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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The city of Dessie boasts a population of about 100,000. It is in a very attractive setting, sitting about 2600 meters high amidst tree-clad hills. On a sunny day, Dessie can be quite glorious. On a rainy day, it’s dismal. Because of its geographical position, Dessie is densely populated and crowded. It is squeezed between […]
I have found that Dire Dawa takes a certain amount of getting used to. It is a recent city in an ancient country, having been founded as the initial endpoint of the railroad from Djibouti into Ethiopia around the turn of the century (19th into 20th). Previously I wrote an article on Dire Dawa, which […]
Ethiopia is embarking on a land certification scheme to try and improve security of tenure for its farmers, IRIN reported here on Tuesday. The scheme aims to offer greater security to Ethiopia’s farmers – whose land is owned by the state – and encourage them to invest more heavily in their farms. Some analysts argue […]
