Ethiopianization ኢትዮጵያናይዜሽን

EFF FIGHT WITH MILITARY AT PARLIAMENT SONA 2017 aka WWE ROYAL RUMBLE

2017-02-10T03:08:00.001-08:00

Citizenship for Jamaicans high on Ethiopia’s agenda - News - JamaicaObserver.com

2017-02-09T08:08:00.001-08:00

BIRRU... roughly 500 Jamaicans live in Shashamane (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

ETHIOPIAN ambassador to Jamaica, North America and Mexico, Girma Birru, says he is working with the Jamaican Government to sort out issues of citizenship for Jamaicans residing in Shashamane, Ethiopia.

Ambassador Birru, who is visiting Jamaica in recognition of Diplomatic Week, told the

Jamaica Observer during a visit to the newspaper on Tuesday that there are about 500 Jamaicans living in Shashamane.

“In Ethiopia there isn’t dual citizenship and some of the Jamaicans have been living there for the last 50, 60 years,” the ambassador shared. “There are roughly 500 Jamaicans living there.

Obama And The Fallacy Of The African Dream

2017-01-05T06:34:00.001-08:00

Tafi MhakaWriter, professional communicator.

The leaders of Africa have sorely struggled to secure socio-economic security for all for more than five decades.

Obama And The Fallacy Of The African Dream The leaders of Africa have sorely struggled to secure socio-economic security for all for more than five decades. 05/01/2017 04:59 SAST | Updated 2 hours ago Tafi Mhaka Writer, professional communicator. EVAN VUCCI/AP U.S. President Barack Obama, left, shakes hands during a bilateral meeting with African Union Commission chairperson, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, at the African Union, Tuesday, July 28, 2015, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. On the final day of his African trip, Obama is focusing on economic opportunities and African security. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) When then-Senator Barrack Obama won the presidential election in the USA, ahead of Republican Party nominee John McCain, on Tuesday, November 3 in 2009 – Africa as a whole celebrated the election of a man many people on the continent regard as a son of the African soil. Ordinary Africans believed Obama could bring change to Africa, as they felt he was a man who could relate to the struggles of African people. His Kenyan lineage captured the imagination of Africa more than the legacy of Martin Luther King Jnr. ever will. Obama seemingly plugged an emotional void in the soul of Africa, which had lingered unperturbed for an excruciatingly long period of time. And he laid bare for all to see, the dearth of young African personalities in positions of leadership in post-colonial political and economic affairs. Obama oozes coolness and sophistication in buckets. He inspires dreams of an expansive nature much more than esteemed liberators like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana did in 1957. What does this say about the state of Africa today? ... do African men shamefully smother the voices and dreams of African women in the hope of perpetuating patriarchal dominance? The leaders of Africa have sorely struggled to secure socio-economic security for all for more than five decades. So millennials have begun to see hope in leaders like Obama. The fascination and respect Obama inspires in Africa, is a much-sought after rarity in African politics only the late Nelson Mandela held in times gone by. Mrs Obama is also highly popular in Africa. She fronted the #bringbackourgirls campaign calling for the release of 276 Chibok girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. She is intelligent and articulate and appears to have formidable strength of character. But is Africa truly in short supply of phenomenal female leaders like Mrs Obama? Or do African men shamefully smother the voices and dreams of African women in the hope of perpetuating patriarchal dominance? Where are the young African pioneers of today, who can develop technology-driven enterprises in Africa, and create millions of decent jobs for the Africans emigrating to Europe in shabby fishing boats? We love to applaud the achievements of Mark Zuckerberg – and rightfully so, but is Africa promoting or stifling innovation for the sake of skewed policy considerations? African leaders are quick to welcome political change overseas, but loathe to see dynamic dispensations cropping up in Angola, Uganda, Egypt and Ethiopia. African leaders rush to congratulate leaders such as Theresa May and Donald Trump when they win elections in their respective countries, but largely fail to support democracy, or uphold the rule of law, or hold free and fair or peaceful elections in Kenya, Togo, Gabon, Gambia and Ivory Coast. African leaders are quick to welcome political change overseas, but loathe to see dynamic dispensations cropping up in Angola, Uganda, Egypt and Ethiopia. Africans love to stand up for the rights of African-Americans on Twitter and Facebook, but ignore injustices suffered by fellow Africans in conflict zones like Darfur and South Sudan. Africans have been all so eager to embrace the deeply personal African-American dream of Barrack Hussein Obama II, they have not discussed how the dream of a free and prosperous Africa remains solidly stuck in the fading hopes of 1957

African union summit starts in Rwandan capital Kigali

2016-07-18T08:02:00.001-07:00

Never be satisfied with mediocrity, Kagame tells Ethiopian students

2016-07-03T10:14:00.001-07:00

Rwanda: "Never be satisfied with mediocrity, Kagame tells Ethiopian students
By: JAMES KARUHANGA
PUBLISHED: July 03, 2016 News Print Email
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L-R: Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Tedros Adhanom, First Lady Jeannette Kagame, H.E President of the Republic of Ethiopia, President Paul Kagame, Dr Mulatu Teshome, Ato Gadu Andargachew, President of the Amhara Region State, Dr Baylie Damite, President of Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia yesterday. (Photograph: Sisay Argwa)
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President Paul Kagame yesterday told students of Bahir Dar University, in Ethiopia, to use their voice to stand up for what is right.

The President said this after the Ethiopian university conferred to him an honorary Doctor of Laws in recognition of his role in stopping the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, championing the empowerment of women and ensuring Rwanda’s sustainable development. The President was accompanied by the First Lady Jeannette Kagame.

“You have as much stake in this world of ours as anyone. Take your seat, Africa’s seat at the high table. In every situation strive to bring people together never to divide them. We benefit from our diverse ideas and identity,” Kagame said.

Whether as a nation, continent or the world, he added, there is always a way to build a common purpose and “we should strive” for this.

“Thank you for this great honor bestowed upon me and my people, this speaks a lot to how much we can do as brothers and sisters. We will continue to work together ever more closely with the people of this great nation of the Republic of Ethiopia.

These are among the African and universal values that you youth inherit and you should be proud.”

The President thanked Bahir Dar University for awarding him with a honorary degree which pays tribute not just to him but also the Rwandan people.

“This recognition is a great honor to the struggle of the Rwandan people for liberation and prosperity.”

“You got it right by emphasizing the huge role Rwandan women have played in Rwanda’s rebirth. Thank you for that. Our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia have been with us, all the way, which we will always appreciate and reciprocate. I am honoured to stand together with you today and to be associated with this university and the great nation of Ethiopia.”

“To the new graduates. Like your parents, I came of age in a different Africa with complicated circumstances. Injustice and bad politics prevented many of us from attending university. Even the right to live, was not always assured. We had no choice but to struggle and fight to secure the dignity and opportunity we now enjoy and deserve.”

Kagame then urged the graduates to build on “this foundation” and do even more and better for the continent’s future.

“We must therefore never take for granted how far we have come and the sacrifice required to get to where we are today. Neither can we be satisfied with mediocrity or praise for small ambitions. We live in a better Africa than ever before.”

He told them that it is not enough to have a degree or to be young. More important, he said, is the mindset of ownership, responsibility and curiosity. The biggest part of any problem, President Kagame added, is accepting it as normal.

President Mulatu Teshome and Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Tedros Adhanom, including Chief Administrator of Amhara Regional State, Gedu Andargachew, attended the event.

President Teshome said: “It is an honor for us to have President Kagame grace this graduation. A continued testament of our close relations.”

“On behalf of the Government, I would like to thank the University for presenting this degree to President Kagame. Congratulations President Kagame on receiving this honorary Doctor of Laws. May our two countries continue to prosper.”

Bahir Dar University located in the city of Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara National Regional State in Ethiopia, graduated 8, 321 students trained in first, second and doctorate degree programs.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw"

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Ethiopia wants Africa fully represented on UN Security Council

2016-07-02T09:35:00.001-07:00

areyouseriouse? 5 hours ago
and why should Africa get a veto vote? Africa has shown no reasonable ability to even sorting out the smallest of problems and has no military to back up its actions... maybe one day when Africa has the military and resources it can have a say, but until Africa fix its problems, i can not see it ever happening ...
maybe africa should focus on getting rid of people like robert mugabe and other dictators...
Reply

Share ›
- Ateme Sonko areyouseriouse? 24 minutes ago
  
  There was no need of specialized military force and big economy to defeat their specialized enemies in Africa. So African unity and solidarity is one of the best reasonable abilities of the Africans to fight terrorism and to have veto power on the council. Since World War2, everything had changed in the world except the number of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. Why? Five(5) is not the other name of the God. I believe that it has to change with changes.

Ethiopia gets non-permanent UN Security Council seat

2016-06-29T01:21:00.001-07:00

Ethiopia is to be a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for two years. The country may spread peace while on blue helmet missions abroad, but critics complain that political space at home is contracting.

The vote at the UN General Assembly electing Ethiopia as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council turned out to be largely a formality because Ethiopia ran unopposed in its regional grouping. Africa heads of state and government had agreed on Ethiopia as a joint candidate at their summit in January, when Kenya and the Seychelles withdrew from the contest.

Ethiopia may have run unopposed but it still had to pick up two thirds of the votes cast in the 193-nation assembly. It was backed by numerous African states, including Rwanda whose candidacy Ehtiopia backed in 2013/2014, and by Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Viera said Ethiopia "with its extensive experience in regional, African and global peacekeeping missions" could make "an immense contribution" to the UN Security Council.

Regional gendarme

Ethiopia's participation and experience in peacekeeping in Africa was a trump card in its bid for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. Its contingent of 8,000 troops - men and women - on peacekeeping duties is the largest in the world. (The official promotional literature says Ethiopia has the biggest number of female peacekeepers worldwide.)

As a founding member and host country of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor of the African Union (AU), Ethiopia is a major pillar in the continent's peace and security architecture. Africa's second most populous state also chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), mediating in conflicts on the Horn of Africa, most recently during the strenuous negotiations between the warring parties in South Sudan.

Ethiopia has been criticized for ignoring the Ethiopia Eritrea Boundary Commission ruling that defines their common border

Ethiopia and Liberia signed the UN Charter as founding members in 1945. Ethiopia has represented Africa at the Security Council twice in the past, the last time in 1989/90. It contributed troops to the UN in Korea in the 1950s and 60s (when 121 Ethiopian soldiers lost their lives over three years) and in the Congo. Ethiopia pursed its candidacy for 2017/18 with some vigor, it would have been disappointed if it had ended in failure.

Crackdown on dissent

Critics of Ethiopia says its participation in blue helmet missions in Liberia, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and other conflict zones is considerably more successful than its efforts to create democracy and stability at home. The country, with a population of some 90 million, is run by an authoritarian regime. Journalists, human rights campaigners and opposition activists complain that the political space is contracting and that anti-terror legislation is being used to crack down on dissent.

The Ethiopian foreign ministry says it wishes to use its non-permanent seat on the Security Council to "promote peace and security through dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution." This prompts the question why Ethiopia has been so belligerent in its recent border clashes and verbal exchanges with its neighbor Eritrea.

In the promotional literature for its candidacy, Ethiopia said it "wanted to expand the role of regional security deals." So why then does Ethiopia ignore the ruling of the Boundary Commission defining its border with Eritrea?

Chatting with DW on Facebook on Tuesday, a number of Ethiopians spoke of the changes they hoped the Security Council seat would bring. "Perhaps there will be change within the country," said Kibrom Tadesse. Nesta Worku is more pessismistic. "Which African country protects human rights or democracy? The UN Security Council can't do anything about the African heads of state - they repress human rights."

Ethiopian troops standing guard before a display of weapons left behind by al Shabab militants in Somalia

In his historic speech to the UN General Assembly in 1963, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie said that "the Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man" only to add that "these, too, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning."

More than 50 years later, Ethiopia is no longer an empire but one of Africa's "lion states." As such, it will be expected to demonstrate that "African solutions for African problems" really is a promise that can be kept, especially in the field of peace and security policy. There is one particular project which Ehtiopia is expected to nudge forward - the African Peace and Security Architecture - the main plank of which is a rapid reaction force based in Addis Ababa.

Local media covers President Park's state visit to Ethiopia

2016-05-27T07:02:00.001-07:00

The 75th anniversary of Liberation Day in Ethiopia

2016-05-02T06:49:00.001-07:00

By Bruce Walker

What of the Fascist leader in this war? Mussolini was a cynical politician and his motives need not be trusted but the arguments he made for war – arguments which have all disappeared down the memory hole – which were not bad arguments.

Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”

Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.

Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.

Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)

Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.

Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.

May 5 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of a signal day in modern African history. On that day, British forces brought back into power Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, who had been driven out of his country by the forces of Fascist Italy almost exactly five years earlier. The oldest independent nation in Africa, indeed, one of the oldest nations on earth, was restored.

The Fascists were bad. The use of poison gas by air was particularly reprehensible, but the history surrounding the Second Italo-Ethiopian War defies the standard understanding of bad European colonial power and noble indigenous African nation which we have been taught. The lessons of that war are useful in understanding our world today.

Ethiopia, like most large nations in the Old World, was an empire with ruling peoples and subject peoples – just like Iran or Iraq or Turkey or Pakistan or China or many other trouble spots in our world. Haile Selassie was an enlightened despot but he was a despot who ruled without the consent of his subjects, just like Mussolini.

What of the Fascist leader in this war? Mussolini was a cynical politician and his motives need not be trusted but the arguments he made for war – arguments which have all disappeared down the memory hole – which were not bad arguments.

Consider first slavery, something which is often portrayed as wicked whites owning oppressed blacks. In fact, slavery was horrible problem in Ethiopia and the Fascists presented their war as one against slavery. Boake Carter, a friend of the Ethiopian cause and writing just before the Italian began war against the African nation, was nonetheless compelled to note: “Today, of the nation’s 10,000,000 people, 2,000,000 are actually slaves. It is estimated that one out of every four persons in Addis Ababa is a slave…Actually the slaves are on par with the beasts of the field. They have no rights and they must work from dawn to dusk.”

Consider the racial question. The ruling Ethiopians actually considered themselves as racially superior to their subjects rather like the high caste Indians viewer lower castes as racially inferior: “Varna” is translated as “color.” Racism exists in Africa and Asia without European influence at all. Odd as it seems to us today, the Fascists, who long mocked Nazism racism, also told the world that they welcomed black natives into the Fascist movement and in the 1935 National Geographic article “With the Italians in Eritrea” showed native blacks and Italians Fascists happily working together.

Consider the “oppressed” - Mussolini professed to do – and he presented his aggressive war as a war of liberation by the Fascists against the rulers of Ethiopia and Mussolini called this Italian war “a war of the poor, the disinherited, the proletariat.” Mussolini, the former Marxist who always maintained that Italian Socialist Party left him and he did not leave it, waged war as any good Marxist – as he did, indeed, throughout the Second World War.

Consider the religious divide in Africa, Mussolini, who also described himself as the “Defender of Islam,” did and he got a number of Moslem tribesmen to fight alongside the Fascists against the Christian Emperor Haile Selassie. Because the Italians particularly sought, and gained, Moslems recruits from neighboring lands, some of the kinfolk of our president, Kenyan Moslems, might well have been fighting alongside Mussolini and against the forces of Haile Selassie (just as Obama’s ancestors were just as likely to own black Africans as slaves as any white man in the America.)

Africa and much of Asia is a nightmare and it has been a nightmare no matter who won or lost wars. Seventy-five years after the Ethiopian Empire was liberated from Italian rule, “Ethiopia,” which splintered into separate nations after nasty rebellions, remains divided by language, religion and tribe. Independence has not made this land a happy place. Ethiopia ranks 148 out of 178 in the world in freedom and, like its neighbors, Ethiopia, is very poor. The problems of Africa and Asia, which are dreadful, are not the consequence of the richer Europe-American world. The problems are consequence of bitter divides which often have stretched for many hundreds of years.

Africa, sixty years after de-colonization, is still wretched and violent. Ethiopia, the first modern nation of Africa, celebrates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the expulsion of Italian Fascists from their nation. Is anything better? Honestly, no. The problems of Africa and much of Asia are not the consequence of Italian invaders or British imperialism. These problems are old and, tragically, self-inflicted.

Tiny Djibouti thinks big with China-backed infrastructure splurge | Daily Mail Online

2016-04-07T12:05:00.001-07:00

The tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, which votes Friday in presidential elections, is hitching its wagon to the star of neighbouring Ethiopia with a series of cross-border projects funded mainly by China, the new power-broker in the region.

Djibouti's President Ismael Omar Guelleh, in power since 1999, is seeking a fourth term as head of the former French colony that sits at the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

The vote, which the opposition has already branded a sham, will test support for a series of infrastructure projects that aim to increase the already outsized influence of the country of around 800,000 people, home to America's biggest -- and only permanent -- military base in Africa.

Djibouti's President Ismael Omar Guelleh, in power since 1999, is seeking a fourth term as head of the former French colony that sits at the entrance to the Red Sea and Suez Canal ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)

Djibouti has been in the lucrative position of offering landlocked Ethiopia its only access to the sea since Ethiopia went to war with Eritrea next door in 1998.

During the two-year conflict, Addis Ababa relied on Djibouti's main port to import weapons.

Since then Ethiopia's economy has grown exponentially, and with it the tide of imports flowing through Djibouti to the country of 97 million people, which accounts for 86 percent of all goods transiting through Djiboutian ports.

Not content to rely on passing trade and playing host to the military bases of several world powers, Djibouti is now looking to play a bigger role in east Africa, in tandem with fast-growing Ethiopia.

"Even if the country has a very good strategic location, small economies like ours need to be integrated into regional development efforts," Foreign Minister Mahamoud Ali Youssouf told AFP.

- A 'model' for east Africa -

In 2011, Djibouti was hooked up to Ethiopia's electricity grid. Two further interconnectors are planned, one of which could transport Ethiopian power across the Red Sea to Yemen.

A 752-kilometre railway line linking the city of Djibouti to Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa is scheduled to open soon, with another line for exporting potassium from the northern Ethiopian city of Mekele through the Djiboutian port of Tadjourah set to soon follow.

In the past year the neighbours have also announced two major energy projects.

A multi-billion-dollar pipeline will transport natural gas from Ethiopia to a liquefaction plant and export terminal at Damerjog in Djibouti, while in the other direction, a planned 550-kilometre pipeline will carry diesel, gasoline and jet fuel from Djibouti's ports to central Ethiopia.

Completing the list of cross-border projects is a water pipeline to channel drinking water from Ethiopia to Djibouti, which like Ethiopia is prone to droughts.

"Our relationship is gaining momentum", said Tewolde Mulugeta, spokesman for the Ethiopian foreign ministry, who sees the deepening ties between the two countries as "a model" for the region.

It is a view shared in Djibouti.

"The main thing is that the development benefits not only the two countries but also other countries in the region," Energy Minister Ali Yacoub Mahamoud told AFP.

"That is why we must combine our resources, our efforts and our ideas".

- Chinese money -

The two countries see themselves as the engine of closer cooperation within the regional IGAD grouping, which also includes Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.

Ethiopia and Djibouti's special relationship has been welcomed by China, a major investor in the region.

Most of Djibouti's 14 major infrastructure projects, which have been valued at a total 14.4 billion dollars, are being funded by Chinese banks, including the railway line that will halve transit times from Djibouti to Addis Ababa.

"These are very big investments," Djibouti's foreign minister said, explaining that China was "the only partner that accompanied us along this path."

China is also funding the pipeline that will transport natural gas to the port in Djibouti for export to the Asian powerhouse, and recently signed an accord with the Red Sea state on the construction of a free trade zone around 50 kilometres from Djibouti city.

Economists warn that Djibouti is becoming too reliant on Chinese credit. The country's public debt burden is forecast to rise from 60 per cent in 2015 to around 80 percent in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund.

"It's a dilemma," admits Youssouf, the foreign minister. "The more indebted we are, the more we depend on our creditor. But what alternative is there? Countries can only develop if they have infrastructure."

Not content to rely on passing port trade and playing host to the military bases of several world powers, Djibouti is now looking to play a bigger role in east Africa, in tandem with fast-growing Ethiopia ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)

Workers seal packages in the port of Djibouti, which is in the lucrative position of offering landlocked Ethiopia its only access to the sea ©Simon Maina (AFP/File)

Ethiopia welcomes the Queen: archive, 2 February 1965 | World news | The Guardian

2016-02-03T01:38:00.001-08:00

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip with Emperor Haile Selassie I, 1965. Photograph: Keystone/Hulton/Getty Images
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came here tonight to a leonine welcome at the start of a week’s state visit to Ethiopia.

Waiting for her at the airport was the Emperor of Ethiopia in field-marshal’s uniform and a lion’s mane helmet. As she drove the two miles to the Jubilee Palace she passed two huge gilded aluminium lions erected in her honour.

Halfway on the journey they changed from a car to a state coach drawn by six white horses. Surrounded by a 100 horsemen of the imperial bodyguard, jogging under heavy lion’s mane helmets, it took more than an hour to drive the two miles through crowd clapping a rhythmic welcome and drums thumping. Horsemen cantered among the crowd with even longer lions’ manes stuck to their hair.

State banquetLater the Queen was guest of honour at a state banquet in the old palace, where in the gardens the Emperor keeps his pet lions. By then she could be in no doubt that she had come to the land of the Lion of Judah, King of Kings.

The welcome, all the same, was gay and unforced. The traffic jams began two hours before her plane arrived, and it was noticeable how pedestrians who had armed themselves with spears made the best progress.

Her palace looks out upon the handsome African Hall where many times in the past 18 months African leaders have met to denounce the colonial Powers and to plan the liberation of Southern Africa. But a banner strung across the road proclaims “Long live the friendship between Great Britain and Ethiopia.” And behind her palace are roads named after three British generals - Wavell, Wingate, and Cunningham - who helped to liberate Ethiopia from the Italians.

Tonight, Britain was in Ethiopian eyes the great country and a liberator rather than a colonialist. Many of the soldiers at the airport wore the British Africa Star.

The state visit is being made in return for one paid to London by the Emperor when Sir Winston Churchill was Prime Minister ten years ago. Britain was also host to the Emperor and his family while he fretted out four years of exile in a country house near Bath.

Ancient gloriesFor a week, Ethiopia is prepared to be unashamedly imperial. Today’s Issue of the “Ethiopian Gazette” carefully notes that the six white horses drawing the state coach were bred from the stable of the Emperor Maximilian, famous 300 years ago.

During the week the accent will be mainly on the country’s ancient glories, with a night spent camping above the old capital of Gondar. But the Queen is also to see new glories, such as the huge Tendaho cotton estates, one of the few pieces of British enterprise in Ethiopia. It is the successful vision of Mitchell Cotts, and that company’s 10,000 British shareholders.

The Queen’s arrival has inspired the capital’s only daily newspaper to inaugurate a women’s page, and in this the Queen is praised as a monarch who has shown interest in industry and patronised the arts. There is little doubt that the Queen, who added to today’s brightness by wearing a buttercup yellow coat and petal hat, will wipe out the somewhat frosty memory most Ethiopians have of the British monarchy.

No one in public speeches is likely to mention the unhappy events of a century ago, when the Emperor Theodore felt himself slighted in correspondence with Queen Victoria, and the incident ended with a British punitive expedition and the Emperor dying after battle. Today’s horsemen looked as if they had galloped out of the last century, but their welcome belonged to this happier age.

The Queen has invested Emperor Haile Selassie with the honorary rank of field-marshal in the British Army. The only other monarch in the world to hold this British rank is the King of Nepal.

26th AU Summit Opening: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2016-01-30T08:52:00.001-08:00

Promised land? Rastafaris struggle in Ethiopia -

2015-11-14T00:49:00.001-08:00

Promised land? Rastafaris struggle in Ethiopia - YouTube: ""

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Seven moments from African history on archive film - BBC News

2015-08-11T09:11:00.001-07:00

Seven moments from African history on archive film - BBC News: "Seven moments from African history on archive film
11 August 2015
From the section Africa

Among the half a million archive videos recently uploaded by the Associated Press news agency and British Movietone are some key moments from Africa's past.
We have selected seven highlights:

1936: Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie in exile
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Media caption
Emperor Haile Selassie thanks the British people in 1936 for their welcome
In this film Emperor Haile Selassie, exiled in the UK a year after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, speaks about his hope for the "the final triumph of justice".
He was restored to his throne in 1941, four years before the end of World War Two.
Find out more

1958: Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah meets Ethiopian emperor's lion
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Emperor Haile Selassie meets Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah in 1958
Ethiopia's emperor and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah were among the leaders of the pan-African movement.
This 1958 footage shows a meeting between the two men in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia - also then known as Abyssinia, when Mr Nkrumah was Ghana's prime minister - and an encounter with a pet lion.
Find out more

1969: Biafra secessionist leader urges on his troops
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Nigeria's Biafra leader in 1969 urges on his 'brave boys'
Nigeria's civil war began in 1967 after Biafra declared independence from the rest of the country.
In this film from 1969, Biafra's leader Colonel Emeka Ojukwu talks about how Biafran soldiers "have turned the tide of this war", but a year later Biafra's army was defeated.
Find out more

1978: Scenes in Rhodesia after desegregation
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Media caption
Rhodesia desegregation scenes in 1978
As Rhodesia's leaders were negotiating a new multi-racial future for the country - which became Zimbabwe in 1980 - bars, schools and other public places began to desegregate.
This shows desegregation in different parts of the capital in 1978, known at the time as Salisbury, black people are shown walking down one of the city's main streets which had been out of bounds to them.
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1990: Nelson Mandela walks free in South Africa
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South Africa's Nelson Mandela walks free in 1990
After 27 years in prison South Africa's anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela walked free in 1990.
The footage shows that moment as well as the start of his emotional address to people in Cape Town a few hours later.
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1997: Zairean rebel leader predicts quick victory
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Kabila's move to take Kinshasa in 1997
Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila was on his way to peace talks in South Africa in April 1997 when he spoke briefly to reporters at Lubumbashi airport.
When asked about his goal, he says he will reach the capital Kinshasa "in three weeks". He took just a bit longer and overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in May, become president and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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2003: Liberia's Charles Taylor offered asylum in Nigeria
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Liberia's Taylor given asylum in Nigeria
In this film from July 2003, Nigeria's then-President Olusegun Obasanjo flies to Liberia's capital, Monrovia, to offer his Liberian counterpart Charles Taylor asylum as a way to help end instability in the country.
Lurd rebels were besieging Monrovia and Mr Taylor was wanted for war crimes in Sierra Leone. He eventually went to Nigeria that August, but he was arrested nearly three years later and tried by a UN-backed court and found guilty.
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'via Blog this'

#Blockupy protesters clash with Frankfurt police

2015-03-19T03:06:00.001-07:00

'First human' discovered in Ethiopia 2.8 million-year-old

2015-03-05T00:56:00.001-08:00

By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News

The fossil's teeth are smaller than those of other human relatives

Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first humans.

The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.

The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".

“Start Quote

This is the most important transition in human evolution”

Prof Brian VillmoareUniversity of Nevada

Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between an iconic 3.2 million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974, called "Lucy".

Could Lucy's kind - which belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis - have evolved into the very first primitive humans?

"That's what we are arguing," said Prof Villmoare.

But the fossil record between the time period when Lucy and her kin were alive and the emergence of Homo erectus (with its relatively large brain and humanlike body proportions) two million years ago is sparse.

The 2.8 million-year-old lower jawbone was found in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. He told BBC News that he was "stunned" when he saw the fossil.

"The moment I found it, I realised that it was important, as this is the time period represented by few (human) fossils in Eastern Africa."

The fossil is of the left side of the lower jaw, along with five teeth. The back molar teeth are smaller than those of other hominins living in the area and are one of the features that distinguish humans from more primitive ancestors, according to Professor William Kimbel, director of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.

“Start Quote

These new studies challenge us to consider the very definition of what it is to be human”

Prof Chris StringerNatural History Museum, London

"Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo was an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago," he told BBC News.

"So this new discovery pushes the human line back by 400,000 years or so, very close to its likely (pre-human) ancestor. Its mix of primitive and advanced features makes the Ledi jaw a good transitional form between (Lucy) and later humans."

A computer reconstruction of a skull belonging to the species Homo habilis, which has been published in Nature journal, indicates that it may well have been the evolutionary descendant of the species announced today.

The researcher involved, Prof Fred Spoor of University College London told BBC News that, taken together, the new findings had lifted a veil on a key period in the evolution of our species.

"By discovering a new fossil and re-analysing an old one we have truly contributed to our knowledge of our own evolutionary period, stretching over a million years that had been shrouded in mystery," he said.

Climate change

The dating of the jawbone might help answer one of the key questions in human evolution. What caused some primitive ancestors to climb down from the trees and make their homes on the ground.

A separate study in Science hints that a change in climate might have been a factor. An analysis of the fossilised plant and animal life in the area suggests that what had once been lush forest had become dry grassland.

As the trees made way for vast plains, ancient human-like primates found a way of exploiting the new environmental niche, developing bigger brains and becoming less reliant on having big jaws and teeth by using tools.

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London described the discovery as a "big story".

He says the new species clearly does show the earliest step toward human characteristics, but suggests that half a jawbone is not enough to tell just how human it was and does not provide enough evidence to suggest that it was this line that led to us.

The jawbone was found close to the area where Lucy was discovered

He notes that the emergence of human-like characteristics was not unique to Ethiopia.

"The human-like features shown by Australopithecus sediba in South Africa at around 1.95 million years ago are likely to have developed independently of the processes which produced (humans) in East Africa, showing that parallel origins are a distinct possibility," Prof Stringer explained.

This would suggest several different species of humans co-existing in Africa around two million years ago with only one of them surviving and eventually evolving into our species, Homo sapiens. It is as if nature was experimenting with different versions of the same evolutionary configuration until one succeeded.

Prof Stringer added: "These new studies leave us with an even more complex picture of early humans than we thought, and they challenge us to consider the very definition of what it is to be human. Are we defined by our small teeth and jaws, our large brain, our long legs, tool-making, or some combination of these traits?"

Follow Pallab on Twitter

BBC News - 'First human' discovered in Ethiopia

2015-03-05T00:51:00.001-08:00

By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News

The fossil's teeth are smaller than those of other human relatives

Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what they claim is one of the very first humans.

The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that our kind first emerged.

The discovery in Ethiopia suggests climate change spurred the transition from tree dweller to upright walker.

The head of the research team told BBC News that the find gives the first insight into "the most important transitions in human evolution".

“Start Quote

This is the most important transition in human evolution”

Prof Brian VillmoareUniversity of Nevada

Could Lucy's kind - which belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis - have evolved into the very first primitive humans?

"That's what we are arguing," said Prof Villmoare.

"The moment I found it, I realised that it was important, as this is the time period represented by few (human) fossils in Eastern Africa."

“Start Quote

These new studies challenge us to consider the very definition of what it is to be human”

Prof Chris StringerNatural History Museum, London

"Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo was an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago," he told BBC News.

The researcher involved, Prof Fred Spoor of University College London told BBC News that, taken together, the new findings had lifted a veil on a key period in the evolution of our species.

Climate change

The dating of the jawbone might help answer one of the key questions in human evolution. What caused some primitive ancestors to climb down from the trees and make their homes on the ground.

Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London described the discovery as a "big story".

The jawbone was found close to the area where Lucy was discovered

He notes that the emergence of human-like characteristics was not unique to Ethiopia.

Follow Pallab on Twitter

5 Awesome African Civilizations That Aren't Egypt

2015-02-26T02:04:00.001-08:00

Not so long ago Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings debuted in theaters, whitewashed and all. Despite (or perhaps because of) the major controversy surrounding it, the film didn't seem to make much of an impression and has already faded from most people's minds. But it doesn't look like Hollywood's done with ancient Egypt yet and there's talk that Angelina Jolie's pet project Cleopatra might actually be moving forward, which means we'll be getting another (likely unrepresentative) iteration of the fabled kingdom again. But why focus on Egypt? After all, there's a whole continent to explore.

One thing I observed when I wrote my article about Egyptians' race a couple of months ago is that not very many people actually know very much about African history. This isn't altogether surprising: our perception of history has a decidedly Eurocentric slant and out of all the continents, Africa is perhaps the most sorely neglected (with the possible exception of Australia/Oceania). But it is a bit disappointing, especially since, as I think you'll see, there's plenty of interesting stories to tell about Africa that don't involve pharaohs or pyramids.

What I've gathered here isn't even an exhaustive list: these are just some of the five best-known and most recognizable states from pre-modern Africa. I'm leaving plenty of stuff out, which in of itself should tell you how much Africa's past has to offer. Still, I think it's a representative sample and it provides a broad sweep of Africa's history across five different regions and over three millennia.

1) The Kingdom of Aksum

A lot of people in the United States have heard, at least obliquely, of the Rastafari movement. A smaller number know that Rastafarians, in addition to helping to popularize reggae music, worship Haile Selassie I, the last Emperor of Ethiopia, as an incarnation of God and the messiah. Fewer still know that one of the reasons for Haile Selassie's popularity among the 20th century Afrocentrist movement that gave rise to Rastafaris was that Ethiopia was the only country in Africa free of European domination. In the eyes of blacks throughout the Western Hemisphere, Haile Selassie's exuberant coronation, which was attended by world leaders from around the world, was a potent symbol of their own yearning for political freedom and representation on the world stage.

If Ethiopia's defiance in the face of that weren't enough the Ethiopian royalty claimed direct descent from the Biblical House of David through an affair between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, lending the country a certain mystique that was undeniably attractive to black religious leaders looking to separate their faith from the white-filled narratives of European Christianity. Contributing to this attraction was the fact that the Ethiopian Empire featured its own, separate branch of the Christian faith, an offshoot of the Coptic Church based out of Egypt.

In truth, while there's reason to be skeptical of the idea that Haile Selassie actually was descended from King David, the claim may not be without some basis in historical fact. The Solomonic dynasty of which Haile Selassie was a member was founded in the 13th century by Yekuno Amlak, an Amhara noble, who claimed descent from the ancient kings of Aksum, an Iron Age dynasty that existed within much of what is now Ethiopia. In his claim, Yekuno also perpetuated the legend that Aksum was founded by the bastard son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and while he may well have been fibbing about his own ancestry (like many nascent kings), his assertion that Aksum had an ancient connection to Israel may actually have been true.

No one knows precisely how the Kingdom of Aksum came into being; the Ge'ez script in which ancient Ethiopian records are written only became widespread after the kingdom was well-established and most accounts of its early history are from foreign sources, rather than the Aksumites themselves. Most historians do, however, believe Aksum rose out of an earlier kingdom, D'mt, probably with some influence from the Sabaeans, a people from modern Yemen in southern Arabia. The Sabaeans, as it so happens, are widely believed by modern historians to be the same kingdom referred to in the Bible as "Sheba."

Like modern Ethiopians, the Aksumites spoke a predominantly Semitic language distantly related to modern Arabic or Hebrew, which for some time historians thought was descended from the Sabaean language (though this is no longer widely believed). The connections to Israel don't stop there though. It's long been known to anthropologists that Ethiopia has a large population of indigenous Jews, commonly known as the Beta Israel, but it was only recently that genetic analyses evidenced what the Beta Israel themselves had long-claimed, that they were descended from a population of ancient Jews in Ethiopia dating back at least two millennia, rather than later converts. Which itself, along with the Sabaean connection, lends the Solomonic dynasty's claim of Biblical descent considerably more credit than might initially be assumed.

But regardless of whether or not the ancient Kings of Aksum had some connection to ancient Israel, their achievements are undeniable. At its height, around the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, Aksum had brought much of modern Ethiopia as well as Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Sudan under its control, along with smaller portions of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and was regarded as one of the four great empires of the known world (the remainder of which were Persia, the Roman Empire, and ancient China). A major center of trade, Aksum was an important part of the Indian Ocean sea trade that linked Egypt to India, China, and Southeast Asa, controlling the Red Sea through which much of said trade was conducted.

Aksum was also one of the first countries in the world to convert to Christianity, adopting the new religion at around the same time as the Romans and the Armenians (the two other main claimants). The Aksumite kings took their faith quite seriously and considered the welfare of Christians in both Africa and Arabia their responsibility, extending their protection to those experiencing religious persecution. Ethiopia would remain one of Christianity's principal centers for more than a millennium and its status as the sole holdout against Islam's spread throughout East Africa likely influenced the Prester John myth so popular in Medieval Europe.

The Aksumite dominion over East Africa and the Red Sea began to fade as the Umayyad Caliphate extended its control over North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, isolating Aksum from the Mediterranean. The economic decline was followed by political fragmentation, eventually resulting in the overthrow of Aksum by the Jewish queen Yodit in the 10th century. However, while the political state known as Aksum came to an end, Aksum's cultural legacy would survive into the present day, in the form of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Amhara people, and the Solomonic dynasty's claims to descent from ancient Judea. And that certainly makes them an empire worth remembering.

2) The Carthaginians

You may have heard of the Carthaginians (also known as the Punics). If your middle school history course was anything like mine, you learned of them briefly during your school's rundown on ancient Rome, which detailed in short the role of Carthage as Rome's adversary in the Punic Wars. You may even have heard of Hannibal's march across the Italian Alps with war elephants or how the Roman Republic never rested easy until his death, long after they defeated him. It may not have occurred to you, however, that the Carthaginians were African.

Mind you, they weren't originally African. Carthage, a city whose name literally means "New City," was founded around the 8th century BC by Phoenician colonists. The Phoenicians were a Semitic-speaking, seafaring people from modern Lebanon who were pretty incredible in their own right but unlike the Carthaginians never actually established any empires and were primarily organized into autonomous city-states (much like ancient Greece). According to ancient legend Carthage was founded when Dido, a princess of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre, fled from her homeland to Africa with her allies after a political struggle with her brother the king.

Regardless of whether the legend is true or not, evidence suggests the initial founding population of Carthage, like that of most Phoenician colonies, was fairly small and it is unlikely the majority of Carthage's subjects were Phoenician in origin. Indeed, early accounts of Carthage's history note both close trading partnerships and political marriages with the local inhabitants, who were primarily Tamazight-speaking Numidians. Carthage's relationship with the Numidians was always somewhat precarious—sometimes they were enemies, sometimes they were allies—but both had an undeniable impact on one another. By the time Carthage emerged as Rome's rival for control of the western Mediterranean, the Carthaginians were arguably as African as they were Phoenician.

Within a few centuries Carthage emerged as Phoenicia's most successful colony by far, owing probably to it's strategic location guarding the pass between Sicily and North Africa. Carthage emerged as a prime hub for trade between both sides of the Mediterranean, establishing close ties with the Tartessians of modern Spain, the Celtic Gauls, the Etruscans of northern Italy, and, of course, their own homeland in the Levant. There's even evidence to suggest the Carthaginiansestablished contact with cultures in West Africa, possibly as distant from Carthage as Gambia or further. The Carthaginian economy was based in dyes, textiles, and other luxury goods, as well as the buying and selling of commodities across the Mediterranean.

The wealth the Carthaginians gathered from trades would allow them to eventually break free of their ties to Phoenicia, becoming fully independent and forming their own colonies throughout the western Mediterranean. The most successful of these were Carthage's colonies in Spain (which apparently may mean "land of the rabbits" in the Carthaginian language), which included among their number the modern day city of Cartagena, which was originally named Carthage itself. The Carthaginians would also establish colonies in western Sicily, which would be the principal cause of their eventual conflicts with Rome.

Like Rome, Carthage was a former monarchy that eventually gave way to a republic. In 483 BC, after suffering a devastating defeat by the Syracusan army at Himera, the Kings of Carthage agreed to hand over most of their power to an oligarchical Council of Elders comparable to Rome's Senate. By the end of 4th century BC the Council of Elders had taken complete control of the city's government and the last of the kings was deposed, leading to a fully republican government. The change brought Carthage a deal of respect from both the Greeks and the Romans, who as a rule preferred republican systems to monarchical ones.

Relations between Rome and Carthage took a turn for the worst following the Pyrrhic War. Though the two had fought together during the conflict, they quickly began to compete for control of the Mediterranean in general and Sicily more specifically. In 241 BC the Romans forced the Carthaginians from Sicily and incurred upon them a heavy indemnity. This in turn led to the second, more famous war between Rome and Carthage when Hannibal Barca, a Carthaginian aristocrat rose an army of Carthaginians, Iberians, and Gauls and marched them across the Alps, laying waste to the Italian countryside. Without siege equipment, however, Hannibal was unable to capture Rome and he was eventually defeated, ending Carthage's reign as a major power. Half a century later, the Romans sacked Carthage and burned it to the ground, slaying or enslaving most of the inhabitants.

Although Carthage was destroyed, its legacy remained in North Africa. For many centuries afterward Punic, the Carthaginian language, was the lingua franca of northern Africa. Many notable persons within the Roman Empire, including Septimus Severus, a Roman emperor, and St. Augustine of Hippo, an early Christian leader, spoke and wrote Punic as their first language. Although scholars are not sure when Punic culture disappeared entirely from North Africa, it may have been during the 8th century, when the Arabs (who also spoke a Semitic language) conquered the region, introducing a sufficiently similar culture to the area that was able to absorb what remained of ancient Carthage.

3) The Kingdom of Kongo

Today, when you talk about the Congo, one of the first things you'll need to do is clarify whichCongo you're talking about. Do you mean the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire)? Or do you mean the Republic of the Congo? It may seem confusing that both countries share the same name (and aren't even distinguished by a geographic qualifier like South Korea and North Korea) but their name derives from the fact that both were at one point part of the Kingdom of Kongo, before the African kingdom was divided between the French, Portuguese, and Belgians during the 19th century "scramble for Africa." The DRC derives from the Belgian portion, the RoC from the French section, while Angola makes up the Portuguese territory.

As is often the case with pre-literate societies, the origins of the Kongolese Kingdom are somewhat uncertain. According to oral traditions later recorded by the Portuguese, the kingdom was founded by a Kikongo warrior named Luken lua Nimi raised an army within the modern DRC and raised it against the Kingdom of Mwene. Luken established his kingdom at the foot of Mongo dia Kongo, a mountain upon which rests the present day city of M'banza-Kongo in Angola. Under his descendants, Luken's empire eventually stretched to encompass much of Angola, the DRC, and the RoC, dominating central Africa for centuries.

The Kongolese established a quasi-feudal system over their subjects, where the lowest unit of administration was the libata or local village, which in turn was administered by regional aristocrats known as mwene, who in turn owed their allegiance to the king. The Kongolese also held suzerainty over a number of semi-autonomous vassal kingdoms, which the king of Kongo listed among his official titles. The king was himself chosen by an election held among the mwene, though he was for much of Kongo's history a descendant of Luken, lending a certainly hereditary quality to the title.

The Kongolese economy was fueled by trade up and down the central rivers of Africa, dealing primarily in ivory, copperware, textiles, and pottery, though slaves and rubber both eventually became premium exports. The riches gained from these and other trades helped the Kongolese expand and enrich their capital, which by the time of their first contact with Europe was likely 130,000 square kilometers in size and had as many as half a million inhabitants. After the kingdom's conversion to Christianity, it also featured an enormous cathedral, though by many to be the oldest church in Africa south of Ethiopia.

The Kingdom of Kongo was actually known to Europeans for several centuries before its forcible partition. The Portuguese first encountered the Kongo during their exploration of the African coastline in the 15th century and the navigator Diogo Cão actually organized a diplomatic mission as early as the 1480s. The Kongolese nobility were received with honor and established trade relations with the Portuguese shortly thereafter and allowed the established of religious missions by the Roman Catholic Church. From then until the Portuguese's betrayal in the 19th century, relations between the two countries were largely peaceable and even friendly.

They weren't without a sinister side, however. While the Kongolese' acceptance of trade relations and Christianity from the Portuguese may seem relatively benign, the Kongolese were also (like many West and Central African kingdoms of the time) more than willing to engage in the slave trade as well, selling war captives and several of their own subjects to the Portuguese and the Dutch. Indeed, King Diogo tried to have it arranged so the Portuguese could only purchase slaves from his kingdom. That's not to say the Kongolese did not have disagreement with the Portuguese slave trade; they wanted it carried out according to their laws and were primarily interested in using it to strengthen their own power at the expense of their neighbors. But they were largely accepting of the trade's legality and profited greatly from it.

Relations between the Kongolese and Portuguese broke down for the first time in 1622, when the Portuguese formed an alliance with the cannibalistic Imbangala against a Kongolese vassal. This and several other conflicts with European powers would weaken the Kongolese regime, though during the 18th century, the kingdom would experience a brief resurgence and it was not until the 19th that the kingdom would be subjected to European rule entirely.

Eventually, in 1884, the Portuguese government called the rulers of Europe to Berlin over their concerns about Belgian and French encroachments onto the Kingdom of Kongo, which at that point they considered their territory. The Portuguese were able to convince the Belgians and the French to split the kingdom with them, on the condition that the Portuguese forcibly occupy their portion. Additionally, the gathered powers agreed to split the rest of Africa between themselves, leading to the colonial period of not just Kongo's history but all of Africa's.

Although the Kingdom of Kongo's history ended in betrayal and occupation, its legacy lives on. Not only are two countries named for it, but so is the Congo River, the world's deepest river and the second largest by volume. The Kikongo language, spoken by the elite of Kongo, remains one of the official languages of Angola, as well as a regional language in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo. Lastly (and more lamentably), the Kingdom of Kongo was the greatest source of slaves for the Atlantic slave trade, making it one of the principal mother nations for the modern black populations of the Americas and the Caribbean, particularly in Brazil, the largest of Portugal's former colonies.

4) The Mali Empire

It would be negligent to talk about the great civilizations of Africa without mentioning the Mali Empire. One of the richest and most powerful states of pre-colonial Africa, Mali was a wonder in its own time, respected and admired by the great powers of North Africa and the Middle East and known as a center of learning and wealth. It is perhaps best known today for the city of Timbuktu, one of the empire's many trading centers and a place which even today provokes a sense of awe and mystery among Europeans (a survey of Britons in 2006 found that 66% thought it was a mythical place like Shangri-la).

According to the Epic of Sundiata, an oral history of Mali that would later be recorded by French scholars during the colonial period of Mali's history, the empire arose out of what was originally a confederation of Mandinka kingdoms known as the Manden Kurufaba, located in what is now modern Mali and Guinea. During the early 13th century, the king of one these minor states had a crippled son named Sundiata Keita by a secondary wife. Upon his death, Sundiata, who was his father's favored son but his second by birth, was usurped by his half-brother Dankaran Touman. Fearful for their lives, Sundiata and his mother fled their home and went into exile within the nearby Mema kingdom.

Among the Mema Sundiata fought alongside them in several of theirs wars, acquiring a reputation—despite his disability—as a formidable warrior. So popular did he become that Sundiata eventually rose to become the king of Mema's new heir. Meanwhile the king of Sosso, Soumaoro Kanté, had deposed Sundiata's brother and conquered his kingdom. Utilizing his new alliance, Sundiata returned home to liberate his people, defeating Soumaoro and unifying the Mandinka kingdoms into one empire. Among several new titles (including the royal title ofmansa), Sundiata was proclaimed the "Lion King" and at least one scholar has argued that Sundata's tale is, along with Hamlet, one of the inspirations for Disney's The Lion King.

Under Sundiata's heirs the Mali Empire would grow large and prosperous, fueled in large part by its immense supply of gold, which may have amounted to half of Africa and Eurasia's supplies before the colonization of the Americas. Mali also had trade ties throughout most of West and North Africa, connecting it not only to other neighboring kingdoms but to the Arab world, from whom the Mali would important Islam, which soon became the country's primary religion. In addition to gold, Mali also traded heavily in cotton and salt, both of which were extremely valuable in the arid regions of the Sahel and Sahara.

The golden age of Mali was arguably reached during the reign of Sundiata's grandnephew, Musa I (also known as Mansa Musa). By the time of Musa's ascension to the throne, the Mali Empire already ruled over most of modern Mali and Guinea, as well as a substantial portion of Mauritania, but Musa would extend the empire's reach still further into northern Mali and Senegal, bringing the city of Timbuktu under Malian rule. In addition to his military works, Musa was also renowned for both his wealth and his piety. During his reign, numerous mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools) were constructed throughout the empire and Mali organized an extravagant pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca as part of the Islamic tradition of hajj,reportedly spending so much wealth on his journey that he massively inflated the economies of Egypt and Arabia, devaluing gold and other commodities.

The Mali Empire survived Musa for many more centuries and would remain one of the pillars of the Islamic world well into the 14th century. However, during the 15th, the Mali would begin to experience competition from other local kingdoms, the greatest of which would eventually become the Songhai Empire, which was originally a Mali vassal before it broke free of the mansa's rule. In 1468, the Songhai seized control of Timbuktu, signaling the end of Mali's reign as a great power in the region. Mali would persist for another century and a half before finally disintegrating into a number of smaller kingdoms sometime around 1600.

Today, the Mali Empire's legacy is visible throughout most of West Africa. The cities of Timbuktu and Djenné, two of the empire's greatest economic centers, remain cultural touchstones for the region and were both designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites, signifying their significance to Mali's history. The name Mali itself is retained as the name for one of the modern countries whose territory the empire shared and the Epic of Sundiata is widely regarded as one of the most significant pieces of West African literature in the world. Indeed, it would probably not be incorrect to say that of all the civilizations listed here, Mali may be the one whose legacy is most secure.

5) The Kingdom of Zimbabwe

Of all the civilizations mentioned here, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe is easily the most elusive. Leaving behind no written records and having collapsed nearly a century before the first Europeans reached its territory, Zimbabwe is only known to us from local oral traditions and ancient ruins. Even today, very little about the kingdom is known with absolute certainty. Nonetheless, its impact on Southern Africa was enormous and it's as deserving of a mention as any of the others I've listed.

The Kingdom of Zimbabwe probably emerged from an earlier kingdom known as Mapungubwe, which was based out of what is now South Africa. Mapungubwe, which existed between the 11th and 13th centuries, is thought by many archaeologists to be the first complex hierarchical society in Southern Africa, with a landed elite ruling over a larger group of farmers. The transformation of the region was likely triggered by the expansion of the Bantu cultures, which arrived in Southern Africa from West Africa sometime during the 1st millennium AD, bringing with them agriculture and iron metallurgy.

Eventually, the Mapungubwe culture collapsed, for unknown reasons and the center of power shifted northeastward toward modern Zimbabwe, around 1220. There, the new rulers of the region established a massive stone citadel known as Great Zimbabwe, from which both the kingdom and the modern country take their name (Zimbabwe means "great stone houses" in the Shona language). From this capital, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe extended its rule into parts of modern Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, and South Africa, dominating the region for two centuries.

The economy of Zimbabwe was based primarily on its agricultural output but it also derived a large amount of wealth from its massive stocks of gold and ivory, which it used to establish trade connections with the seafaring city-states of East Africa (which were themselves linked to the Middle East and India). Archaeological finds have established that the Kingdom of Zimbabwe imported a large number of goods from these contacts, indicating a healthy exchange over the kingdom's lifespan. Unlike many African states during the period, however, Zimbabwe does not seem to have adopted Islam as its religion and when Europeans reached the region centuries later, the local people still practiced their traditional, pre-Abrahamic beliefs, a mix of animism and monotheism that venerated both a supreme deity and ancestral spirits.

At some point, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe entered into a decay, much like the Mapungubwe culture before it and power shifted further north to Zvongombe, where the Kingdom of Mutapa was established around 1430. It was this culture which Portuguese traders would eventually contact in the 16th century and from whom both the modern states of Mozambique and Zimbabwe claim much of their heritage. Mutapa was eventually subjugated by the Portuguese over a period of several centuries, leading to the introduction of colonial rule.

For centuries, European explorers and colonialists were baffled by the sophistication of the stone ruins at Great Zimbabwe, which many of them considered beyond the ability of the natives to construct. Looking for another explanation, early historians and archaeologists suggested any number of implausible solutions, such as the idea that they were constructed by an Arab state or even King Solomon of Israel. It was not until the 1950s that scholars began to accept the idea that Great Zimbabwe had indeed been built by a local people, likely the Bantu-speaking Shona still located in modern Zimbabwe. Such was the weight of racism in early anthropology, which denied even the obvious when it conflicted with ideas of European supremacy and African primitivism.

A Promising Design Solution for Ethiopia’s Water Problem

2015-01-28T07:48:00.001-08:00

by Laura C. Mallonee on January 27, 2015
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A rendering of how Warka Water towers would fit into the village landscape (image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

These days, it’s easy to feel that good design is a luxury produced mostly for the enjoyment of the super-rich. But that’s not the whole picture. In recent years, architects and designers like Shigeru Ban and Nille Juul-Sørensen, along with organizations like the recently shuttered Architecture for Humanity, have increasingly pushed for a more humanitarian approach to design. Today, plenty of like-minded and largely unrecognized creative people are not designing for the wealthy, but for the poor.

Arturo Vittori, founder of the Italian firm Architecture and Vision, is answering the call by tackling a single need. In 2012, he and a team of fellow designers visited Ethiopian villages in the country’s mountainous northeastern region. They noticed women were having to walk for miles just to draw contaminated water from shallow, dirty ponds. According to the World Health Organization, 34% of Ethiopia’s rural population lacks access to clean drinking water, one of the reasons that 54,000 children die each year from diarrhea.

A Warka tree (image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

Vittori’s team responded to the problem by developing Warka Water, an alternative water source named for the Ethiopian fig tree that serves as a central gathering place in many villages. The 33-foot-tall collection tower harvests up to 26.4 gallons of rain, fog, and dew every day and can hold up to 264 gallons of water. It’s ideal for high plateaus where conventional pipelines often don’t reach and where wells can be difficult to drill. So far, they’ve built nine water towers (one in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa), and are currently raising funds on Kickstarter to construct and test 10 new prototypes.

From a Western perspective, Warka Water is architecturally stunning. The tower’s outer, triangular frame is woven from split bamboo following local basket weaving traditions. Inside hangs a water-collecting plastic mesh inspired by lotus flower leaves, spider web threads, cacti, and the Namib beetle’s shell — all which have developed their own ways to draw water from thin air. Seen from a distance, the structure’s overall shape mimics the geometry of the termite mounds found throughout northern Ethiopia. A fabric overhang also provides shade, much like the branches of the Warka tree, under which people can meet.

But as beautiful as it is, it’s the possibility of what Warka Water could accomplish once large scale production is reached (planned for 2019) that really matters. The water it collects from the atmosphere in rural regions will likely comply with WHO standards for drinking water purity, meaning a lot fewer kids will get sick. The towers could also invigorate the local economy. They’re relatively cheap to produce —about $1,000 in Ethiopia — and easy for villagers to build and maintain themselves, as construction doesn’t require the use of power tools or scaffolding. Vittori and his colleagues plan to offer training courses to village inhabitants, teaching them how to construct, use, and care for the towers.

“It’s about answering a need,” the architect told Hyperallergic via email, when we asked why he was so interested in designing for the poor. “I believe we all should do something to make our planet a better place for all of us and not thinking only to our immediate interests.”

Looking inside the Warka Water tower (Image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

A woman sews mesh for a Warka Water tower (image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

Detail of a Warka Water tower (image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

A rendering of how Warka Water towers might fit into a village landscape (image courtesy of Architecture and Vision)

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The life-size, bronze statue has stood at the center Moscow's Pushkin Square since being inaugurated in 1880 by world-renowned Russian authors Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

World Bulletin/News Desk

Ethiopia is awaiting the imminent arrival of a decades-old statue of renowned Russian poet Alexander Pushkin – who allegedly had Ethiopian roots – from Russia, Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Born in 1799 in Moscow, Pushkin, whose ancestry is claimed by both Ethiopia and Eritrea, is considered the father of modern Russian literature.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday that the Pushkin statue would be transported to Addis Ababa from Moscow "soon."

"It's a gift to Addis Ababa from Moscow," he said, noting that the two governments were currently arranging the logistics of the move.

The life-size, bronze statue has stood at the center Moscow's Pushkin Square since being inaugurated in 1880 by world-renowned Russian authors Ivan Turgenev and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

According to Mufti, Ethiopian and Russian officials discussed the process of transporting the statue during a recent visit to Ethiopia by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"This will further strengthen the ages-long friendship between Ethiopia and Russia," the spokesman asserted.

Pushkin's grandfather, Abram Gannibal, is believed to have been born in Ethiopia in 1679. The son of an Ethiopian prince, Gannibal was kidnapped and taken to Russia at the age of eight as a slave of Russian Czar Peter the Great.

In Russia, Abram climbed the ladder of Russian society, eventually becoming an aristocrat.

Eritrea, for its part, claims Pushkin had Eritrean blood, since Gannibal is believed to have been born in an area called Loggo Sarda in the modern state of Eritrea, which seceded from Ethiopia in 1991.

In 2002, the Ethiopian government built a bust of Pushkin, naming a square and avenue – located near African Union headquarters – after the great poet.

Seven years later, Eritrea erected its own Pushkin monument, likewise naming a street after him.

In both cases, Russian diplomatic representatives took part in the unveiling ceremonies.

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