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Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
January 19, 2010
A few days ago, I met some friends from Ogaden here in Cairo, and we had a long discussion with them about eventual political developments in Abyssinia (fake ´Ethiopia´) during 2010. We then explored the possible outcome of the forthcoming elections.
The present article merely reflects points of our discussion and structures my thoughts and estimations.
As we started talking about ´Ethiopian´ politics and ended up with the elections and the question whether they will be a fraud or not, I have to start with this. As a matter of fact, I believe the subject has little to do with ´Ethiopian´ politics and is rather connected to
a. colonial plans about ´Ethiopia´ and
b. balance of power between the colonial centers of power, namely Europe and America.
Of course, I don´t agree with the surety about Zenawi remaining in power. Not in the sense that I am convinced that he will be removed! No! But simply I believe that there are chances that he stays and there are chances that he will be removed.
Under any circumstances, I don´t believe that he makes any important decision; he certainly does his best to stay in power. But I don´t call this a ´decision´.
Who makes a decision?
The colonial powers that use him.
In this regard, you may have three possible chances:
1. either America and Europe agree to keep Zenawi in power,
2. or they both agree to remove him from power
3. or they disagree, and each of them sides with the one of the two main political opponents.
I believe that what matters for the decision-making colonial powers is the preservation of ´Ethiopia´ about which they know very well that, as a country, it has been greatly weakened because of
a. the ´malgoverno´ (misgovernment; failed governmental policies),
b. the deterioration of the country´s internal politics and overall socioeconomic situation (even comparably with neighboring Sudan and Egypt, the country failed to advance over the past 10 years at the same pace, thus becoming sort of an African Yemen or a second Somalia), and
c. extremely narrow ethno-religious basis of the present regime.
Now, if the decision-making colonial powers side with Zenawi, they must have already given him the green light to go ahead.
If they side with the Amhara – pseudo-Oromo opposition, they will certainly avoid to show this to Zenawi now. They are not apprentice magicians; they excel in political machination, and they never offer their opponents (or those whom they consider as expendable stuff) a single opportunity to correctly assume their decision and thus act against beforehand.
If the decision-making colonial powers sided with the Amhara – pseudo-Oromo opposition, they will utilize / mobilize their ´tools´ at the very last moment, when they will truly need them, namely the very last week before the elections.
Zenawi´s recent rhetoric (that foreign countries cannot influence the forthcoming fake elections´ results) suggests that of the aforementioned three (3) working scenarios two only are plausible, namely 2 and 3.
Plan no 2
Now, if no 2 happens to be underway, Zenawi´s days are numbered. The colonial powers have a long tradition of hypocrisy and evildoing, which will turn against Zenawi, after it destroyed the lives of the subjugated nations of Abyssinia for a great number of decades.
Their hypocrisy to which I am referring relates also to their desire to depict themselves as liberators, saviors, hope-bringers, benevolent and caring! They love bringing their new puppets from the jail straight to the government, thus ensuring (to innocent, naïve, unsuspicious and easily suggestible minds – otherwise called ´idiots´) total lack of machination, absence of behind-the-scenes interference, and hypothetical prevalence of (their venerated but inexistent) transparency.
In this regard, for the Freemasonic evildoers, who do their ingenious best to keep all of their acts hidden, a political person undeservedly condemned to death in absentia, who gets elected as prime minister, is a character in an enormous theatrical act that they love presenting to hypnotized masses as the masses´ own will!
Similarly, an undeservedly imprisoned female judge, who gets elected as deputy prime minister, is another character fashioned by the Freemasonic theatrical play writers and stage directors (for their theatrical act that only ignorant people simply call ´politics´). This character serves the promotion of a hypothetically democratized, pro-feminist and pro-liberal, African country, which is geared to remain an apocalyptic Cemetery of Nations, under the absolutely filthy, politically biased, and morally disgusting Berhanu – Birtukan coverage.
How Will Plan no 2 Be Materialized?
Well, perhaps average people do not know much about political chicanery but this is what does not allow Cannibal Zenawi sleep these last nights. He knows that his Western masters have the power to eliminate him at any possible moment. In fact, he is not a powerful dictator; this is merely the image that he sells to the opposition, aptly utilizing his repressive state apparatuses.
Once the fear of a tyrant is eradicated from the heart and the mind of a person, of a group or of a people, the tyrant is just a little piece of rubbish. Nothing more!
This is what liberation groups and fronts seem not to have clearly understood. Zenawi is powerful only in their imagination, which triggers inside them the rise of fear, and confines them to inactivity. If they stop monitoring events as mere spectators, remove the fear from their hearts and minds, and share their intrepidity with their followers and members, Zenawi will not stay in power even for an hour.
Zenawi clearly knows the colonial powers´ political chicanery because he knows himself and his past; he has been the adulterous offspring of this evildoing. Out of nothing, he became ´something´. Zenawi knows that with the same easiness with which his colonial masters brought him to power they can in fact bring anyone who suits them, thus irreversibly eliminating him. Hours are needed for this, not days; for instance, he can be miraculously poisoned! If this happens, he will not be the first and he will not be the last to disappear in this way.
If plan 2 reflects the real situation, the following solution will be implemented. A few days before the elections, the colonial powers´ selected tools (by this, I mean top army officers, governmental deputies, members of the administration at all levels, and key officeholders in the powerful secret services that Zenawi in fact never controlled) will receive an order with general guidelines on how to proceed. I speak of only few dozens of people that form the selected and instrumental elite of Abyssinia´s colonial dependence on London and Washington. They are viewed by the colonial powers as the top of their pyramidal hierarchy of dominance. They will successively and successfully process the order to their subordinates within hours; and they to theirs.
The order will simply be to totally disregard all of Zenawi´s elections-related directives.
It will not take a day or two for Zenawi to get the feedback of his few personally / tribally trusted people who will first clash with the aforementioned order process and implementation, and they will quasi-automatically report. Zenawi will then be in the know of who, among his subordinates, betrays him or not.
However, the limited time left until the elections take place will certainly tie his hands. In any case, any major reaction (involving arrest of top army officers, governmental deputies, members of the administration at all levels, and key officeholders in the powerful secret services) will not be possible to hide, and if undertaken, it will bear witness to panic. Ceausescu is a good example to study in this regard. The only option for Zenawi will then be to accept defeat and withdraw; time will show if anything else except cannibalistic vulgarity is left within his otherwise totally useless head.
Total disregard of Zenawi´s own directives means rejection of ordered (by Zenawi) electoral fraud. This will mean an electoral shipwreck for Zenawi. It is so easy for the colonial powers to implement and so difficult for Zenawi to oppose. The few dozens of people of whom I spoke earlier have no reason to prefer Zenawi to their colonial masters who have maintained with them a time honored relationship, involving bribery, corruption, and manipulative forcefulness. They will not be in a position to say ´no´ to the colonial order because suddenly their bank accounts (full of money that is not theirs but belongs to the idiotic European and American taxpayers) will be blocked and even worse, some past but intercepted telephone calls will be leaked to Zenawi himself, thus surely terminating their lives.
In fact, Zenawi´s chance to politically survive in case of no 2 scenario is zero.
Scenario no 3: EU – US Clash Over Support to Tyrannical ´Ethiopian´ Leadership
This scenario may imply (to some) two sub-cases, namely EU support to Zenawi and US willingness to remove him and US support to Zenawi and EU willingness to remove him. Of the two sub-cases, the second is quasi-fictional, because it does not correspond to EU practices if the proportions of the overall political landscape are taken into account. In addition, any major figure in Abyssinia´s political opposition did not get from EU anything more than lip service.
With China present in the East African game, particularly in the Sudan, and with the US in the control in Kenya and the Somali South (due to the CIA-educated / promoted Shabaab), EU presence risks becoming marginal.
The recent trip of the Egyptian prime minister in Abyssinia and its strong economic character may be attributed to a European advice to Egypt´s president. This, viewed in the light of the amiable snapshot of Cannibal Zenawi with France´s ridiculous president at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, may be sort of European help delivery to Africa´s most reviled gangster and most ailing tyaranny.
The obviously rising EU support to Zenawi may even be, in and by itself, a reason for US removal of support to Zenawi, and eventually for a soon-to-be manifested action against him.
Another reason may be the fact that America needs to control the periphery of the ongoing Horn of Africa deterioration project that involves Somalia and Yemen as focus. If Zenawi turns to EU, Washington will fail to adjust Abyssinia to the Horn of Africa deterioration project that tends to generate a second Afghanistan for the forthcoming second September 11th-like scenario.
EU maintained good relations with the Tigray tyrant but if the US proscribed him, EU will not be in a position to save him, except through Washington intelligence leak to Europe, and early exploitation of this development by Zenawi.
Scenario no 1
To all this, several insiders may find that in the present analysis, scenario no 1 (Zenawi´s continued rule) is not taken into consideration, and then ask the possible reasons for this.
Well, I don´t exclude this development; but ….
Zenawi´s continued tyranny (after an electoral fraud) means further deterioration and even possible dismantlement of the country. It may turn Abyssinia to a second Somalia with the radicalization of the Ogadeni, Afar, Oromo, Tigray and Amhara Muslims. This would not take much time to arrange. Actually, there is no force to oppose this development. The government is totally discredited among the aforementioned ethno-religious groups, and the only real opposition forces (existing only among Oromos and Ogadenis, namely OLF and ONLF) have absolutely no means to prevent the (CIA-sponsored) Shabaab-ization of parts of the monstrously tyrannized Oromo and Ogadeni nations. Such is the desolation and the despair that Adama and Jigjiga can easily become Africa´s new Mogadishus.
However, although the radicalization of the Horn of Africa is definitely a target for Washington´s undemocratic military – industrial complex, I have reasons to believe that they will do everything it takes to preserve (at least the major part of) Abyssinia (fake ´Ethiopia´) intact for later use and forceful insertion to plans of wider scope.
Radicalization may be ´exported´ to Ogaden, and the pseudo-states of Puntland and Somaliland, and even Ogaden may be left autonomous to better serve this project. Accordingly, a war between Eritrea and Abyssinia may precisely herald Somaliland´s radicalization and Shabaab-ization.
The Fake Queen of the South and the Shabaab-ization - Limits of Two Orbits
But the Freemasonic plan to fabricate a fake, pseudo-Christian ´Ethiopia´ and maintain it (as a fake ´Queen of the South´) - until their theatrical act ´End of Times´ (which is – in this regard – a grotesque imitation of what is revealed through Jesus´ words in Luke 11:31 and in the Apocalypse John) is staged on our global theater - is the focal part of every Anglo-French and US concern with, and involvement or interference in, East Africa.
This plan was not only early noticed, through adequate monitoring and thorough study of the visits paid to Abyssinia by European members of the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge, but it was reasonably interpreted as the root cause of all major East Africa policy decisions taken by the colonial powers over the past five centuries.
So, the radicalization and Shabaab-ization of Abyssinia is not an option for the Western capitals that are totally controlled by the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge.
For all the aforementioned to happen in a concerted way, any further deterioration of Abyssinia´s socioeconomic and political conditions must be ruled out.
This means that Ogaden may be left to secede; it would thus become Somalia´s third unrecognized country. If this happens, it will only help the Abyssinian regime better concentrate its repression state apparatuses on smaller territory, which in turn ensures longer viability.
To avoid any further deterioration of Abyssinia´s socioeconomic and political conditions, the Freemasonic colonial regimes know that they must provide with a wider ethno-religious basis that would duly, though temporarily, assuage Abyssinia´s traumatic troubles that at this time gravely endanger the country´s very existence. Then, Zenawi may have to go for the colonial fabrication ´Ethiopia´ to continue existing.
Is this all suggesting that ONLF and OLF, and all the other liberations fronts and organizations of the subjugated nations of Abyssinia, have no chance to materialize their goals and achieve liberation, freedom, national independence, integrity and progress?
No, not all!
For any devilishly conceived plan there can be an anti-plan.
There is nothing concealed that cannot be revealed.
There is nothing maneuvered that cannot be outmaneuvered.
And anyone, who may have conceived something against some one else, may be deceived by some one else.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/printFriendly/137422
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Over 1.1 million voters registered in two zones
Adama, January 19 (WIC) – Some 280, 530 voters have been registered in east Shoa zone of the Oromia state for the upcoming , zone election office said.
Office Coordinator, Hussen Tifo, told WIC that 280, 530 voters, including 135, 102 women, were registered at 1,039 polling stations established in the zone.
He said 700, 362 voters are expected to register in the zone.
He further said Coalition for Unity and Democracy (Kinijit), All Oromo People Democratic Party, Oromo National Congress (ONC), Oromo Abo Liberation Front and Ethiopian Democratic Party have so far fielded 17 candidates for seats in the HPR and State Council.
Two private candidates were also registered for seat in the parliament, he indicated.
In a related development, close to 862,000 eligible voters in east Hararge zone have secured IDs, zone election board office said.
Office Coordinator, Mesfin Zenebe, said the stated electorates were received the IDs at 1,538 polling stations.
He said 399,895 of the electorates were women.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 19 January 2010 )
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Africa: Land grab or development? (NHK)
Japan Broadcasting Corporation | 8 January 2010
Africa: Land grab or development?
by Koehi Tsuji
Watch the Video: http://farmlandgrab.org/10157
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Ruchi Soya takes farm land on lease in Ethiopia
Published: 16 January 2010
Ruchi Soya takes farm land on lease in Ethiopia
Posted By GRAIN On 16 January 2010 @ 22:38 In Ethiopia, India, KS Oils, Ruchi | No Comments
The Hindu Businessline | 16 January 2010
Our Bureau
Pact with Govt to cultivate soyabean, set up processing unit.
Mumbai, Jan. 15
Ruchi Soya Industries, one of the leading edible oil processors, on Friday announced a major farm land acquisition in Ethiopia for soybean cultivation.
The company said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ethiopian Government for cultivation of soyabean and setting up a processing unit on 61775 acres in Ganmbella and Benishangul Gumaz States on a lease basis for 25 years.
It has an option to increase the area under cultivation to 123,550 acres. However, it did not reveal investment details.
Looking overseas
“Ethopia has been chosen for agriculture investment considering the availability of labour, its strategic location and the Government support to boost foreign investment and development,” Ruchi Soya informed the stock exchanges on Friday.
The company’s closest competitor, KS Oils, in October last invested Rs 380 crore to acquire 53,000 acres at Kalimantan in Indonesia for palm plantation.
The funding was done through the wholly-owned subsidiary, KS Natural Resources, Singapore, which received a Rs 375-crore-infusion from the parent company.
The company had earlier bought 85,000 acres in two tranches in the last two years.
Constrained by the availability of cultivable land and hiccups in contract farming, Indian agricultural companies are looking at global destinations for backward integration.
Tie ups with State Govts
Ruchi Soya gained the potential to develop palm plantation of about 89,000 hectares by entering into tie-ups with various State governments.
The country would continue to depend on imports for its edible oil requirement.
The oilseeds coverage in the rabi season as on January 7 was lower by six per cent at 84.23 lakh hectares against 90.01 lakh hectares logged in the same period last year. Ms Shraddha Umarji, Research Analyst, NCDEX, said the dry weather had led to a decline in the acreage of the winter-sown oilseeds.
This may lead to a strain on edible oils supply, forcing imports.
The vegetable oil imports in November were at 753,966 tonnes (555,342 tonnes). Edible oils constituted 712,677 tonnes while non-edible oils import was at 41,289 tonnes.
“A lowering of import duties coupled with an increase in consumption and high price elasticity had resulted in large-scale imports,” she said.
Ruchi Soya stocks on the BSE were down marginally by 0.73 per cent at Rs 95 and KS Oils closed down 0.60 per cent at Rs 75.
http://farmlandgrab.org/10396/print/
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Call for papers: 4th London International Oromo Workshop on the scramble for land
Published: 8 January 2010Posted in: Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia
Gadaa.com | January 8, 2010
Press Release from the Workshop Organizing Committee
The 4th London International Oromo Workshop on 3 July 2010
At City University London
Call for Papers
The scramble for land, ‘investment’ and environmental degradation in Oromia: consequences for the future
As the world population is growing food security is becoming one of the most challenging issues facing the world leading to a global scramble for lucrative farmlands. Subsequently, some governments and private investors are buying up farmland in Africa and Asia to grow not only food but other commercial products. This high-stakes game of real-life monopoly of farmland is leading to “neo-colonialism.”
Oromia is an oasis on the frontline of the ever-expanding Sahara desert. Its ecosystem is very fragile and requires delicate balancing act in terms of the environment and its sustainability. Notwithstanding this, the Ethiopian regime has already leased millions of hectares of fertile Oromo farmland to foreign investors by displacing Oromo farmers from their lands. For exampl, Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest and most aggressive buyers of land. This spring, the King of Saudi Arabia attended a ceremony where he took delivery of the first export rice harvest, produced exclusively for the Kingdom in hunger-stricken Ethiopia. The lowlands of Oromia, where higher rainfall assists the cultivation of grains, flower plantations and bio-fuel crops, are particularly vulnerable.
Land in Oromia is not only being sold to capitalists for the purpose of industrial-scale farming, but also being invaded from many directions, including by the so-called investors, mining companies, extensive re-settlement as well as urbanization programmes without due respect for protection of the environment.
What is more, it is not known if these companies carry out environmental impact assessments or do anything to protection the ecosystem. The environmental impact of such unregulated large-scale farming is alarming. Evidence is emerging that underground water and rivers are being severely polluted from unregulated pesticides use by commercial flower plantations as a result of which a number of people are dying.
On the other hand, there are some who argue that the activities of the investors may help poor nations to achieve the development and modernization of their ailing agricultural sectors, and that the foreign investors will be able to produce enough food for the overpopulated planet. Howeve, its negative environmental and societal impacts on the indigenous people deserve a serious attention. The issue of land property rights in territories, such as Oromia, is complex and driving farmers from their ancestral land can lead to a serious societal breakdown.
This one-day multidisciplinary workshop will examine the scale of the problem and the environmental degradation, economi, social and health problems facing the Oromo people as the result of the farmland wholesale to foreign investors and will aim to formulate a consensus on how to mitigate its burden on the Oromo people.
The London International Oromo Workshop 2010 Organizing Committee invites proposals for this one-day workshop addressing research areas related to the conference theme. Researchers can submit workshop proposals to partake as panelists at the Workshop via email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
by 15th March 2010.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
http://farmlandgrab.org/10141
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CSO network rejects ‘corporate takeover of Africa land’
Posted By GRAIN On 3 December 2009 - In African Biodiversity Network, Ethiopia | No Comments
Gathuru Mburu (ABN), Jennifer Koinante (IPACC), Bern Guri (COMPAS), Anne Maina (ABN), Million Belay (MELCA), Simom Mwamba (ESAFF) and Mariam Mayet (ACB)
Capital Ethiopia | 3 December 2009
As African countries attract foreign investors looking to rent agricultural land, a group of civil societies who met in Addis Ababa this week called on African leaders to reject what they call the “corporate takeover of African land for food production”.
The civil societies, under their umbrella network Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), say some of the positions of the developed countries are calculated to distract Africa from pursuing genuine solutions towards empoweringcommunities towards attaining food sovereignty, and conserving and sustainably utilising their biodiversity.
They say African leaders need to reject false solutions and should champion small family farming systems based on agro ecological and indigenous approaches that sustain food sovereignty and the livelihoods of communities.
Hosted by local NGO, MELCA Mahiber, as part of the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), the Pan African Network meeting brought six major networks of civil societies who represent smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and hunter/gatherers.
“We demand that African leaders resist the corporate industrialisation of African agriculture, which will result in massive land grabs, displacement of indigenous peoples, especially the pastoral communities and hunter gatherers and the destruction of their livelihoods and cultures,” the civil societies said, at the conclusion of their three day meeting.
They also explained that though it should be appreciated that African leaders are increasingly choosing a common approach, such as to have the continent represented by one voice at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, there isn’t much to praise when it comes to African government’s practices at a national level. They called on leaders to bring an end to the continued exploration of African resources for the consumerist demands of the North.
“Leasing or giving away a huge chunk of land to foreigners, who will produce food to be shipped to their own people, and to hope that the money gained in profits will feed the local people is the height of naivete,” Gathuru Mburu of ABN said, rejecting the latest effort of East African countries who met in Addis Ababa to sway Saudi investors to lease land.
Million Belay, Director of MELCA Mahiber, has cautioned that arable lands are not excessive resources in East African countries, including Ethiopia, and that leaders need to thoroughly revise the deals they are considering.
http://farmlandgrab.org/9527/print/
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Al-Amoudi solicits additional arable land
By GRAIN On 7 December 2009 @ 00:36 In **, Al Amoudi, Caterpillar, Ethiopia, Karuturi Global Ltd, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Star | No Comments
Addis Fortune | 7 December 2009
Wudineh Zenebe
Mohammed Ali Al-Amoudi’s recently established Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc requested, two weeks ago, for an additional 250,000ht of land in Jawi Wereda of the Awi Zone of the Amhara Regional State for sugar beet production from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD).
The request is under review by the Investors Support Directorate under the State Minister Abera Deressa who told Fortune that the land would be granted if the review of the business plan of the company turned out to be good.
The three sugar factories in Ethiopia, Metahara, Finchaa, and Wonji Shoa, as well as Tendaho and the Pakistani-owned Al-Habesha Sugar Mills Plc, which are under development, all produce sugar from sugarcane, making Saudi Star the first to use sugar beet.
This is part of the company’s plan to develop 500,000ht of land in 10 years at a total expected cost of three billion to five billion dollars. It has currently obtained 10,000ht of land in the Alwero Area of the Gambella Regional State for the production of rice. Subsequently, the company intends to produce maize and wheat. The Amhara Regional State project focuses on cash crops.
“Al-Amoudi wanted this project to be implemented in the Amhara Regional State in order to create job opportunities in the area. It emanates from his aspiration to alleviate the poverty there,” Haile Assegdie, managing director of Saudi Star told Fortune.
The company wanted to get the land in the Jawi Wereda where 98pc of the land is said to be flat terrain with an annual average rainfall of 1200 to 1300mm.
The wereda’s Communication and Public Relations Secretary Tamene Demessie, said that the interest in the area previously came from sesame growers. Lately, however, Hibir Sugar had chosen the area for its sugar factory and sugarcane plantation, followed by Saudi Star’s interest now.
The Caterpillar agricultural machinery, which Saudi Star acquired for 80 million dollars, are, at present, being transported to the Alwero farm in Gambella. This company and the Indian Karuturi are presently the two largest food and cash crop growers in the country. Karuturi has commenced wheat production on the 300,000ht of land it acquired in the Gambella Regional State.
In Ethiopia, crop production has been localised to the densely populated, highland areas, which accounts for 40pc of the total land of the country.
The lowlands cover the remaining 60pc, and are sparsely populated. The Ethiopian government has been assuring land concessions should an interested investor come, as has been repeatedly expressed by PM Meles Zenawi.
http://farmlandgrab.org/9645/print/
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Egypt Primier Arrives in Addis Ababa To boost Economic Ties
By GRAIN On 30 December 2009 @
NewBusinessEthiopia.com
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Egypt's Premier Ahmed Nazif & PM Meles of Ethiopia (Source: New Business Ethiopia)
Leading business delegation of Egypt, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif arrive Addis Ababa on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 to boost economic ties between the two nations.
The delegation of 26 Egyptian agriculture companies led by Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza, is now inspecting land proposed by the Ethiopian government for Egyptian investment projects.
The delegation is studying possibilities of growing sugar cane using the abundant water resources of Ethiopia. “In return, we will give priority to Ethiopia in our imports of frozen meat,” Egypt’s Minister of Agriculture is quoted by Egypt.com Before the delegation’s arrival in Addis Ababa.
They will initially develop a farm on 20,000 hectares of land in Afar Regional State of Ethiopia. Some Egyptian drug manufacturing companies are also undertaking preparation to invest in Ethiopia while others showed interest to do so.
After Elsewedy International, an Egyptian cable manufacturing company, inaugurated its factory in Ethiopia few months ago, many Egyptian investors are encouraged to invest in Ethiopia. Currently, Elsewedy is expecting response from Ethiopian government to obtain land for its plan of constructing an industrial zone.
According to Egypt’s premier, the two countries have identified cooperation areas during the October, 2009 visit of a high level Egyptian delegation to Ethiopia. Investment, agriculture and construction were some of the cooperation areas that the Egyptians are interested to focus in Ethiopia.
During his talk with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Premier Nazif said that Egypt is desirous to work with Ethiopia in various sectors. He said participation of Egyptian investors in various investment sectors in Ethiopia is a start towards strengthening economic ties between the two countries.
He said the private sector significantly contributes in the efforts to strengthen the relations between Ethiopia and Egypt.
The total trade turnover between the two countries had been growing by 20 per cent annually on average and had more than doubled to 96 million USD in 2008 from about 41 million USD five years ago.
Between the two nations had reached 51 million USD in the first nine months of this year alone. Since 1992, about 75 investment licenses had been issued for Egyptian investors.
Meles and Nazif on the occasion expressed commitment to further strengthen existing economic ties between the two countries.
Meles on his part expressed Ethiopia’s readiness to cooperate with Egypt in various sectors. “Ethiopia and Egypt should work together in the efforts to ensure benefits of the peoples of the two countries,” he said.
“Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan are expected to reach an agreement on installation of electric cable lines in the near future,” Premier Ahmed Nazif said.
The three countries under Nile Basin Initiative are currently planning to construct a hydroelectric dam with a capacity of 2,100 megawatt, which will enable Ethiopia to sell power to Sudan and Egypt. The feasibly and design consultancy of the project has now secured funding from the Norwegian government.
Irrigation Minister Mohamed Allam on his part said Ethiopia has proposed building three medium-size dams on the Blue Nile to generate electricity for industrial purposes. “We have agreed to the offer as long as it would not affect Egypt’s Nile water quota,” Allam told media.
http://farmlandgrab.org/10090/print/
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Full circle: Back to the ‘Land to the Tiller’: Implications of the land grab in Ethiopia
Ethiopian farmers walk in their wheat field in Abay (Photo: Barry Malone)
Ethiomedia | December 3, 2009
By Fekade Shewakena
Zenawi is doing the secretive land deals with Arab and Asian tycoons and agribusiness corporations in secret and without any public discussion and scrutiny, and why the officials are handling it in much the same way like thieves who sell their stolen stuff on street corners and dark alleys, you have asked a serious question and probably have almost gotten some of your answers. This is pure theft and burglary sugarcoated as investment – only in this case that the burglar has someone to open the door from inside. It is a dangerous venture that has little to do with solving Ethiopia’s economic problems but bound to negatively impact the country’s most strategic resources, land and water, and its posterity. It appears that we have reached a point where we are selling out our last belongings just like the desperate peasants I once saw in 1984 sell their last belongings for scrape as they fled their villages to escape an impending famine.
Read the complete article: http://farmlandgrab.org/9539/print/
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Ethiopia – country of the silver sickle – offers land dirt cheap to farming giants
Addis Ababa sells vast fertile swaths to international companies in effort to introduce large-scale commercial agriculture
Xan Rice in Bako
This is a country of the bent back and the silver sickle, where virtually all the crops have felt the calloused fingers of the peasant farmer working his tiny parcel of state-owned land. The ox pulls the plough and the donkey the cart, and fertiliser counts as agricultural technology.
Read the complete Article: http://farmlandgrab.org/10305/print/
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Agri-Vie eyes $300 mln for Africa farm projects
By GRAIN On 14 January 2010 -In Agri-Vie, Ethiopia |
Reuters | 14 January 2010
By Wendell Roelf
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Sub-Saharan focused private equity fund Agri-Vie will reach its $100 million target for investment in agricultural projects by March, and could triple this amount in a second fund, a top official said on Thursday.
Agri-Vie funds food and agricultural projects in Africa seeking to make equity investments across the agribusiness spectrum, including processing and product distribution.
Africa’s agriculture sector, largely subsistence-based and underdeveloped, is set to boom as European, Asian and Middle Eastern countries invest in the world’s poorest continent to boost food security in their own backyards.
“The indication is that we would reach that target of $100 million by February, March this year,” Izak Strauss, executive director and chief investment officer of the Cape Town-based fund told Reuters in an interview.
The first fund was launched in May 2008.
Agri-Vie’s backers include South Africa’s Development Bank of Southern Africa and private entities such as the W.K. Kellog Foundation.
“There is definitely an opportunity to do a second fund substantially larger than the first fund… probably (in the region of) $200 to $300 million,” he said, adding that the second fund would likely launch around 2013 or 2014.
Strauss said the firm plans to invest up to $25 million on five new projects during 2010, including a new $4 million eco-tourism project in Tanzania. He did not elaborate.
Earlier this month, Agri-Vie invested slightly more than $10 million in two ventures in the east African agribusiness sector, which it considered an “investment hotspot” because of positive economic growth forecast in the region.
Strauss said Agri-Vie invested $6.7 million in New Forests Company (NFC), a forestry and timber products group with operations in Uganda as well as Tanzania, Rwanda and Mozambique and with a British holding company.
East Africa has so far been a net importer of sawn timber and electrical poles and NFC aims to replace these imports with locally-produced goods.
africaJUICE fruit plantation in Ethiopia (Photo: http://inethiopia.nl/tom)
The second investment was $3.5 million in africaJUICE, a company establishing fruit production and processing operations in East Africa, and which wants to capture a piece of the lucrative European and Middle East juice market.
“Its first operation is in Ethiopia growing yellow passion fruit, mango and papaya,” said Strauss.
He said the company, which was converting a 1,200 hectare state-run farm, hoped ideal growing conditions in Ethiopia coupled with its location would help displace European companies’ reliance on importing the fruits from South America.
“The first exports will happen from mid-this year,” Strauss said of the fruit farm being developed by Dutch and British entrepreneurs.
http://farmlandgrab.org/10249/print/
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Recognize land as a human right- Sellout of agricultural lands will aggravate food crisis
By GRAIN On 10 December 2009 FIAN, Kenya, Madagascar | 1 Comment
FIAN | 10-12-2009
Heidelberg 10/12/2009 – For the first time in decades, the estimate of undernourished people is on the rise again, and has passed the historic margin of one billion. Unsecured, unequal and discriminatory access to land and other natural resources remains one of the key structural causes of hunger. The recent phenomenon of large-scale land grabbing brings a new dimension into the struggle for the scarce resource.
“The sellout of African, Asian and Latin American agricultural lands to foreign states and companies will further aggravate the food crisis,” warns Sofia Monsalve, agrarian policies expert at FIAN International. “On the occasion of today’s Human Rights Day, we demand that States fulfill their obligation to respect and protect the right to food of their citizens and abroad by preventing large scale land grabbing” Monsalve points out.
The new land grabbing wave is triggered off by a number of countries which, in order to combat their dependency on food imports, start outsourcing their domestic food production by gaining control of large tracts of farm land in foreign countries. At the same time, private investors have discovered foreign farmland as a new source of profit.
“Large-scale foreign land acquisition for export purposes drastically reduces land availability for agrarian reform and equitable land access”, says Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights director at FIAN International Secretariat. “This is particularly detrimental as peasants and pastoralists depend on access to land and other productive resources to be able to feed themselves. In a context of population growth in these countries their increasing resource needs have to be respected”, Künnemann goes on.
80 percent of the people that suffer hunger and undernutrition live in rural areas, but become increasingly deprived of access to land, due to violent dispossessions and displacements in the context of armed conflicts, extractive and agribusiness industries, tourism, industrial and infrastructure projects, accelerated urbanisation and the massive promotion of plants used for agrofuel production.
Künnemann is particularly concerned about Ethiopia, where almost half the population is food insecure, famines are recurrent, but at the same time, the government gives away vast stretches of prime agricultural land to business interests from India, the EU, the USA, Israel and Saudia Arabia – mainly for sugar, meat, agrofuels and flowers. “By failing to outrule such scandalous deals these countries are complicit in Ethiopia’s violations of the right to food”, Künnemann explains.
“Since its inception, FIAN has been consistently working on access to land and agrarian reform as central elements of the right to adequate food. Given the dramatic scale of land grabbing we are witnessing today, and given the fact that land is essential for the fulfilment of several human rights such as the right to food, housing, water, work, culture and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, time has come to increase the protection of access to land by fully recognising it as a human right”, says Flavio Valente, FIAN’s Secretary General.
Background information:
In Kenya’s Tana River Delta, the country’s most fertile area, two major agricultural investments are being planned. A 40,000 hectare sugar cane plantation to be run by a private Company and a horticultural project of dimensions yet unknown for the government of Qatar. For the pastoralists who depend on the fertile pastures during the long dry season, the realization of the project would spell doom. The grazing land, held in trust by the county council, would be fenced off and converted into plantations. Access to the river would be blocked. But also hundreds of farmers would be affected directly, because they are squatting on project land, or indirectly, because the water resources would be tapped by the investors.
In Madagascar, a country where 37% of the population is undernourished and the majority (approx. 73% ) of the population lives in rural areas and mainly relies on agriculture and rural development for their livelihoods, Daweoo Logistics, a subsidiary company of Daweoo International Corporation signed a contract for leasing 1,3 million ha for 99 years to produce maize and palm oil mainly for export. This project sparked strong opposition among the Malagasy population. However, the government has not given any answer yet to the 10,000 letters sent to the Malagasy government through a FIAN letter campaign requesting to officially confirm that the lease contract with Daweoo has been cancelled as was announced on the18th of March 2009 – see FIAN Urgent Action on Madagascar [1]
http://farmlandgrab.org/9665/print/
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SOMALI TRAFFIC - A SMUGGLER’S STORY
With mounting violence and escalating refugee numbers, human smuggling is a growing Somali business.
[Bossaso, Somalia] Each week hundreds arrive. Most of them Somalis and Ethiopians, they seek to flee East Africa for Europe or the Middle East in the hope of escaping violence and poverty.
Bossaso, a small port town surrounded by ancient buildings in the northeastern Puntland region of Somalia, is witnessing a boom in human trafficking.
Because of its post on the main smuggling corridor in northeastern Somalia, Puntland has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in East Africa.
But while Bossaso’s regional government runs the local administration and handles security, human smuggling is one of several issues over which it is suspiciously silent.
''Our operations are well-coordinated and the government’s efforts to block us amount to nothing,'' one smuggler at the Bossaso harbor told The Media Line under condition of anonymity. He points to one of the wooden boats his colleagues used to smuggle people out of the country.
''I hope to build good hotels in Puntland and then I will stop this dangerous work,'' he says clutching a long stick for beating immigrants in the sea on his hands.
Like many smugglers, he took up this work for the opportunity to earn easy money by driving immigrants across the shark-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden into Yemen.
Refugees are typically charged between $50 to $100 for the treacherous journey. Some refugees are lured from nearby bus stations by smugglers promising to lead them to a better life.
But these promises are rarely fulfilled. More often than not, smugglers are all too happy to take their fee and abandon the migrants at the slightest indication of trouble. Many of the migrants fall victim to human traffickers, who hold them against their will and force them to work in the bush lands of Saudi Arabia.
Hundreds die at sea every month and for those who do survive, the sad reality is often arrest, deportation and refugee camps. Those who succeed as migrants, usually do so having attained poor jobs with no legal status and little freedom.
Abdirahman Haji Nur, a Somali analyst in Puntland, said that the majority of the thousands of immigrants who die at sea are under 18 years old.
Tsegaye Gilu, a young Ethiopian man, stands under an old crumbling building clutching a small tattered bag in his left hand. He fled Ethiopia by road to reach Bossaso hoping to catch a boat to Yemen.
''I’m trying to get to Saudi Arabia via Yemen to get a good job and find a better life,” the dark-skinned, tall 20-year-old told The Media Line.
Gilu, who survived tragedy in the Gulf of Aden, was repatriated from Saudi Arabia, but says he won't turn any work down. It’s his only chance to send money back home to his family in Jijiga, the capital of Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
''Work is work,” the famished-looking Gilu says as he sits on a stone next to a ramshackle building. “I have been in towns where I have no money, job or life. I'm ready for any employment regardless of the conditions involved.''
While some Yemeni villagers have tried to help the new arrivals, care for the sick, rescue those drowning and bury the dead, the Yemeni government has responded differently. Most Somalis are sent to squalid refugee camps. Ethiopians and Eritreans can expect arrest or deportation, and reports have emerged lately of the Yemeni government forcing Somali migrants to fight against the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
These days, smugglers are extra careful to search every passenger, banning everything beyond small biscuits and two liters of water for the long journey ahead.
It is commonplace for smugglers to throw migrants overboard, even pregnant woman and children. Over-laden boats often sink in storms or in calmer waters from the sheer weight of their cargo.
In 2007, Gilu remembers, one of his co-passengers managed to smuggle a gun aboard the boat. When the smugglers started beating some of the immigrants, throwing some in the sea, the armed refugee shot one of the armed smugglers and another two who were beating passengers. News spread quickly and searches and brutality have since been stepped up.
''If you don't inspect them they will pick up weapons and kill us,” one refugee smuggler, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Media Line.
Despite the fact that human smuggling would be easier to curb than other crimes in the region, not a single person has been brought to court, fuelling widespread suspicions that Puntland regional officials are involved in the smuggling.
As Bossaso authorities were telling local media that they were cracking down on illegal migration, closing ports and confiscating immigration boats last year, the numbers of smuggled persons surged at the same time.
''We have begun to stop the trend of human-trafficking,” Muse Gele Yusuf, governor of Puntland’s Bari region told The Media Line. “We’re forcing immigrants to go back to their countries.”
By Abdinasir Mohamed Guled on Tuesday, January 19, 2010
http://www.themedialine.org/news/print_news_detail.asp?NewsID=27759
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