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ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A powerful party in Ethiopia’s government accused authorities of arresting members of its ethnic group in a politically-driven crackdown – an unprecedented public charge exposing deep rifts at the heart of the ruling elite.

The accusation marked growing tensions between elements in the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – a movement that has dominated Ethiopia for decades – and new reformist prime minister Abiy Ahmed who has upended politics with a string of radical reforms.

At least 79 security officers, officials, businessmen and women, many of them Tigrayan, have been arrested since last week – under what the government said was a clamp-down on corruption and mistreatment of prisoners.

Amnesty International and other rights groups have welcomed the arrests. But TPLF chair Debretsion Gebremichael said on Monday the arrests ordered under “the pretext of corruption and human rights are being used to attack Tigrayans”.

The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Debretsion’s remarks.

Abiy’s rise – as Ethiopia’s first leader from the majority Oromo group – had transformed decades-old hierarchies in the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition that was founded by the TPLF and came to power in 1991.

Soon after Abiy was inaugurated in April, he made peace with long-time foe Eritrea and started pushing reforms he said were meant to rein in the military and security services and limit their involvement in the economy – changes that have been largely welcomed by Western powers.

The TPLF’s Debretsion did not spell out who he thought was behind the arrests, that were announced by the government’s attorney general. “There is a foreign involvement in the process. Thus, it is unacceptable,” he said, without giving further details.

Debretsion picked out last week’s arrest of Kinfe Dagnew, a Tigrayan major general in the army and former chief executive of the METEC military-led conglomerate.

“While Kinfe was arrested peacefully, they tied him handcuffs. This is a political attack,” Debretsion told a news conference.

“While they should have gone after an individual, they went after an ethnic group and a party,” he said in comments aired by Dimtsi Woyane TV.

Kinfe and others appeared in court but have not been charged or entered any pleas. There have been no statements from them or lawyers representing them.

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ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Dozens of Ethiopian security officials appeared in court on Monday after the attorney general accused security chiefs of ordering a grenade attack on Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

The arrests appeared to mark a crucial moment for Abiy, who has embarked on a whirlwind series of economic, political and diplomatic reforms since he came to power in April.

Attorney General Berhanu Tsegaye said evidence showed “the senior leadership of the national security agency” told members of Abiy’s Oromo ethnic group to attack him at a rally in June.

The assertion is jolting in an ethnically diverse country that has seen recent ethnic clashes and because Abiy is the ruling coalition’s first Oromo leader.

Berhanu said at a news conference that arrest warrants have been issued for 36 security agents accused of abusing prisoners and for more than 30 officials from a military-run firm, where he said inquiries had uncovered mismanagement.

Reuters could not immediately contact the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), or the industrial conglomerate named by the attorney general – Metals and Engineering Corporation (METEC).

Several hours later, 36 officials from branches of the security forces including NISS and the federal and Addis Ababa police forces and 26 officials from METEC appeared in the Federal High Court in the capital.

The court session ran until 9 p.m., a rarity in Ethiopia, and a judge denied the suspects bail and gave police 14 days further to investigate. None were charged.

Among those in court was METEC deputy director general Tena Kurunde and the wife of former deputy head of NISS Yared Zerihun, witnesses said. Yared was moved from that role to head the federal police in April but resigned three months later.

Ethiopia’s security services have for decades wielded power as has METEC, a key player in an economy dominated by the state and the military.

Abiy’s reforms have challenged the security services and upended policies and hierarchies that have been in place since his ruling EPRDF coalition came to power in 1991.

He has pledged to open state-held sectors to investors and acknowledged police brutality he likened to state terrorism. He has also made peace with neighboring Eritrea and announced pardons for previously outlawed Oromo rebels and other groups.

ABUSES UNCOVERED

A grenade attack killed two people at a rally in Addis Ababa in June, soon after Abiy left the stage. Authorities arrested five people in September, saying they were members of the formerly exiled Oromo Liberation Front that Abiy had pardoned.

“The evidence we gathered shows that the senior leadership of the national security agency instructed Oromos to carry out the attack because it would mean that the prime minister – an Oromo – was killed by Oromos,” the attorney general told a press conference. “It would (also) give the impression that he is not endorsed by the Oromo population.”

Berhanu said several suspects had fled Ethiopia or were in hiding and investigations over the past five months had uncovered serious abuses by security services.

“There are people that have been blinded after being held in darkness for long periods of time. Others have been left infertile because of blows to genitals. There are some that had limbs broken. Women have been subjected to gang rape, and men to sodomization,” Berhanu told reporters.

He said investigations had also uncovered issues with procurement procedures at METEC.

“For six years METEC made international procurements totaling $2 billion without any bidding processes,” Berhanu said, without naming the international firms involved.

He said the investigation had examined METEC’s contract for the Grand Renaissance Dam, the centerpiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.

In August, the government canceled the contract, citing delays in completing the project.

Until recently, Ethiopia’s government was dominated by members of the Tigrayan minority. Ethiopia has seen economic growth near 10 percent over the past decade but rights groups say the government has cracked down on dissent.

Abiy became the EPRDF’s first Oromo leader after anti-government protests helped force his predecessor to step down.

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NAIROBI/ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian Airlines is accelerating its strategy of weaving a patchwork of new African routes to soak up traffic on the continent and fly customers towards its more lucrative flights to rapidly expanding Asian markets.

With a long-delayed African “open skies” revolution still mired in red tape, Ethiopian has been snapping up stakes in small carriers around the continent to pre-empt potential rivals and become the dominant pan-African airline.

The carrier is in talks with Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo Republic and Djibouti about either launching airlines or securing landing spots, CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told Reuters.

He also said in May the airline was looking to set up carriers in Equatorial Guinea and Guinea through joint ventures.

“The task of African integrati on is not easy,” Tewolde said in an interview. “The context is the need for air transport. There is huge demand. We are responding to it.”

Ethiopian’s push comes as Middle Eastern rivals who expanded heavily in Africa are feeling some pain from overcapacity, while African carriers such as South African Airways and Kenya Airways are on the back foot after losing money for years.

The success or failure of Ethiopian’s plan is being watched by long-haul competitors such as Turkish Airlines and suppliers led by Boeing and, more recently, Airbus.

Ethiopian’s fortunes are also important for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, which has said it plans to sell a minority stake in the airline to domestic and foreign investors as part of broad economic reform pledges.

Ethiopian unveiled its 15-year expansion strategy in 2010, and started small. First it helped launch ASKY Airlines in the West African country of Togo and then acquired a 49 percent stake in Malawi’s flag carrier in southern Africa in 2013.

Since May, Ethiopian has announced plans to launch an airline in Mozambique, relaunched Zambia’s flag carrier, established a new airline in Chad to cover West and Central Africa and resumed flights to Somalia after a 41-year hiatus.

REGIONAL HUBS

The prize is growing fast. Air traffic in Africa is forecast to grow 6 percent a year, twice as quickly as mature markets and faster than any other region over the next two decades.

Ethiopian is hoping to snare a greater share of capacity on flights between cities in Africa, which are already 90-percent controlled by African carriers, according to data firm OAG.

In most cases so far, Ethiopian has taken minority stakes in “start-up” airlines and tried to implant its management culture, often in nations haunted by costly failures of state carriers.

Tewolde also wants to claw back market share on routes to and from the continent, dominated by Turkish and Gulf carrier Emirates. This year, 61 percent of capacity to or from Africa has been controlled by non-African carriers, says OAG.

There are big risks.

Ethiopian is spending tens of millions of dollars in some of Africa’s toughest markets and the strategy of buying minority stakes to get a foothold abroad has failed spectacularly for some, such as Abu Dhabi’s Etihad.

Analysts worry accelerated expansion may spread Ethiopian too thinly if traffic doesn’t pick up fast enough at its new hubs in Togo, Malawi and Chad.

The regional hubs are designed partly to channel customers to Ethiopian’s main hub in Addis Ababa and so fill its direct flights to the Middle East and Asia.

OPEN SKIES?

There are also concerns that none is in a major African city. Lome is far smaller than west African cities such as Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, or Abidjan in Ivory Coast, while Chad’s dusty desert capital is even smaller.

“You want to build (a hub) in a place where you are going to get local traffic and connecting traffic,” said Craig Jenks, president of consultancy Airline/Aircraft Projects Inc aap.aero/index.html.

Tewolde said the new airline in Chad would draw in passengers from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Niger, northern Nigeria and Sudan.

Yamlaksira Getachew, a management professor at Loyola Marymount University, warned Zambia’s relaunched flag carrier could steal traffic from Ethiopian’s existing southern African hub in neighboring Malawi.

Ethiopian has been forced to adopt the piecemeal approach to expansion because full air transport liberalization has failed to materialize, despite several attempts.

In 1999, 44 African countries signed the Yamoussoukro Decision in Ivory Coast’s capital giving airlines freedom to ferry passengers between two foreign countries.

But the agreement was barely implemented as governments moved to protect domestic carriers.

To try to revive the stalled process, 23 African governments signed another deal this year to forge a single aviation market.

So far, Ethiopian’s plan appears to be working. It says it has clocked average growth of 25 percent a year since 2010 and expects to carry nearly 10.6 million passengers this year, up from 3.7 million eight years ago.

Unlike many African rivals, it is also making money. Net profit rose 2 percent to $233 million in its 2017-18 fiscal year.

It says Western banks are helping to fund plans to boost its fleet of 108 planes, with 66 more on order.

Highlighting the potential riches at stake, Chinese banks are involved too, partly reflecting Beijing’s drive to build a new trade corridor to the Middle East and Africa, bankers said.

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Economist – “THE REASON why we are poor is inside us,” cries Nigusie Roba, his face sweating with emotion. “It is not the fault of God.” The pastor’s youthful congregants rise, palms open wide. Nigusie’s voice grows louder: “Tonight you will go home anointed by God.” In the far corner a young woman drops to the floor, her body writhing as she screams.

Preachers like Nigusie—sharply dressed, charismatic, and renowned for exorcising demons from the bodies of the faithful—represent a strain of Christianity not widely associated with traditionally Orthodox Ethiopia. For centuries national identity was entwined with the conservative ritual and hierarchy of the continent’s oldest church. But “Pentes”, as both Pentecostals and more staid Protestants are known in Ethiopia, are on the march.

Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, is a devout Pentecostal. So was his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn. Lemma Megersa, the prime minister’s closest ally and president of Oromia, Ethiopia’s most populous region, is a board member of Assemblies of God, the church which hosted Nigusie in Addis Ababa in October. The rise of the Oromo wing of the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), has brought even more Pentes into the highest ranks of government. Most of the executive committee of Abiy’s Oromo faction have been followers of Pastor Gemechis Desta, a Pentecostal preacher, even though Pentes are probably still outnumbered in Oromia by both Muslims and Orthodox Christians.

In the 1960s Pentes were less than 1% of the national population. Today they may be as much as a quarter, packed into cities and among the fast-growing rural populations in the south and west. Most of this growth has come at the expense of the Orthodox Church (see chart).

Before the EPRDF introduced freedom of religion in 1995 the Pentes were fiercely persecuted by the Orthodox establishment and its allies in government. When Abiy’s church, Full Gospel Believers, tried to register in 1967, its application was rejected by the then emperor, Haile Selassie. Arrests and beatings followed, worsening under the communist regime known as the Derg. In 1979 some church members were publicly flogged as punishment for not chanting socialist slogans. Popular hostility was rife, too. When one of Nigusie’s children died in infancy, some of his neighbours in southern Ethiopia dug up the grave and hung the corpse on a post as a warning to others.

Even during those dark times Pentecostalism won converts. In much of Oromia it has also grown with the rise of Oromo nationalism, in part because sermons are conducted in the local language, Afan Oromo, rather than Ge’ez, the ancient language of Orthodox liturgy (akin to Latin for Catholics). Most of the founders of the Oromo Liberation Front, a secessionist rebel group, were Pentes.

Today the faith’s modern image explains its rise better than politics. In the Assemblies of God chapel upbeat pop music welcomes Nigusie on stage. A new wave of charismatic pastors known as “Prophets” attract huge crowds by telling followers that God will make them prosper. Suraphel Demissie, who grew up as an orphan, has a 24-hour satellite television channel, tens of millions of YouTube views, a large office in Addis Ababa and an international following. “The beguiling feature of Pentecostalism …[is] the idea that nothing is impossible,” says Andrew DeCort of the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology.

Ideas like these can be revolutionary. Dena Freeman, an anthropologist, found how a large majority of people in a rural district in Ethiopia’s southern highlands converted to Pentecostalism in the early 2000s. The individualism taught by the religion encouraged a boom in businesses, in part because it freed people from traditional obligations to share their wealth.

The former guerrillas who used to run the EPRDFdrew a sharp line between religion and state when they came to power in 1991. But religion seems slowly to be returning to the public sphere. Although there are few signs that Abiy favours Pentes at the expense of other faiths, religion seems to have shaped his politics. Many of his sermon-like speeches about love and forgiveness invoke God. Moreover, many of his followers see him as being on a divine mission. He seems to agree, having said that as a child his mother prophesied his rise.

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NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopia has overtaken Dubai as a conduit for long-haul passengers to Africa, highlighting the success of the state airline’s expansion drive and the reforms of its new prime minister.

Travel consultancy ForwardKeys said on Wednesday Addis Ababa airport had increased the number of international transfer passengers to sub-Saharan Africa for five years in a row, and in 2018 had surpassed Dubai, one of the world’s busiest airports, as the transfer hub for long-haul travel to the region.

Analyzing data from travel booking systems that record 17 million flight bookings a day, ForwardKeys found the number of long-haul transfers to sub-Saharan Africa via Addis Ababa jumped by 85 percent from 2013 to 2017. Transfers via Dubai over the same period rose by 31 percent.

So far this year, Addis Ababa’s growth is 18 percent, versus 3 percent for Dubai.

Dubai has long been a major global air travel hub because it is the base of Gulf carrier Emirates. Given the lack of an “open skies” deal smoothing flights across Africa, many passengers traveling between one part of the continent and another, or from Asia or Europe to Africa, must often transit through Dubai.

But this is changing.

Ethiopian Airlines [ETHA.UL], the country’s most successful state company, is accelerating a 15-year strategy it launched in 2010 to win back market share on routes to and from Africa that are dominated by Turkish Airlines and Emirates.

It is also weaving a patchwork of new African routes to rapidly expanding and lucrative Asian markets.

ForwardKeys also attributed the recent jump in bookings via Addis Ababa in part to a positive international response to the broad reforms introduced by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in April and has upended politics in the Horn of Africa country of around 105 million people.

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BBC- Birtukan Mideksa is the latest significant appointment of a woman to a key public office.

Ms Birtukan returned to Ethiopia earlier this month after seven years in exile in the US.

She was among dozens of opposition leaders jailed after the disputed elections of 2005 that led to the deaths of hundreds of people.

The BBC’s Emmanuel Igunza in the capital Addis Ababa says she faces a key challenge in restoring faith in an electoral board that has constantly faced accusations of being manipulated by the state – and will oversee elections in May 2020.

There is currently not a single opposition MP in Ethiopia’s parliament.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has carried out wide-ranging reforms since coming to office in April.

These include making peace with neighbouring Eritrea after two decades of conflict, freeing political prisoners and welcoming back armed opposition groups from exile.

The 42-year-old leader has also given half of the government’s 20 ministerial posts to women and last month the parliament chose Sahle-Work Zewde as the country’s first female president, a ceremonial role.

Recently he was commended for appointing renowned human rights lawyer Meaza Ashenafi – whose efforts to tackle the underage marriage of girls formed the basis of an Angelina Jolie-produced Hollywood film in 2014 – as the country’s most senior judge.

After her appointment, Ms Birtukan said she felt her career as a judge would help resolve the conflicts and differences that were likely to arise in her new role.

But she said that Ethiopians across the board had shown they were ready for change.

“The Ethiopian people are ready to build the democratic system they want and to hold the government accountable – and they have showed us that by paying the sacrifice needed,” Ms Birtukan told journalists.

“So, I believe that that public readiness is one good opportunity.

“Even though there’s still a lot to be done, we are seeing many institutional reforms in many directions. These are good opportunities.

“And I believe that fact that this government has proved its commitment for a genuine and true democracy is another good opportunity.”

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FBC–Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed has been named among the 100 most influential Africans of 2018 by the New African magazine.

The magazine has featured Dr Abiy on its cover page.

The Ethiopian Prime Minister has made stunning political reforms in the country since he came to power last April.

He released thousands of prisoners, lifted bans imposed on political parties as well as unblocked websites.

The country has also signed peace deal with neighboring Eritrea and appointed a gender-balanced Cabinet with 50 percent women.

Six other Ethiopians, including Group CEO of Ethiopian Tewolde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethio-Telecom Frehiwot Tamiru as well as founder and executive director of soleRebels, Bethlehem Tilahun, appeared in the list.

Presidents of Egypt, Rwanda, and South Africa are also included in the list.

In terms of countries, entries are led by Nigeria with 18 names followed by Kenya (11) South Africa (10) Egypt (8) and Ethiopia (7).

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Economist – If any single event sums up the confusion, danger and enormous opportunity posed by the change sweeping across Ethiopia it was when dozens of armed soldiers marched on the office of Abiy Ahmed, the new prime minister, in October. As the troops moved closer, the government shut down the internet, leaving the capital awash with rumours but little information. It looked to many Ethiopians like a coup.

But when the soldiers arrived, Abiy approached them and listened to their complaints. Within a day videos were circulating showing the 42-year-old former army officer doing press-ups with the grinning troops. Abiy later said the protest had been part of a plot to kill him by opponents of his reforms. Yet with boldness and charm he turned a possible military coup into a public-relations one.

Across Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous country, scenes that were unimaginable a year ago are now commonplace. On a recent Friday morning in Hawassa, a regional capital, crowds of young men draped themselves in the white, red and blue flags of the Sidama Liberation Movement, a rebel group. Chanting and singing, they gathered to welcome its leaders home from exile.

Farther along the highway to the capital, as the road crosses an invisible ethnic border, the colours of the flag change to yellow, green and red—those of the Oromo Liberation Front, another rebel group that has been allowed to return and contest elections, scheduled for 2020.

If the democratic uprisings that swept across the states of the former Soviet Union in the early 2000s were “colour revolutions”, then Ethiopia’s counts as a multicoloured one, with flags of many hues representing its more than 80 ethnic groups.

There is no mistaking the excitement that has gripped the country since April, when Abiy took office and embarked on the most radical liberalisation in Ethiopia’s history. He has made peace with neighbouring Eritrea, freed thousands of political prisoners, welcomed back armed opposition groups and promised to open up the state-dominated economy.

But he faces big challenges. As he lifts the heavy hand of the state, ethnic nationalism and violence are spreading. The economy is slowing. Much will depend on whether Abiy can use his enormous popularity to unite the country and shepherd it towards fair elections.

No dirge for the Derg

Ethiopia has had two previous revolutions. Neither worked out well. In 1974 students and soldiers toppled the feudal empire of Haile Selassie and replaced it with the Derg, a Marxist junta that forced peasants onto collective farms, where they starved. Seventeen years later the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (eprdf), a coalition of ethnic liberation movements, overthrew the Derg.

Although professing to be democratic and representing all of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups, the eprdf ruled harshly and was dominated by Tigrayans, who are 6% of the population. It adopted a constitution that promised to protect human rights, then ran roughshod over it, shooting or arresting protesters and installing party loyalists at even the most local levels of government. The former strongman, Meles Zenawi, who died in 2012, boasted that the eprdf’s “writ runs in every village”.

Because Ethiopia’s economy expanded rapidly, many came to see it as a model of authoritarian development, similar to China’s. gdp grew by an average of 10% a year over the past 15, the government says. That figure is probably overstated, but the growth, from a low base, was certainly swift. In recent years, however, questions have been raised about whether the Ethiopian model is sustainable. Much of its economic growth came from state spending on roads, industrial parks, giant dams and Africa’s biggest airline. This was financed largely through borrowing abroad. The binge has pushed foreign-currency debt to the equivalent of 350% of annual export earnings. The imf says it is at high risk of “debt distress”. Foreign exchange is scarce. Inflation is 14%.

The authoritarian regime also proved fragile. Oromos, who are about a third of the population, long resented the Tigrayans’ control of the government. Protests, which began in late 2014 in Oromia, gathered pace a year later after elections in which the eprdf so thoroughly suppressed opposition parties that it won 95% of the vote and all the seats in parliament. A ten-month-long state of emergency was imposed in October 2016 after protesters burned foreign-owned factories and blocked roads.

The crisis sparked a coup within the eprdf. Oromos aligned with Amharas, who are about a quarter of the population (and ruled the roost under Haile Selassie and the Derg), and shunted aside the Tigrayan elite. Abiy was named chairman of the party and the country’s first Oromo prime minister.

Since taking charge, he has ordered the release of thousands of political prisoners. For the first time in 13 years there are no journalists in jail. Censorship of the media has ceased. The army and police, who shot scores of people in 2015-16, now rarely use lethal force to contain unrest. Confrontations between them and protesters have declined by more than 80% since April.

The shift away from authoritarianism has been accompanied by a push towards democracy. Abiy has promised a free and fair election. He nominated a respected opposition figure to head the electoral board and a renowned human-rights lawyer as chief justice of the supreme court. Experts are rewriting the statutes that all but criminalised peaceful opposition.

But the revolution risks spinning out of control. The wave of protests that brought Abiy to power also exposed the degree to which many Ethiopians do not regard their government as legitimate. District officials across Oromia and Amhara were often the first targets of violent unrest before Abiy took office. Tens of thousands have been replaced, but many are powerless in the face of young protesters. “The lower administrative structure has almost completely collapsed,” says Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist with vast clout.

In the vacuum young men have taken to vigilantism. “Every citizen should be a policeman,” says Abdi Abkulkdar, a leader of an Oromo youth organisation in Shashamene, a town near Hawassa. In August a mob there lynched a man wrongly suspected of carrying a bomb.

If they go, there will be trouble

A greater threat to Ethiopia’s stability comes from ethnic tension. Since 1995, when the current constitution came into force, ethnicity has been a central feature of politics. The constitution created nine ethnically based, semi-autonomous regions, but also gave each of Ethiopia’s more than 80 recognised groups the right to form its own region or to secede. In practice the eprdf kept the federation together by shooting anyone who tried to break away. Now separatists are trying again.

In recent weeks four ethnic groups have demanded plebiscites on self-rule. There have also been attacks on minority groups and ethnic cleansing, which is made easier by the fact that in most regions ethnicity is recorded on identity cards. “They had a list, they called my name,” says a middle-aged Welayta man, whose house was destroyed by a Sidama mob in June. Several Welayta men were burned alive and 2,500 were forced from their homes in Hawassa, a cosmopolitan city in the heart of what the Sidama claim is their homeland.

Almost 1m mostly ethnic Gedeos, a small group living south of Hawassa, have been homeless since April. In recent weeks hundreds of thousands have been displaced along the border between Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz. More than 1.2m Ethiopians were forced from their homes in the first half of this year.

Some are stockpiling weapons. “The people in this region are buying machine-guns like crazy,” says a young man in Bahir Dar, the capital of Amhara. Young Tigrayans have also been calling for weapons and training. “The risk of chaos, anarchy and state collapse are within the realm of possibility,” says an official.

Abiy may see no choice but to use the police and army to separate the factions and restore order. A more lasting solution is likely to involve strengthening state institutions. That would mean curbing the powers of his own office and ensuring that the state itself is bound by the law. At times, though, Abiy has acted as if he is above it. In August he deposed the tyrannical president of Ethiopia’s troubled Somali region. This was welcomed, but unconstitutional. In September the police in Addis Ababa arbitrarily arrested thousands of young men suspected of being involved in violence. Abiy later apologised.

He also needs to revive the economy so as to create jobs for millions of young school-leavers. Many now have nothing better to do than join ethnic youth groups, such as the Oromo “Qeerroo” or Sidama “Ejjeetto”, which look like militias-in-waiting. A good place to start economic reform would be to allow competitors to Ethio Telecom, a state-owned monopoly that is responsible for one of Africa’s lowest rates of phone and internet penetration. He should also lift restrictions on banks that force them to give cheap loans to the government while starving private firms of credit.

Most of all Abiy must show Ethiopians that democracy need not mean anarchy. “Historically we are not used to reforms,” he has said. “All we know is revolutions.”

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ECONOMIST– ETHIOPIANS ARE calling it their third revolution. The first was the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. The second was in 1991, when Ethiopians kicked out the Derg, a Marxist junta that had forced peasants onto collective farms at gunpoint, causing mass starvation. Now, after 27 years of less homicidal but still authoritarian rule by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Ethiopians are getting their first real taste of freedom (see article).

The seeds of revolution were sown at a phoney election in 2015, when the EPRDF and its allies won an implausible 95% of the vote and every seat in parliament. Furious protesters took to the streets. The government shot dozens and arrested thousands, sparking riots. Young men burned foreign-owned factories and blocked roads. In April, desperate to end the mayhem, the EPRDF named Abiy Ahmed, a 42-year-old reformist, as prime minister.

He has acted quickly, lifting a state of emergency, freeing thousands of political prisoners and vowing to hold fair elections in 2020. He has signed a peace deal with Eritrea, re-opening the long-closed border with what was once a mortal enemy. The atmosphere of amity is spreading. Eritrea has signed a peace accord with Djibouti, and restored diplomatic ties with Somalia. The UN secretary-general talks of a “wind of hope” blowing across the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia is central to this. With 105m people, it is the second-most-populous country in Africa. Also, since the demise of the Derg, it has been seen by many as evidence that the “China model” of an authoritarian but businesslike state could work in Africa. For the past 15 years Ethiopia’s GDP has expanded at 10% a year from a low base, the government says. Even if its numbers are overstated, millions of Ethiopians have lifted themselves out of poverty. But much of this growth was fuelled by unsustainable public borrowing. The “Ethiopian miracle” has run out of steam. The country’s foreign debt is now equivalent to three years’ export earnings. The government is struggling to service it. Annual inflation has risen to 14%. Sclerotic monopolies such as Ethio Telecom desperately need to be broken up and sold.

Not only must Abiy cope with an economic crisis. He must also stop the country from falling apart. Ethiopia is home to more than 80 ethnic groups. Under the EPRDF, group rights were foolishly written into the constitution. Each “nation, nationality and people” was given the right to secede. For a long time this meant little—anyone who asked to break away risked being shot by a regime dominated by one group, the Tigrayans. However, under the new, gentler dispensation, ethnic chauvinists spy an opportunity. Four groups, some consisting of barely 1m people, have demanded plebiscites on self-rule. Larger groups are conducting pogroms to drive smaller ones from their territory, or what they hope will become their territory. Ethnic cleansing is all the easier because identity papers record ethnicity. In the first half of this year a horrifying 1.4m Ethiopians were forced to flee their homes.

Some are urging Abiy to slow his democratic reforms and bring back the iron fist. This would be a mistake. In the short term he will need the army and police to stop ethnic violence, but under orders to show restraint. In the long run the only peaceful way to hold Ethiopia together is to persuade all its people that they have a voice. Mr Abiy should hold a credible election in 2020, which he will probably win. He should then start a process of constitutional reform to reduce the power of ethnicity in politics.

This means abolishing ethnic-identity cards entirely. It also means reforming the winner-takes-all voting system to allow more representation for minority parties and to encourage them to campaign on issues rather than identity. The details matter. Elections in other African countries have often sparked ethnic violence. For now, Abiy has the popularity and political capital to avert disaster. He should use it.

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(FBC) –A delegation composed of senior leadership of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) arrived in Ethiopia this morning.

Upon arrival the delegation was received by Ahmed Shide, Chairperson of the Somali People’s Democratic Party (SPDP), and Mustefa Omer, Deputy Chief Administrator of the Somali regional state.

Among members of the delegation include chair of the Front, Mohamed Umar.

The Front’s army returned a week ago to the Somali regional state from their base in Eritrea after the

ONLF had reached an agreement with the government of Ethiopia.

The government and the Front signed a peace deal in the Eritrean capital Asmara last month.

The two sides reached a historic deal that allowed the ONLF to undertake peaceful political struggle in Ethiopia.

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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopian Airlines on Monday resumed flights
to Moscow after a gap of 27 years stretching back to the demise of the
Soviet Union, which saw relations with Moscow dive.

“Moscow is a vital addition to our European service, a very important
region. It’s going to take our total number of weekly flights to
European destinations to reach 54 passenger flights a week,” said the
carrier’s executive director Tewolde Gebremariam as the first flight
took off from Addis Ababa.

Russian ambassador to Ethiopia Vsevolod I. Tkachenko welcomed the move. 

“I’m happy Ethiopian Airlines made a bold decision to re-start such
flights because it will not only provide passenger flow, but also
connect Russians with Ethiopian Airlines air services’ global network”
he told AFP.

The carrier will fly 3 times a week to the Russian capital.

Ethiopian Airlines which is 100 percent state-owned, is Africa’s largest carrier.

Addis Ababa airport has recently undergone a large-scale revamp as a
major continental aviation hub in a country run until 1991 by a
communist military junta — a regime which received substantial Soviet
support in the 1970s and 80s.

Earlier this year saw a wing of a new $345 million passenger terminal at the airport, which is one of Africa’s busiest.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, ties between the two nations
slid. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Ethiopia last
March and cooperation in several sectors, nuclear power included, have
been discussed.

AFP

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Addis Ababa, December 20, 2018 (FBC) – Ethiopian Air Force Academy today graduated 50 Rwanda Air Force personnel.

Rwanda Air Force Chief of Staff, Major General Charles Karamba, along
with Ethiopian Air Force Commander, Brig Gen Yilma Merdasa, attended
the graduation ceremony.

The Rwandan Air Force Airmen have been undergoing an Aircraft Maintenance diploma course from the Ethiopian Air Force Academy.

In his remarks, Maj Gen Karamba thanked the Government of Ethiopia,
the Defence headquarters and the Air Force in particular for the
support.

He said the training is a result of the two countries’ historical and brotherly cooperation that dates back in the 90’s.

He congratulated Brig Gen Yilma Merdasa upon his new appointment as the Ethiopian Air Force Commander.

“I want to thank the Air Force Academy for having trained us for two
years which is why we are celebrating today. I also thank the graduates
for the job well done, and emphasise that in aviation, the real training
happens at work and I believe the acquired skills will benefit us all,”
said Maj Gen Karamba.

Among the 50 graduates are seven women, who like the rest; have
specialized in aviation power plant, airframe, electrical, instruments,
and navigation and armament systems.

Rwanda Defence Force and the Ethiopian National Defence Forces enjoy
strong bilateral relations, and have over the last 20 years cooperated
in areas of engineering, aviation, and medicine.

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Addis Ababa, (FBC) –An electronic investment guide (iGuide) to Ethiopia was officially launched today at a ceremony held in Addis Ababa at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC).

The web-based investment promotion tool covers a wide range of topics
deemed relevant to investment consideration and will serve as the first
point of contact for domestic and international companies and
businesspeople interested in investing in Ethiopia.

The platform highlights the various investment opportunities in the
country and provides information on the costs, laws and regulations
related to various aspects of investment, such as business set-up,
labour, taxation, and access to land.

Investors may also be interested in contact details of relevant
public institutions, official texts of laws and directives, as well as
in feedback collected among investors who are already active in
Ethiopia.

The iGuide for Ethiopia was developed by the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) in collaboration with the ECA and UNCTAD.

As part of the project, the two UN organizations have provided
capacity-building and technical assistance to the EIC staff who will
own, manage and update the platform regularly.

Since the beginning of the year, ECA and UNCTAD have jointly launched
iGuides in six other African countries, namely the Republic of the
Congo, Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, Madagascar and, most recently,
Mauritania.

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Libyan Authorities Say They Recover 34 Bodies From Islamic State Mass Grave

TRIPOLI — The bodies of 34 Ethiopian Christians executed in Libya by Islamic State (IS) in 2015 have been exhumed from a mass grave, Libyan authorities said on Monday.

The grave was unearthed on Sunday, after information was obtained during investigations of arrested IS members, the interior ministry’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) said on its Facebook page.

A video posted on social media in April 2015 appeared to show IS militants shooting and beheading the Christians, who were wearing orange jumpsuits, on a beach.

The CID displayed drone images of the mass grave, which appeared to be on a farm near the coastal city of Sirte.

The bodies will be repatriated to Ethiopia once “domestic and international legal procedures are completed”, it said. Hundreds of thousands of people have migrated from sub-Saharan Africa to Libya in recent years, many hoping to eventually reach Europe.

Islamic State took control of Sirte, the hometown of Libya’s former leader Muammar Qaddafi, in 2015 and lost the city late in 2016 to local forces backed by U.S. air strikes.

Source: New York Times

An elite force has been created in Ethiopia responsible for
protecting officials including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, after a deadly
blast while he addressed a crowd in June, Fana radio said Sunday.

Troops in the new Republican Guard unit began training six months ago
for “protecting higher government officials and their family, from any
form of aggression by ill-intentioned forces,” Fana announced on its
website.

The formation of the specialised unit followed the explosion of a hand grenade in the middle of a huge crowd of people who had gathered in the capital Addis Ababa to hear Abiy speak on June 23. Two people were killed and scores injured.

Some observers believe the prime minister was the intended target of the grenade attack, but he was not harmed.

After taking office in April, Abiy gained public support with
promises of reform to promote national unity after years of hardline
rule.

He has freed thousands of jailed dissidents and journalists and
cemented peace with neighbouring Eritrea, after a 1998-2000 war that
left a legacy of distrust.

Ethiopia had an Imperial Guard during the reign of Emperor Haile
Selassie, but that military unit was disbanded after he was ousted in an
army coup in September 1974.

A recent upsurge in the number of ethnic confrontations in Addis
Ababa and of clashes in remote regions has aroused fears that the second
most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria faces renewed violence.

According to a 2017 estimate by the UN Department of Economic and
Social Affairs, the population is about 102.4 million. The Horn of
Africa nation is home to dozens of distinct ethnic groups.

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Addis Ababa, December 20, 2018 (FBC) –Ethio-telecom has announced new
tariff cuts on international voice calls and short text-messaging.

In a press conference today, CEO of Ethio-telecom, Firehiwot Tamiru,
said the company had made 10-40 percent reduction on international voice
calls.

She also announced up to 51 percent tariff cut on international short text-messaging.

The rates for Africa are reduced to 7.50 birr from 10.29 birr, for
Asia and Middle East to 7.19 birr from 8.63 birr, for North America to
7.17 from 8.63 birr, for South America to 7.36 birr from 10.29 birr and
for Oceanian islands to 8.95 birr from 23 birr per minute.

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Addis Ababa, December 20, 2018 (FBC) – The House of People’s
Representatives (HPR) today approved the draft bills developed to amend
the Defence Forces Proclamation and to establish an Administrative
Boundaries and Identity Issues Commission.

The House approved the draft bill to amend the Defence Forces Proclamation with majority vote and one vote against.

Similarly, the House approved the draft bill to establish an
Administrative Boundaries and Identity Issues Commission with majority
vote, 33 against, and four abstentions.

The establishment of the Commission is required to solve issues of
administrative boundaries and identity questions that repeatedly occur
between regions, it was noted.

Powers and duties of the commission:

• provide alternative recommendations to the House of the Federation
  and the Prime Minister by studying any problems and conflict that are
  related to the administrative boundaries demarcation and issues of
  identity.
• Provide recommendations to the House of the Federation on amendments
  actions that has to be taken to promote and consolidate unity of
  peoples based on equality and their mutual consent.
• Provide recommendations, for the continued determination and
  alteration of administrative boundary decisions, to the House of the
  Federation, to the House of People’s Representatives and to the Prime
  minister, in order to expand appropriate constitutional principles,
  transparency and efficient system or amendment of laws.
• Present recommendations to the House of the Federation for
  consideration, where by investigating administrative boundaries
  controversies which are directed to it from the House of the Federation,
  the House of Peoples’ Representatives and the Prime minister.
• Facilitate ways in which Conflicts arise over administrative
  boundaries have been resolved, the renewal and strengthen of good
  relations between neighboring regions.
• Provide recommendations to the House of the Federation, the House of
  People’s Representatives and the Prime minister on the measures that
  has to be taken to make administrative boundaries is not further cause
  of conflicts.
• Initiate the policy framework of administrative boundaries to make
  the administrative boundaries and their area of well-being for
  development and commerce.
• Collect public opinion on issues of administrative boundaries.
• Collect opinion and inputs for the study from regional and federal officials, political parties, and other stakeholders.
• Prepare strategy and detailed plan that show the process of
  gathering public input and feedback, which ensures that the process
  includes all sections of the community.

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