at fire sale prices and hand them over to its cronies.

T-TPLF history of liquidation of national assets in the name of “privatization”, “efficiency” and “development and growth” is well-established.

The World Bank’s landmark corruption study in Ethiopia explained the structural corruption under T-TPLF rule in liquidation of state assets. The study concluded, “The level of corruption is influenced strongly by the way policy and legislation are formulated and enforced. For example, the capture of state assets by the elite can occur through the formulation of policy that favors the elite.” In other words, the laws are written to rig the bidding process to give T-TPLF’s cronies, buddies and supporters a significant advantage in picking up state assets at fire sale prices.

In my June 2009 commentary, “Inside the Barley Republic: Ethiopia’s Land on Fire Sale”, I demonstrated how the T-TPLF orchestrated a fire sale of huge chunks of the country to foreign governments and fly-by-night “investors” while lining their pockets.

In 2012, the T-TPLF announced it has accepted 2.1 billion birr (USD$121million) for “seven state-owned farms” as part of the plan “to privatize dozens of corporations in the next three years.”  The so-called Privatisation and Public Enterprise Supervising Agency “accepted an 860 million birr bid from MIDROC Ethiopia for one of the country’s biggest farms, Upper Awash Agro-Industry Enterprise to Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Al Amoudi. Al Amoudi’s other companies Horizon Plantation PLC, National Mining Corporation and Saudi Star Agricultural Development won bids for four other firms for a combined 463 million birr ($26.7 million).”

According to a WikiLeaks US Embassy 2008 Cable  on “privatization or monopolization in Ethiopia”, the U.S. Treasury was advised: “While the vast majority of enterprises in terms of numbers– 233 of 254 — have been either sold to employees in a Management/Employee Buyout (MEBO) arrangement or purchased by individual Ethiopians, these are mostly small shops and hotels. In dollar terms, nearly 60 percent of enterprises have been awarded to Al Amoudi-related companies.”  The Lega Dembi gold is owned by MIDROC Gold Mine PLC; and it is reported that “Ethiopia earned over $456 million from exporting gold during the last fiscal year [2013].”

The T-TPLF has sold local breweries including Bedele, Harar and Meta Abo to global brewery giants  Heineken and Diageo for a combined $388.3 million.

In 2010, the no-collateral bank loans in the millions of dollars handed out to T-TPLF cronies, friends and supporters and the 1.7 billion birr ($141.6 million) loan to Messebo Cement Factory, one of the many companies owned by the “Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray” (EFFORT) sent the “Development Bank of Ethiopia” careening into insolvency.

Why not privatize land?

The T-TPLF says it is committed to “privatization”. Then, why doesn’t the T-TPLF privatize land in the country?

The T-TPLF says land cannot be privatized because it is owned by the government?

And I ask the T-TPLF, “Who owns the government?”

Ethiopia under the T-TPLF is going down, down, down…

Despite the T-TPLF’s claims that Ethiopia is “one of the fastest growing countries in the world”, the fact remains that Ethiopia is among the poorest. In 2015, Ethiopia was ranked 171^st poorest (out of 185 countries) country in the world by Global Finance.

Ethiopia’s debt is mounting. In 2015, “Ethiopia public debt was 34, 539 million dollars” an increase of  8,843 million over 2014.” That “debt reached 56.05% of Ethiopia GDP, a 9.75 percentage point rise from 2014, when it was 46.30% of GDP.” Is it unlikely Ethiopia’s public debt will hit USD$40 billion in 2017?

In 2016, the “worst drought in 50 years” is alleged to have occurred in Ethiopia “devastating eight out of 10 people who depend on farming and livestock.” Some 18 million (18 percent of the population) Ethiopians were given USD$1.7 billion in emergency handouts in 2016. How much of that $1.7 billion lined the pockets of T-TPLF, the international poverty pimps and other parasi-ticks remains to be determined.

For the past 25 years, the T-TPLF has sold large chunks of Ethiopia for pennies to foreign fly-by-night operators masquerading as investors. The T-TPLF has given away Ethiopia’s mineral wealth to its cronies and supporters. The T-TPLF is conducting fire sales on Ethiopia’s infrastructure today.  The T-TPLF continues to trade on the souls of starving Ethiopians.

The T-TPLF is a scourge on Ethiopia. The T-TPLF stuffs its pockets while Ethiopians stand holding a bagful of debt, fire sale IOUs and empty promissory notes.

There is the Midas Touch that turns everything to gold.

Then there is the T-TPLF touch which turns gold into _ _ _t.

Ethiopia: Top US Aid Recipients Could Face Cuts in Trump’s Proposed Funding Audit

President Trump’s proposed audits of U.S. international funding will reportedly call for a review of development aid to countries that “oppose important United States policies” – a plan that could prove uncomfortable for some of the biggest recipients of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Administration reports examining countries’ voting records at the United Nations, for example, show that most of the countries getting the most aid each year frequently oppose the U.S. position on important policy issues.

A draft executive order obtained by the New York Times calls for the setting up of a committee to recommend where funding cuts can be made, specifying among other things the question of U.S. assistance to countries that oppose important U.S. policies.

The report did not say whether the draft indicates how this will be quantified.

But the State Department has long been required to report to Congress annually on countries’ voting practices at the United Nations. The reports compare U.N. General Assembly votes of each member-state with those of the U.S. on a range of resolutions which the department determines to be of high priority.

(The 1990 law requiring the report describes those as “issues which directly affected United States interests and on which the United States lobbied extensively.”)

In the most recent annual report, released in mid-2016 and covering 2015, issues covered in the identified key votes included the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Cuba embargo, the Arms Trade Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, strengthening the U.N.’s role in promotion democracy, and human rights in North Korea, Iran and Syria.

The report found that, in 2015, the average voting coincidence with the U.S. in General Assembly votes was just 43.2 percent.

In some cases, countries’ voting decisions come as little surprise, since their governments are actively hostile to the United States. Iran’s voting only coincided with that of the U.S. 20 percent of the time, for example, while the scores for both North Korea and Syria were 0 percent.

But when it comes to countries that are among the biggest beneficiaries of U.S. foreign aid, the picture is not a great deal better, with most voting the same way as the U.S. on those key resolutions only half, or less than half, of the time.

The top ten recipients of U.S. aid in FY 2015 were, in order: Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

The 2015 State Department report shows that Egypt’s votes coincided with the U.S. stance only 36.4 percent of the time. The equivalent figures for others were Tanzania (37.5 percent), Afghanistan (44.4 percent), Kenya (44.4 percent), Iraq (45.5 percent), Pakistan (45.5 percent), Nigeria (50 percent) and Ethiopia (50 percent).

Jordan’s voting on the important resolutions coincided with that of the U.S. a little more than half of the time (54.5 percent), while Israel’s voting coincided with that of the U.S. 100 percent of the time.

The previous year’s State Department report showed a similar pattern.

The top ten recipients of U.S. aid in FY 2014 were largely the same as the following year, the only difference being that Uganda replaced Ethiopia, and the order was shuffled somewhat: Israel, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

In 2014, those top ten aid recipients’ votes on important General Assembly resolutions coincided with those of the U.S. as follows: Pakistan (12.5 percent), Iraq (36.4 percent), Afghanistan (41.7 percent), Tanzania (44.4 percent), Jordan (45.5 percent), Nigeria (50 percent), Uganda (50 percent), Kenya (66.7 percent) and Israel (100 percent).

Going back to the last year of the Bush administration, the picture was even worse.

In the 2008 report, the voting coincidence scores for the FY 2009 top ten aid recipients were as follows: Jordan (0 percent), Ethiopia (0 percent), Kenya (0 percent), Egypt (7.7 percent), Pakistan (9.1 percent), Nigeria (12.5 percent), Afghanistan (23.1 percent), Iraq (30 percent), Mexico (40 percent) and Israel (91.7 percent).

Diplomatic row breaks out between South Sudan and Ethiopia

JUBA (23 Jan.)

A diplomatic row has broken out between South Sudan and neighbouring Ethiopia following rumours on social media that President Salva Kiir accepted to allow Ethiopian rebels to open their office in the capital Juba

.

“Rumours have been circulating on social media that when President Kiir visited Egypt, he discussed important issues with the Egyptian officials so that Ethiopian rebels can open an office in Juba, “a senior government official who preferred anonymity told Radio Tamazuj today.

“The rumours circulated that the President has accepted to allow the Ethiopian rebels to open their office in Juba and Egypt will support the Ethiopian rebels with guns, because Egypt is having differences with Ethiopia over the issue of Renaissance Dam, so this is what happened on social media,” he added.

The official accused the SPLM-IO faction allied to former First Vice President Riek Machar of circulating the rumour in neighbouring Ethiopia.”The rebels now took advantage of that, and this information has already reached the government of Ethiopia,” he said.

He pointed out that the government of Ethiopia has decided to cut diplomatic ties with the government of South Sudan and expel South Sudan’s Ambassador to Addis Ababa.

“Even if there are differences between us, Ethiopia cannot expel our ambassador, because the ambassador is the ambassador of South Sudan to Ethiopia and at the same time he is representing us in the African Union. So, Ethiopia cannot expel our ambassador,” he said.

According to the official, South Sudan government will issue a statement to deny the rumour.

File photo: Ethiopian Prime Minister during his visit to the capital Juba in October, 2016 (Radio Tamazuj)

Ethiopian-Born Actress Ruth Negga nominated for Oscar

Actres Ruth Negga –
Image sourced at bbc.com

Written by  bbc.com/entertainment Jan 25, 2017

Ethiopia-born actress Ruth Negga has been nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her part in the film Loving.

The story is based on a real-life couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who were arrested in Virginia, US, five weeks after their wedding in 1958, when inter-racial marriage was still banned in the state.

They challenged – and changed – the US’s last remaining segregation laws, People Magazine explains.

As for the actress herself, Ms Negga was seven when her Ethiopian father died in a car accident. She was raised by her Irish mother, a nurse, and they moved around before settling in Dublin, reports The Guardian.

Ms Negga is up against Meryl Streep for her performance in Florence Foster Jenkins and Natalie Portman for her portrayal of Jackie Kenedy.

TrAIDing in Misery: The T-TPLF, its Partners and Famine in Ethiopia

By Prof. Al Mariam

The T-TPLF (Thugtatorship of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front) is out in full force once again on its annual panhadling circuit.

In January 2016, the T-TPLF was out peddlingfor food aid and blaming the West for being ungenerous.

For the past one-quarter century, the T-TPLF has been panhandling in the name of the Ethiopian people.

Aaah! So mortifying to listen to the annual chatter of beggars’ teeth.

Last week, the T-TPLF Disaster Commissioner Mitiku Kassa yelped to the international community to cough up “USD$948 million in aid” because “we are facing a new drought”.

That is the same Mitiku Kassa who in 2010 declared, “In the Ethiopian context, there is no hunger, no famine… It is baseless [to claim hunger or famine], it is contrary to the situation on the ground. It is not evidence-based. The government is taking action to mitigate the problems.”

In May 2016, Dr. Alex DeWaal, Executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and a longtime associate of the T-TPLF also declared: There is “no famine in Ethiopia… Ethiopians aren’t starving to death… People aren’t dying… Animals are dying of thirst…”

In 2017, there is aggravated famine in Ethiopia; and the T-TPLF is completely paralyzed in a state of emergency and unable to “mitigate the problem”

In his first press conference in Addis Ababa after the T-TPLF seized power, its late leader Meles Zenawi declared that the litmus test for the success of his regime should be whether Ethiopians were able to eat three meals a day. (Watch video here.)

Two decades later in 2011, Meles pompously declared, “We have devised a plan which will enable us to produce surplus and be able to feed ourselves by 2015 without the need for food aid.”

A quarter of a century after the T-TPLF seized power, Ethiopia is still in the grips of Biblical famine and endless “new droughts”.

Save the Children in its June 2014-June 2016 report stated that it was “by the middle of 2015… that the Government of Ethiopia played its fundamental role of recognizing  and responding to the gravity of the loss of harvest, and lack of food and water for hundreds of thousands of families, calling on the support of the international community  to prevent a terrible catastrophe.”

Simply stated, until mid-2015, the T-TPLF was asleep at the switch or just pretending “there is no hunger and no famine” in Ethiopia. Ho hum! Yawn. Another famine?!

The 2017 “U.N. Humanitarian Requirements Document”, claims in 2016 “the Government of Ethiopia, allocated more than $735 million to initiate the HRD response and to facilitate a speedy response to additional needs as the situation evolved.” It also reports, “As we turn to 2017, the number of people that require humanitarian assistance has significantly decreased from that of 2016. This is due to the positive impact of the kiremt/gu/ganna rains and the subsequent above-average meher harvest”.

So the simple question is: Why is USD$ 1 billion needed (nearly 25 percent more aid) if “the number of people that require humanitarian assistance is significantly decreased in 2017”?

In July 2016, Save the Children warned that by the end of the year, An estimated 10.2 million people, including more than 5.75 million children, will remain reliant on emergency food assistance. In 2015-16, Save the Children “programmed USD$90 million worth of relief activities.”

In 2016, the “worst drought in 50 years” is alleged to have occurred in Ethiopia “devastating eight out of 10 people who depend on farming and livestock.” Some 18 million (18 percent of the population) Ethiopians received $1.7 billion in emergency aid in 2016. (I am using the word “alleged” because I wonder if the T-TPLF and its international poverty pimp partners are using hyperbole and over-dramatization to scare and squeeze more dollars from private and governmental donors. “The sky is falling,” clucked Chicken Little as he announced the end of the world.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warns that the “impact is expected to be most dire in early 2017 among livestock, with unusually early migrations, excess mortality rates and extreme emaciation.” In April 2016, USAID Administrator Gayle E. Smith said exactly the same thing. They all share the same talking points in their unified campaign to squeeze more aid dollars from donors.

In May 2016, the T-TPLF Disaster Commissioner at a press conference with USAID Thomas Staal Acting Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Affairs, USAID said: “As you all know, Ethiopia has a drought which is caused by the global climate event, El Nino.  The effect of the current drought is severe as compared to the 1974 and 1984 disasters. So for the drought we appealed 10.2 million people, and with regard to the resource it was $1.4 billion.”

In its 2016 humanitarian response “Mid-Year Review”, UNICEF placed the entire problem of famine on “El Niño, combined with extensive flooding, disease outbreaks and the disruption of basic public services.”

The T-TPLF and its partners are trying to blame everything on El Nino and climate change; and absolve the T-TPLF from any moral, political or legal responsibility for the recurrent famines.

I find it painfully humorous whenever the international poverty pimps circle the wagons around the T-TPLF and try to distract attention from human beings dying from lack of food to farm animals dying from lack of feed. They play these clever semantic games. The fact is that in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa, when livestock die, people also die because livestock are a primary source of household food, income and vital assets.

What is even more jarring and bizarre is the fact that in one of the “world’s fastest growing economies” nearly 20 percent of  the population is facing chronic famine, year after year after year!

In July 2014, in a speech before the Committee of the U.N. Disaster Risk reduction, Disaster Commissioner  Kassa saidEthiopia as “one of the world’s fastest growing economies” and the “Government of Ethiopia has put a disaster risk reduction and resilience building at the top of its agenda”. He assured the Committee that his government’s “disaster risk management approach is in line with the Hugo (sic) Framework of Action”.

The Hyogo Framework promotes strategies for “disaster risk reduction being underpinned by a more pro-active approach to informing, motivating and involving people in all aspects of disaster risk reduction in their own local communities.”

In July 2016, the T-TPLF’s puppet prime minister (PPM) Hailemariam Desalegn said:

Agricultural output during the 2014/15 meher season was better than last years, but improved 2016 belg rains saw outputs rising by seven percent. This rise impacted the entire sector, triggering a three percent growth in the same year, injecting a one to one and a half percent contribution to the overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.

On December 27, 2016, the PPM gave assurances that Ethiopia “will register a double digit economic growth in the fiscal year as it is now on the right track of growth.” He said, “Agriculture, even though the drought situation is very huge, has shown a positive trend of growth.”

Pray tell:

If Ethiopia is developing economically by leaps and bounds and agricultural output rose “by seven percent”  and the GDP grew in 2016, how is it that nearly one-fifth, and possibly more, of the Ethiopian population is facing starvation again in 2017?

If the “Government of Ethiopia” “proactively” implemented Hyogo disaster strategies, how is it that three years after Kassa’s declaration, nearly one-fifth, and possibly more, of the Ethiopian population is facing starvation again in 2017?

Famine and starvation in Ethiopia are the most important issues to me because the right to life is the bedrock of all human rights.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 11 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) recognize the right to food as the quintessential human right.

I have written countless commentaries on famine and starvation in Ethiopia. I have tried to call attention to the structural nature of famine and starvation and how the T-TPLF has used famine to profit on the misery of the famine victims and cling to power. I have even demonstrated how the T-TPLF has “weaponized famine”.

In my October 2014 commentary, “The Rise and Fall of the “Baksheesh State” (beggar state) in Ethiopia, I explained how the T-TPLF has made Ethiopia the beggar nation of the African continent. Today the T-TPLF Baksheesh State has descended into a Baksheesh State of Emergency.

The T-TPLF spreads bogus statistics (BS) like horse manure to prove that it is “transforming” Ethiopia into an African “powerhouse” and boasts that it will make Ethiopia a “middle income country by 20125.”

In my January 8, 2017 commentary entitled, “The World Bank Liars in Ethiopia”, I demonstrated how the T-TPLF coordinates and cleverly propagates BS by passing it through the World Bank and other international poverty pimps in an attempt to validate and legitimize its fake economic growth.

I have been challenging T-TPLF BS for quite a few years. But I was not alone in trying to put the T-TPLF to proof.

In 2012, The Economist called out the T-TPLF on its BS:

It is not clear how factual Ethiopia’s economic data are. Life is intolerably expensive for Ethiopians in Addis Ababa, the capital, and its outlying towns. Some think Ethiopia’s inflation figures are fiddled with even more than those in Argentina. Even if the data are deemed usable, the double-digit growth rates predicted by the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi look fanciful.

In other words, T-TPLF’s BS is really BS.

But the tragic fact is that in January 2017, life is even more intolerably expensive for Ethiopians in Addis Ababa, the capital, and its outlying towns!

I raise the BS issue because the T-TPLF and its partners (I did not say in crime) claim in their publicity campaigns that the T-TPLF has put in hundreds of millions of dollars towards famine relief and mitigation.

The United Nation’s International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in its “Humanitarian Response Planning for 2017 reported: “Over the same period [2016] the Government of Ethiopia contributed ETB16.5 billion (US$735 million), including to response activities beyond the initial scope of the 2016 HRD.”

There is ABSOLUTELY not a shred of evidence to support the claim that T-TPLF put in hundreds of millions of dollars for famine relief in Ethiopia. It is just another T-TPLF BS legitimized by the poverty pimps and generally accepted as fact without any demonstrable evidence.

As most of my regular readers know, the T-TPLF coordinates its BS game with the international loaners, donors and poverty pimps. I guess the T-TPLF and its partners follow George W. Bush’s light-hearted advice: “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”

But what exactly is UNICEF doing in Ethiopia? UNICEF supposedly aims to “address the needs of children in the developing world”. Is that what it is doing in Ethiopia?

UNICEF claims to be “mandated” to work and collaborate with the local regimes in addressing the needs of children. The question is why UNICEF does not work with independent nongovernmental organizations, unaffiliated with regime corruptoids  to help children.

There is little doubt that UNICEF’s “resident coordinators” are in the back pockets of the T-TPLF. They are determined to legitimize, justify and affirm T-TPLF actions and remain on the good side of the T-TPLF leaders. Unfortunately, it is on the basis of the reports prepared by these coordinators that UNICEF headquarters makes its decisions.

Famine in Ethiopia is the result of poor governance

The fundamental problem with famine in Ethiopia is poor governance, not drought; incompetent and indifferent governance, not environmental factors.

The recurrent famines in Ethiopia are man made; that is, they are “made” by a corrupt, indifferent, incompetent and a clueless regime that lack political will to deal with the recurrent problem. The T-TPLF leaders in Ethiopia have a petrified “bush mentality” impervious to rational planning and policy making.

On August 16, 2011, Wolfgang Fengler, a lead economist for the World Bank said it straight up: “This [famine] crisis [in Ethiopia] is man made. Droughts have occurred over and again, but you need bad policy making for that to lead to a famine.”

The World Bank liars have been lying ever since.

In fact, Ethiopia today is 123 out of 125 worst fed countries in the world.

There is a joke that has been going around for some years about the time the PPM Hailemariam was asked if he was worried about the poor rains and looming famine in Ethiopia. Replied the PPM, “We are not worried about the rains in Ethiopia; we are worried about the rains in America and Canada.” No joke; the T-TPLF expects North American taxpayers to fill its begging bowls every year while it stands idly by chattering its teeth for alms.

The fox in charge of the hen house?

Can a Beggar State of Emergency end famine in Ethiopia?

The T-TPLF panhandlers are chattering their teeth once again to fleece donors of USD$1 billion for the foreseeable future. We all know that by mid-year the T-TPLF will be out panhandling for one-half billion dollars more. That is how the T-TPLF rolled for the past decade.

But what happened to all of the “humanitarian aid” the T-TPLF received over the past decades?

In its January 4, 2017 Food Assistance Factsheet  USAID reported that its “partners”  in “targeting food insecure Ethiopians with long-term development interventions” include the “Relief Society of Tigray, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Food for the Hungry (FH), and Save the Children International (SCI) and the Office of Food for Peace (FFP).”

“Targeting food” means food handouts and “food insecure Ethiopians” means starving and famine-stricken Ethiopians. The T-TPLF, USAID and the international poverty pimps think they can fool us with fancy words and phrases.

According to USAID, these organizations, including REST, administered USD$756.9 million worth of USAID “food aid” in Ethiopia in 2016!

But why is REST distributing famine aid in Ethiopia?

What is REST?

REST is an arm of the T-TPLF which has been in the famine and money laundering business for decades.

In 1984, when normal delivery of emergency humanitarian aid to the Tigrai region was made impossible by bombardment of the Derg (military junta) regime, the TPLF used REST to work hand in glove with various American NGOs to supposedly find alternate routes to deliver relief aid to famine victims in rebel-controlled areas. The real aim of REST was to skim and launder humanitarian aid money for  the personal and organizational use of the TPLF leadership.

Much of the firsthand account of famine aid-sharking and money laundering by the TPLF through REST was provided by former TPLF members.

As I documented in my May 2011 Huffington Post commentary  “Licensed to Steal”,  Gebremedhin Araya, a former treasurer and TPLF co-founder Dr. Aregawi Berhe, detailed the scam the TPLF used to swindle, hustle and con millions of dollars from international famine relief organizations in the mid-1980s.

The two former top leaders accused the TPLF top brass, including Zenawi, for taking tens of millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the Tigrai region to buy weapons and enrich themselves. Gebremedhin reported personally handing out cash payments and checks in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the late TPLF capo Meles Zenawi and TPLF godfather Sebhat Nega, the top two TPLF leaders who controlled the cash flow of the organization. Although Gebremedhin was the treasurer, he said he was not privileged to know what happened to the money after he delivered it to Zenawi or Nega.

Dr. Aregawi told the BBC that of the $100 million that went through TPLF hands at the time, $95 million was diverted for weapons purchases and other purposes not related to famine relief. He stated that the TPLF stage-managed “dramas” to “fool the aid workers”. A BBC investigation identified a 1985 official CIA document which concluded: “Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.”

The current administrator of USAID, Gayle E. Smith was an employee of REST in the early 1990s.

According to a May 1991 Christian Science Monitor report: “One of the few Westerners who speaks the Tigre language and has had many contacts with Zenawi over a nine-year period, is Gayle Smith, an American who worked for Tigre’s relief agency, REST, during the 1985-6 drought.” (Emphasis added.)

Lo and behold! Today REST is the principal distributor of “humanitarian aid” in Ethiopia!

The same gang of aid thieves who stole, diverted and laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid nearly 35 years ago are now doing the same thing today except on a gargantuan scale.

The REST bagman 35 years ago, Teklewoini Assefa, (depicted in a circa 1984 picture below keeping log of piles of cash diverted from famine relief) is today the Executive Director of REST today (p.21). The only difference is that Tekelewoini today swaggers in designer suits and alligator shoes as he counts hundreds of millions of dollars instead of combat khakis and tire tread sandals.

The old sly fox is still guarding the hen house. The perfect SCAM!

The greatest irony of all is the fact that Gayle E. Smith, the former REST employee, became Administrator  of USAID in 2015. When that happened the T-TPLF hit pay dirt, snagged the the mother lode.

Gebremedhin Araya (L); Max Peberdy (C); Tekeleweoini Assefa (R)

No wonder the T-TPLF is panic-stricken today. The days of the USAID gravy train for the T-TPLF in Ethiopia appear to be numbered as the Trump transition team is asking some tough questions about the fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in U.S. aid to Africa.

But that is not all!

What is even more mind-boggling is the fact that REST in its multi-million dollar “charitable” aid distribution business is exempt from the so-called Charities and Societies Law. (Proclamation No. 621/2009 of 2009.)

REST has at least 31 foreign charity “partners” (p. 37) including the Development Fund Norway, Oxfam America, Packard Foundation, RKK Japan, European Union (EU), IFAD, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The World Bank, World Food Program (WFP) and other NGOs.

One case that provides clear and convincing evidence of the double standard the T-TPLF uses to discriminate between T-TPLF affiliated “charities” and all others is evidenced in a REST proposal (p. iii) to WellWishers Trust (WW), a “foreign charity”. The proposal seeks funds to support a potable water supply development in “six weredas in Tgray, Ethiopia” for the project period of January 2016 to December 2016.

According to the 2015 WellWishers Trust statement of financial performance, the Trust made “donations to charity (Water Wells in Ethiopia)” in the amount of $661,910.58.

WellWishers declares it conducts its well construction projects in northern Ethiopia with “our partner The Relief Society of Tigray (REST)”. In explaining its “confidence” in REST, WellWishers describes it as “the largest NGO in Ethiopia and is one of the biggest in Africa. They are very professional and we are very happy with the work they do.”

In its proposal, REST submitted a preliminary project budget to WellWishers in the amount of USD$242,451.42. Of this amount, REST requested USD$200,189.90 from WellWishers and made representations that “the balance [USD$42, 261.52] will be contributed from REST and the community.”

Simply stated,  REST will receive 82.56 percent of its project revenue in the proposal from a “foreign charity” source and 17.43 percent from local sources.

Indeed, WellWishers over the years has provided substantial funding to REST which was allegedly used to construct water wells in Tigray.

It does not take a lawyer to figure out that the REST project proposal to WW is patently illegal under the Charities and Societies Proclamation which clearly requires  that local charities can only receive 10 percent of their budget from foreign funding. (See section 2.2., 2.3, 2.4 of the Proclamation.)

Under the “Proclamation”,  “charitable societies” specifically include organizations such as REST engaged in the “the prevention or alleviation or relief of poverty or disaster the advancement of the economy and social development and environmental protection or improvement”.

REST can receive 82.56 percent of its revenue from a “foreign charity” and get away with it! 

In contrast, seven years ago in 2010, a year after the enactment of the Proclamation, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (HRCO), the country’s first  and only human rights monitoring group was forced by the T-TPLF to close nine of its twelve offices and cut 85 per cent of its staff because it “received” more than 10 percent of its revenue from foreign charities.

Similarly, Ethiopia’s premier women’s rights group, the Ethiopian Women’s Lawyers Association (EWLA), was forced to cut 70 per cent of its staff  because it received more than 10 percent of its revenue from a “foreign charity”.

Should the international community give a dime in “humanitarian aid” to the T-TPLF?

The T-TPLF beggars are chattering their teeth and salivating in anticipation of USD$1 billion in aid from the international community, and mostly from the U.S. The question is whether U.S. taxpayers should hand over $1 billion to the T-TPLF so that they can line their pockets?

I see no reason why U.S. taxpayers have to feed the greedy T-TPLF Beast!

A January 17, 2017 U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Press Release stated, “Nearly 230 representatives from the Government, UN, NGOs and donors visited affected communities across Ethiopia’s nine regions. The assessment concluded that some 5.6 million people will be in need of assistance in the course of 2017.” (Emphasis added.)

Notice that not a single independent journalist came along with the 230 international representatives in the nine regions. Not One!

Why didn’t these “international representatives” bring along international journalists to observe and report on local famine conditions?

Simple! The “international representatives” (poverty pimps) do not want the T-R-U-T-H to be told to the international community. They just want to collect billions of dollars by talking gloom and doom.

Why don’t the “international representatives” show us the photos and videos of the famine-impacted areas, population and livestock? What do they have to hide?  Why aren’t international journalists stationed in the country allowed to travel to the affected areas to report?

I am not sorry to call the “230 representatives” poverty pimps and parasi-ticks sucking the blood of poor Ethiopians who profit by trading on the misery of poor and starving Ethiopians.

Suffice it to say that the 230 representatives talking about famine victims in Ethiopia is like a cackle of laughing hyenas holding a convention to discuss the anguish and misery of antelopes or a pack of wolves agonizing over the misfortunes of sheep.

The “230 representatives” shed crocodile tears for Ethiopia’s famine victims. To hell with them!

The fact of the matter is that a good amount of the USD$1 billion is going to line the pockets of T-TPLF leaders, supporters, hangers-on and flunkies through that infamous organization called REST. That is an incontrovertible FACT! Deal with it!

Not a dime to the T-TPLF UNTIL the international press can visit and report on the famine affected areas.

The world needs to know the truth about famine in Ethiopia.

There are 20 million Ethiopians facing starvation. Let the world see the faces of the T-TPLF famine victims.

I have always claimed that the T-TPLF is hiding the scope and magnitude of the famine by prohibiting travel for foreign journalists to visit famine areas and report.

For any international organization or donor country to give aid without T-TPLF transparency and accountability is tantamount to complicity in crimes against humanity.

Could it be that a T-TPLF desperately short on foreign-exchange reserve is trading on the misery of its poor and starving citizens?

Starve the Beast, Feed the People

In my August 2011 commentary on famine in Ethiopia, I made my stand clear and will repeat here one more time:

No more aid to a regime that clings to power by digging its fingers into the ribs of starving children. No more aid to torturers and human rights violators. No aid to election thieves. No aid to those who roll out a feast to feed their supporters and watch their opponents starve to death. Let’s shout in a collective voice to the West — America, England, Germany, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and the rest of them–: “Starve the bloated T-TPLF beast feeding on the Ethiopian body politics, and help feed the starving people.”

STARVE THE T-TPLF BEAST, FEED THE STARVING ETHIOPIAN PEOPLE!

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Posted by  ethioforum on January 23, 2017. Filed under FEATURED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry