In January 2020, scientists around the world announced that, a new Coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 was responsible for a huge outbreak of a respiratory illness in Wuhan, China. Since then, the novel coronavirus has spread all across the planet, and it has touched every single country on the planet. A global pandemic was declared, and I […]
Ethiopia and the United States celebrate this month the 100th anniversary of contact between the governments of President Theodore Roosevelt and Emperor Menelik II. This month 100 years ago marked the first meeting by an official American delegation with the leader of Africa’s oldest independent country. An American mission led by Robert Peet Skinner arrived […]
There are few roads in Addis as congested as Debre Zeit. That is saying a lot. This road is the main lifeline of Addis, connecting the land-bound capital with the port of Djibouti. As a result it is a maze of slow moving trailer trucks, with cars, donkeys and people dodging around them to get […]
China will actually end up overtaking the United States of America as the biggest economy on the planet, by the year 2028 and it is because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a rivalry between China and the United States of America, currently, because of the pandemic. There will be an economic fallout between the […]
The Third Habshi Ulugh Khan The third Habshi bearing the title of Ulugh Khan was Yaqut’s son Muhammad, also known as Shams ud-Dawlah Muhammad al-Habshi, who served as vizier to his father from 1543-4 to 1557-8. Also called Khayrat Khan, he also held the title of al-Majlis al-Ashraf al-Ali, and is remembered, as we have […]
The Walk from Sankober It was an energetic group which set off for a walk that morning (after suffering a downpour the night before), but only at 9 AM after a couple of hours of drying clothes and sleeping bags over a campfire. The walk from Sankober to the Gich camp is part of the […]
The Markets The second great thing about DD (the first is the French influence) is the markets. There are a lot of them. Things are suspiciously cheap. Let’s face it – a lot of stuff avoids the onerous import duties through side routes from the difficult to control border with Somaliland, over which items which […]
The Gilgel-Gibe I Hydroelectric Power plant built at a cost of over two billion birr was inaugurated last Saturday at a colorful ceremony attended by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, government officials and invited members of international community. The power plant, the largest in the country, has an installed capacity of 184 MW and was financed […]
Nechisar Park is quite a way from Addis. To get to Nechisar you must go through the zonal town of Arba Minch. Going to Arba Minch represents a victory of determination over common sense. Take a look at a map of Ethiopia. Look down, way down, to the bottom of the Rift Valley Lakes. Arba […]
Last week’s article, on ‘Enbaqom of Debra Libanos, was inspired by an important literary event in Ethiopian studies: the publication by Tsehai Publishers in Holywood, California, of Paul Stenhouse’s English translation of the FUTUH AL-HABASHA, or 16th. century “Conquest of Abyssinia”. This interesting work was written in Arabic by a Yemeni scholar, Shihab ad-din Ahmed […]