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Ethiopia: Country Too Dependent On Foreign Aid
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
21 April 2008
Posted to the web 21 April 2008
Mammo Muchie
On February 2, 2006 BBC reporter Peter Greste wrote from Mekele, northern Ethiopia: "Like a patient addicted to pain killers, Ethiopia seems hooked on aid. "
He added: "For most of the past three decades, it has survived on millions of tonnes of donated food and millions of dollars in cash. It has received more emergency support than any other African nation in that time."
At present a reported nine million people in Ethiopia need food aid under conditions when food prices have been pushed up by inflation and food supply difficulties preoccupy the managers of the world economy.
The cost of living has been rising and the hardship ordinary people are facing is beyond forbearance in Ethiopia. It is hard times now in Ethiopia for the people, though the elite continue to live a life of opulence with cold and cruel indifference to the plight of ordinary people's lives.
Any country that has been in the situation Ethiopia has been for a generation, that is to say, not being in a position to feed oneself - is invariably a country that suffers from endemic governance crises. Any government that has not developed a comprehensive and integrated system of agricultural production to assure a sustainable food security framework in a country fails to command respect and legitimacy for extending its tenure.
The regime in Ethiopia has been full of contrivance and deception in playing 'democracy' more as a game of deception rather than as a principle of governance to find workable arrangements with moral, intellectual and political integrity to solve the age-old governance problems of the country.
To give may be easier, but to receive is harder. There is so much one loses when one is a recipient of foreign aid. The latter is often doled out in ways that make it recurrent and essential very often to the detriment of the recipient. It is not always the case that foreign aid solves such critical problems such as feeding ones nation.
Feeding a nation must be the responsibility of the government and citizens of a country. It cannot be contracted out to outsiders to help feed a nation. One off help may be necessary and unavoidable when vulnerabilities strike and foreign aid may be useful sometimes depending on how it is given.
But if the help continues year in and year out, it comes at the expense of a nation's necessary confidence to take its own development chances by itself. It can cripple a country's agencies.
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Dr Muchie is professor at the Research Centre on Development and International Relations at Aalborg University in Denmark.
Ethiopia needs to know beggars can NOT be choosers.
Ethiopia severs ties with Qatar The rebellion in the Ogaden is a sensitive issue for Ethiopia. Ethiopia's government has announced it is breaking off relations with Qatar. The Foreign Ministry said it was because of "Qatar's attempts to destabilise the sub-region and its hostility towards Ethiopia itself". Ethiopia is thought to be angry at recent coverage from Al-Jazeera, based in Doha, and financial support given to Eritrea, accused of backing rebels.
Although the two countries have diplomatic relations, neither has an embassy in the other's... [Read Full Text]
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